Contrary to other Intrepid Pictures series, such as Midnight Mass and the Haunting of Hill House, The Midnight Club is very open-ended, which teases a second season might be on its way. That’s precisely how creators Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong imagine The Midnight Club, and they already have a clear direction to follow if Netflix decides to renew the show. In an exclusive interview with Flanagan, Fong, and Intrepid Pictures’ Trevor Macy, Collider’s own Perri Nemiroff got to talk about Season 2 of The Midnight Club and how the story will handle its cast of terminal characters.
The Midnight Club is the fourth series from a partnership between Netflix and Intrepid Pictures, the latest created by Flanagan and Macy. However, while the previous series were designed as one-shot stories, The Midnight Club follows a long-duration format. That means The Midnight Club could return not only for Season 2 but run through multiple seasons. When asked about how this new format affects his creative process, Flanagan said:
“This is the first time we've ever designed anything to be ongoing. And it's strange, it's a whole new vibe, because you want the season to wrap up and be satisfying. But you need to leave enough on the field that people might want to come back. So that negotiation is tricky. And you know, usually we're done with the show, we can talk about it, it's in the past. With this one, we have no idea if it's going to come back or if we're going to be doing more. So it's all very kind of suspenseful for us, we get to experience the tension for a change. It's fun.”
While previous Flanagan series always leave something open for interpretation when the finale credits roll, The Midnight Club ends with a full-blown cliffhanger. In the finale, we learn that Dr. Georgina (Heather Langenkamp) is not just a simple physician, as she has a deep connection to the suicide cult called the Paragon. The reveal could indicate Dr. Georgina as the true villain of the series. Or maybe she’s just someone who escaped the Paragon and now wants to protect Brightcliffe’s patients from the cult’s twisted teachings. As Flanagan tells us, “I think both of those [sides] can survive easily into the second season. And if we get a second season, I don't want to spoil that because we, we have a great answer that we're ready to show.” So, there is a plan for Dr. Georgina, and we’ll learn about it one way or the other because, as Flanagan promises, “If we don't get a second season, we are going to put it all over Twitter and everybody will be able to see what we had in mind.”
Of course, while we want a Season 2 to resolve that cliffhanger, we are all apprehensive about the main cast of The Midnight Club. That’s because the patients of Brightcliffe are terminal young adults getting ready to die soon. So, if Season 2 includes any time jump, we might have seen the last of some of our favorite characters. Fortunately, Flanagan could reveal that “there would not be much of a time jump. For a lot of our characters, they don't have too much time for us to burn. So we would be coming in relatively tight, I think to where we left off.”
Even so, that doesn’t mean The Midnight Club wouldn’t have some casualties along the way. As Flanagan tells us, “that's the thing, though, about this show is if it does continue, there will have to be a new cast. And they'll have to kind of come in one at a time as people go.” Macy added to that grim thought by saying, “The show says how long they've been there. So the timetable kind of writes itself.” That’s it, then. If the show gets renewed, we are doomed to see many more funerals. Even so, we want to suffer. And as Fong perfectly puts it, “hopefully, we were able to have some nice emotional arcs that fulfill themselves, but then, you know, mythological stuff.”
The Midnight Club's main cast comprises Annarah Cymone, Adia, Iman Benson, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, William Chris Sumpter, and Sauriyan Sapkota. The series also stars Heather Langenkamp, Matt Biedel, Larsen Thompson, William B. Davis, Crystal Balint, Patricia Drake, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan, and Rahul Kohli.
The Midnight Club is available on Netflix right now. To learn more about the series, you can check our full interview with The Midnight Club’s young cast below.