he one time you will know that the outstanding brains of our time are just as human as we are is when you find one of them yearning for a period of time you look back on with some wistfulness too. We’re talking about everyone’s favorite decade, the ‘90s, in case The Midnight Club itself isn’t a dead giveaway.

Flanagan graduated high school in 1998, which is around the same time most older millennials (present company included) did too. The Midnight Club series is set somewhere in 1994/95, judging from the song the show opens with (‘Interstate Love Song’) and ends within the same year. The series is set in a hospice for teens, who are allowed to live their last days with agency and dignity, and there is a mystery that weaves their days at hospice together. That’s the larger story taken care of.

The standalone stories that make up each show are derived directly from Pike’s bibliography, which for a YA writer in the horror genre is substantial. There is no other sentiment to be had here but gratitude for this cult childhood hero finally receiving his day in the sun. Even the tinkering with the stories Flanagan and Leah Fong (his co-creator) do, are apt, and completely forgiven, because they do so well with the adaptations.

We can’t fully say if The Midnight Club is a must-watch, just as we could never recommend Christopher Pike as a writer to everyone as kids. The themes explored in the manner that they are, aren’t for everyone. They can seem contrived and tedious, which despite Mike Flanagan’s mastery over the very specific genre of horror with a heart, can still happen.

The very first reason to watch the series actually would have little to do with Pike, and more to do with Flanagan’s storytelling. Over his career, the director has approached the ties of love, blood and friendship that bind us through the lens of horror. He has a very specific moral to all his stories, and if located, the moral isn’t a bad one to contemplate.

Then, you must give the series one watch at least if ‘90s music is your actual jam. You will find everyone from Green Day to Bush to P.M. Dawn in there, and will find yourself feel that delicious warmth of happiness in your gut only favorite music can bring.

Lastly, Christopher Pike has always had undercurrents of his own lessons to impart in his stories, even if one of his characters once proclaimed that the best stories have no moral. He has tried, over the decades, to force us to look at the delicate connections all humanity shares, how everything ripples into the next, and the qualities of love and kindness that exist in everyone, according to the writer. That he meets his most compatible creative match in Mike Flanagan is nothing short of miraculous, and so indicative of the kind of everyday magic both Pike and Flanagan seem to want their audience to believe in.