Anthracite Ending Explained: What Happens to Ida and Jaro? What Happens to the Cult?

Anthracite Plot

When a woman’s mysterious death brings out the horrible truths of a cult’s deplorable activities in a small Swiss town, past delinquent Jaro Gatsi is immediately taken as the scapegoat. As he tries to prove his innocence, he comes across Ida, whose kidnapped journalist father brings her to the town and opens up dark secrets that the town would rather forget.

Anthracite Ending Explained

The story starts with Ida overhearing her father getting kidnapped and following his trail to the French Alps. As she investigates further, she finds Jaro’s picture among her father’s things and decides to rope him into her rescue mission. Unfortunately, Jaro also gets roped into the arms of the law when a woman he briefly makes out with turns up dead and he becomes a suspect. Meanwhile, Ida and her internet sleuths try to find the identity of a key found in Solal’s things and she is surprised to find out that her father owned a storage unit full of tapes.

These tapes contained interviews of all the cult members and everyone associated with the aftermath of the deadly ordeal, giving Ida a massive clue that she, and eventually Jaro and Romeo, have to sift through in order to get a deeper understanding of Solal and the cult as well. Meanwhile, they also meet Caleb in order to get more information but he tells Jaro a cryptic message surrounding his family’s misfortune that gets him riled up.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Giovanna tries to find out the common thread in the murders and ends up at the offices of Arcacia, against whom the locals are protesting for polluting their environment and taking away jobs for corporate greed. As Jaro figures out more about her mother Juliette’s past and about a mysterious child that was in the cult 30 years ago and who was adopted by retired police officer Denis. As it turns out, Denis soon sees a cult member out of the blue at his retirement home and is left traumatised when Jaro shows him a picture of Mani, claiming that it was him who attacked him.

As the police try to figure out about the attacker, the annual festival rolls around wherein Ida, Romeo and Jaro try to bait the cult members to come out but it all goes horribly wrong when a large number of the townspeople start to cough up blood and eventually die, resulting in a bloodbath. Denis is apprehended and it turns out that he was a member of the cult 30 years ago and was responsible for the “mass suicide” then and now. He ends up killing himself.

Meanwhile, Jaro’s wife and daughter end up visiting him at Levionna but they are unable to have a reunion because of the circumstances surrounding them. As they go to stay at a hotel, Jaro has sex with Ida, who stays at his house after her hotel room catches fire. Meanwhile, Gio’s relationship with Erwan spirals downward. Later on, following Denis’s trail, Ida and Gio end up at his flat at an abandoned housing project and find evidence that there was someone living there until recently but aren’t able to figure out who.

They come outside, however, and come across a man walking around outside in the snow and try to ask him the truth but Ida ends up tasering him and they walk off up the mountain to get their next clue. They are surprised to find a decontamination tent in the middle of the mountains with dead sheep inside but before they can do anything more, they both become unconscious. Elsewhere, Jaro finds a folder on a woman called Detraz who allegedly assaulted Juliette years ago. Romeo picks him up from the police station but they are both driven off the road by an old enemy and they end up at the elusive Detraz’s home and finally find Ida’s father.

From Detraz, however, Jaro finds out that it was Juliette who attacked her and then stabbed herself – she implores that his mother wasn’t mentally well. Either way, Solal’s discovery leaves Ida relieved while Gio’s relationship is destroyed further as Erwan refuses to believe her theories and calls her depressed and mentally unstable. On the other hand, Romeo rekindles his relationship with Hari, but the next day, Romeo is left surprised when he finds out that Hari works for Arcacia. In the midst of this mess, Caleb runs out of the mental asylum.

Meanwhile, Hari helps Gio explore Arcacia in secrecy and she confronts Mani who has been exploring the mines for all of these years. Unfortunately, before she is able to get an answer, a terrible accident takes place in the mines, resulting in quite a few men ending up at the hospital in a terrible condition. On the other hand, Ida watches the final tape where she finds Solal helping a clueless Juliette to give birth to a girl. She watches in horror as Juliette rejects the baby, seemingly conceived with Caleb without her consent, and Solal takes the girl home – Ida turns out to be Juliette and Caleb’s daughter.

