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As trivial as it may initially seem to The Midnight Club‘s overarching narrative, Anya’s ballerina statue makes a big difference in the future of Brightcliffe Hospice’s kids. After being calloused by the suffering and deaths of her friends at the hospice, Ruth Codd’s The Midnight Club character Anya carries a cold demeanor and is often hostile toward Ilonka. However, she later warms up to her and opens up about her past by recalling how she moved to the US from Ireland after being accepted at a prestigious ballet school.
She recounts that as much as she wanted to be an accomplished ballet dancer, she struggled to keep up with the challenging disciplined life it demanded and started rebelling against her parents by partying and skipping practice. When her parents went out looking for her one night, they died in an accident. To cope with the overwhelming grief of their death, she turned to heroin, and despite her best friend Rhett’s consistent efforts to help her, she never got into rehab. During an ugly argument with Rhett (played by Daniel Diemer from Netflix’s The Half of It), she lost her temper and threw the ballerina statue he had gifted her, which broke one of the ballerina’s legs. Almost as if by fate, she later lost the same leg as the ballerina to cancer.
When Ilonka gives Anya’s remaining belongings to Rhett, he notices the ballerina statue’s leg is unscathed, as if it was never broken in the first place. While The Midnight Club never explains how the ballerina’s leg got magically fixed after Anya’s death, it seems to be Anya’s way of undoing her wrongs before drifting off to the other side. It symbolizes how even though she never got the opportunity to fix her relationship with Rhett while alive, she did it after death. Considering how the ballerina statue’s broken leg served as a literal mirror of a dark phase of Anya’s life and the living shadow of death that followed her, the mended leg is a metaphor for how it is all behind her, and she is finally at peace with herself and her past.
Seeing Anya’s Statue Has A Massive Impact On Ilonka
A significant part of Ilonka and Anya’s narrative in The Midnight Club revolves around their fear of death. To somehow distill the uncertainty surrounding their imminent doom, Anya initially makes everyone in the club promise that whoever dies first should send a clear sign from the other side. Driven by a similar fear of the unknown, Ilonka tries to save Anya’s life by performing the Paragon cult’s ritual and later even falls for Julia Jayne’s trap in the pursuit of curing her own cancer. Towards the end of The Midnight Club season 1, nothing works for Ilonka, but the ballerina statue gives her peace because it is a sign from Anya assuring her that everything is alright. Although the idea of death still remains incomprehensible for Ilonka, she feels better knowing that it is not the end of the line for any of them and that Anya is likely in a much better place.
Ilonka’s character arc in The Midnight Club revolves around finding a cure for her cancer instead of accepting what lies ahead. She even joins the hospice to unravel the mystery around Julia Jayne’s miraculous healing and find a cure for herself. However, Anya’s sign helps her accept her fate instead of spiraling into Julia Jayne’s sinister path of seeking immortality at the cost of everything else. Given how Ilonka is a “smart girl,” her newfound wisdom could spell trouble for Julia in The Midnight Club season 2.
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