I know what you’re thinking — what was all that about? Well, fear not, as I’m here to walk you through the ending of Anthracite and lay to rest any lingering questions you might have about incest, cults, murders, and other such pleasant matters. This will do as a recap of Episode 6, but given the nested nature of this show’s demented plot, it’ll also take a larger view of events to better contextualize the madness.
Enjoy. If that’s the right word. If you want a spoiler-free overview of the show, check out our Anthracite review instead.
Faure Is The Mother Of Hari and Cali
Cali in her Halloween gear
So, as we saw in previous episodes, Faure is the crazy nurse who became obsessed with Caleb after watching his interview tapes in Solal’s storage locker and then finessed her way into a job as a nurse at the asylum where he was incarcerated. There, she raped him to become pregnant with his child and got two for the price of one.
It was revealed that Faure is Hari’s mother, but it was also revealed — in a very explicit birthing scene — that she gave birth to twins. What happened to the other kid? Well, Cali is the murderer down the mines. Buying too much into Caleb’s theorizing about light and dark and duality and all that, Faure led Cali down into the mines as a child, and she stayed there.
Hari explains all this to Gio after delivering a wounded but alive Romeo to the hospital.
Cali Kills Caleb
Caleb lays eyes on his crazy daughter for the first time
In the finale, Jaro wakes up in the mines and finds Malia bound and sedated nearby. Faure tells Cali to kill her for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, but Caleb and Ida arrive in the nick of time. Ida tries to free Jaro while Caleb distracts Cali, who we see unmasked for the first time, but Faure notices the deception. Cali attacks and kills her father with a pickaxe.
At this point, for reasons we’ll discuss in a minute, the mine starts collapsing. Jaro, Ida, and Malia are able to escape, but Faure and Cali are buried alive inside.
Cali had been kidnapping people and killing them in the mines for years, though again, it’s not entirely clear why. The corpses didn’t seem to have been killed in a specifically ritualistic way, so perhaps she was just a garden variety nutcase who had to commit a murder every now and then to stay even keel.
The Mine Is Destroyed
Bachelard right before he accidentally blows up the anthracite mine
Anyway, as mentioned above, the mine ends up collapsing at the end of Anthracite. This is because Bachelard wired it to blow, but after Gio talked him down, he didn’t intend to detonate it. However, Vincent shoots Bachelard to get revenge for Elias’s deformities, and he drops the detonator.
You’ll recall that Bachelard was really Mani, the kid whose father became Caleb’s 13th disciple after taking his family from Siberia to France. Vassili was killed by Denis and hidden behind the mural of Caleb at the lakeside house, and Denis helped Mani to reinvent himself as Bachelard.
Bachelard’s company, Arcacia, had been working on multiplying a microbe called Levia Borelis that they had discovered in the anthracite. The protein produced by Levia Borelis had extraordinary anti-inflammatory properties, but they had gotten far too carried away with their experimentation, causing civil unrest.
For what it’s worth, a line of dialogue from Hari earlier suggested that there was actually no connection between Arcacia and Elias’s deformities or Gio’s miscarriage. So, there’s every chance that Vincent was way off-base here.
Are Ida and Jaro Related?
Ida and Jaro trying not to discuss incest in the Anthracite finale
One of the ickier twists in Anthracite was the revelation that Ida and Jaro, who had just slept together, were brother and sister, and the ending makes this subplot even worse. The idea came about because Ida learned that Juliette was pregnant with Caleb’s child and that Solal took that child home and raised her as his own. Since Jaro is also Juliette’s son, they figured they were half-siblings.
We’ll get onto specifics in a minute, but Juliette was not pregnant with Caleb’s child. This explains why Caleb wasn’t a match for Ida’s bone marrow transplant. However, she was Ida’s mother and did subsequently go on to father Jaro, so yes, Jaro and Ida are related. They’re actually more related than they first thought.
Who Killed Roxana Vial?
Claude feels sad about being a terrible monster
Ida’s real parentage is tied to the murder of Roxane Vial. She was the teenager whom Caleb was accused of murdering, but it turns out the culprit was closer to home.
In Episode 6, Jaro finds a Walkman with a recording that reveals his Uncle Claude was the “Black Virgin” who came to his mother Juliette in the night. Claude raped his own sister. References to the Black Virgin and Enola were referring to the jersey he wore.
During the ending of Anthracite, Jaro confronts his uncle about this. He says he’s sorry like that would cut it and confesses to a bunch more crimes.
Roxane knew about this, so Claude killed her and daubed her with anthracite to implicate Caleb’s cult. He attacked and kidnapped Solal for asking too many questions about it, and then he killed Marie when she also discovered the Walkman (he should stop leaving it around.) He also started the fire that killed Juliette, since she was having therapy and starting to remember things.
This means that Claude, Jaro’s uncle, is Ida’s biological father. Juliette was pregnant with her brother’s baby, which is why she refused to even look at it after giving birth, and why she mentally collapsed afterward. So, Ida and Jaro are both half-siblings and first cousins. Blimey!
A Post-Credits Scene Teases Season 2
Ida teases Season 2
In a brief post-credits scene, we see that a film crew is finishing the story of the mines. However, this is the least important important detail.
While filming her segment, Ida is pulled away by the news that her sleuth crew has uncovered some very interesting CCTV footage. In it, a woman opens a mysterious cardboard box and the contents shock her.
What’s in the box? Well, it could quite easily be Season 2.
If you want even more context, here’s a complete Anthracite Season 1 recap.
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