We then go back to 1994 and witness a conversation between Solal and a woman who soon discovers Caleb’s interview tapes and becomes enthralled by his words, tipping on obsession. In the present, Ida tells Jaro the truth about Juliette and that the two of them are siblings; she gets disgusted while recalling the story and is unable to accept the fact that the two of them had sex together. Meanwhile, Marie finds a tape of a conversation between Juliette and Roxane that leaves her wide-eyed.

We jump back to 1996 where the same woman from 1994 has now become a nurse and is tending to Caleb at the asylum. She professes her love and devotion for him but Caleb is left unimpressed, asking her to leave him alone. In the present, Jaro talks to Solal and questions why he didn’t tell him or Ida the truth about her parentage. He mentions that he had told Marie everything, which leaves Jaro confused as to why she never told him anything. He goes home to question her aunt but finds her brutally murdered.

As Jaro and Ida cope with the new information, we go back to the past and see the mysterious woman taking matters into her own hands after getting rejected by Caleb and she rapes him so as to get pregnant and “have his heirs” who will “lead the world” according to Caleb’s teachings. That night (in the present), Romeo has an uncomfortable dinner with Hari and his mother, who aggressively tells him to never speak to her son again and insults him thoroughly but Romeo can’t help but notice the cigarette that she is smoking, which turns out to be the exact same stub that he had found in Solal’s storage unit.

On the other hand, Jaro learns that Malia has been abducted and taken to the mines and he decides to go alone to find her and Gio ends up joining him. We meanwhile, see that Hari’s mother had twins but we are yet to figure out who that is and in the present, Romeo goes back into Hari’s house to snoop through their things. He is surprised when he goes into the basement and sees Caleb’s tapes being played and a diary that notes Hari and his twin sister’s childhood.

In the mines, while Gio and Jaro find the bodies of the missing people over the years, Romeo reads how Hari’s mother had taken her daughter into the mines and used her as sort of a sacrifice, in the sense that all the good that Hari does will be offset by all the bad that she will do to balance it. Unfortunately, Romeo is discovered by Hari, who shoots him dead. Meanwhile, Ida follows Caleb into the mines.

Anthracite Episode 6

In the last episode, as Ida goes deeper into the mines with Caleb, Hari takes a wounded (by alive!) Romeo to the hospital. Gio and Erwan have a heart-to-heart conversation, after which they decide to work on their marriage when she spots her brother being wheeled to surgery. Hari tells them that her mother will kill all of them and that he had to shoot Romeo in order to save him. In the mines, Jaro begs for Malia’s life and just as Hari’s sister is about to kill the little girl, Caleb comes in and stops her.

He tries to reason with his daughter as Ida helps Jaro free and upon discovery, Hari’s sister stabs Caleb. Outside, the locals barge into Arcacia, believing that the company has been stealing their children. Gio uses this opportunity to go through the mine entrance in order to find Jaro and Malia but a disgruntled townsperson decides to shoot Mani, setting off the explosive. It saves Malia, though, and Jaro and Ida run off with the little girl in the aftermath but are unable to get out in time as the tunnels collapse. In the end, Arcacia goes up in flames and we see rescuers going down the mines to find Jaro and the others.

3 weeks later, Romeo finally gets out of town after meeting Hari one last time while Jaro tells Ida that he can donate marrow for her since he is compatible. She decides to go back home with her father and misses out on the many alerts that her online sleuth friends send her way. She finally gets the message at a random gas station that it is impossible for Caleb to be her father.

At home, Jaro goes into Juliette’s room and finds the recorder that Marie was listening to previously and is stunned to find his mother’s conversation with Roxane about Juliette’s brother, Claude, assaulting her. Jaro is left devastated at the revelation and realising that he has been caught, Claude tells Jaro everything – that he was the one who killed Roxane, Marie and Juliette and almost killed Solal. Ida, thus, is Juliette and Claude’s daughter.

In the end, Jaro violently beats up Claude but doesn’t kill him and as Ida arrives at the house, the two share a glance as a new day starts.

Anthracite is streaming on Netflix.

Also Read: Anthracite Review: Clément Penohat’s Netflix Series is an Engaging Affair