Ida In ‘Anthracite’ Series, Explained: Are Black Virgin And Enola The Same Person?

A cybersleuth who’s suffering from leukemia comes to the scenic Levionna when her journalist father has disappeared from the face of  the earth. Ida Heilman in Netflix’s Anthracite plays a major role in unraveling the dark secrets the town of Levionna has kept buried for decades. Her entire life takes a turn as she keeps digging up new things to bring to light, and her change in a matter of a few weeks is noticeable. 

Spoilers Ahead


Why Does Ida Want Jaro To Help Her?

Ida pursues Jaro Gatsi to help her find Solal. Despite Jaro’s hesitance to associate himself with more trouble, Ida doesn’t let go of him. The “web-sleuth” knows every little thing about Jaro, and her community on iData keeps her posted on more updates. When Ida searches through Solal’s bag, she finds Jaro’s picture in there, and after a telephone call from Caleb, she takes Jaro to the asylum. Ida is someone who’d go to any means to find the truth about him. She can taser Jaro if that’s what it takes to keep him with her, and she also asks Jaro to get intimate when she needs the extra endorphins.


How Does Ida Find Out She’s Adopted?

After Jaro and Romeo save Solal from Detraz’s house, Ida finally decides to play the tape that was in Solal’s bag all this time. Juliette’s water broke during an interview with Solal, and he helped her deliver the baby right there. Young Juliette didn’t want the little girl and begged Solal to take the baby away from her. Ida’s entire life flashes before her eyes when she discovers Solal isn’t her actual father. This information also meant that Jaro and Ida are siblings, and they’d indulged in a Targaryen activity just a few days ago. This discovery really shakes Ida to her core, and in an episode of rage, she destroys Solal’s workspace. 


What Stops Ida From Killing Herself?

When all hope seems lost for Ida, she goes down to the bridge to jump and put an end to her life of lies. She only had a few months of life to live anyway, and in the moment, it seemed right for Ida to just end it all. Call it divine intervention, but Caleb shows up to talk Ida out of it. You wouldn’t expect a man like Caleb, who’s only been portrayed as a classic psychotic cult leader, to care to save a life, but he does. When Ida wouldn’t listen to him, he pushed her off the bridge and grabbed her hand just in time. Caleb wants Ida to live, as she’s the only person who can save her brother, Jaro.


Are Black Virgin And Enola The Same Person?

Jaro finds the same recording Marie found before she was killed. The murder of Roxane, Juliette’s pregnancy, the Black Virgin, and Enola- Caleb had nothing to do with any of this. The real culprit was hiding right in plain sight: Jaro’s uncle Claude. A conversation between Roxane and Juliette reveals every dark secret Claude wanted to hide, and it turns out he killed Roxane and pinned it on the cult by rubbing anthracite on her face. When Juliette started taking therapy and started remembering the sexual abuse of her brother years later, Claude set fire to her apartment. Claude didn’t even spare his own wife when she found out the truth, and he blamed her death on Jaro. Juliette didn’t want to keep Ida because she was born out of incest, and the Black Virgin was her brother who used to come to her at night. Claude’s jersey had Alone written over it, which reflected in the mirror as Enola. Claude stayed in denial over what he did and passed it off to justify this as a “mistake.” 


What’s Next For Ida?

Jaro, his daughter, and Ida survive the mine explosion. She forgives Solal for what he did and understands that he just wanted to keep her away from all this. The father and daughter reconnect; that’s even more special because now Ida will live since Jaro is compatible for the bone marrow transplant. Ida now knows that Jaro is not only her brother but also a cousin. I know I’m still recovering from the weirdness of it all. However, in the post-credit scene, all of Solal’s investigations into the Ecrins cult have been taken up by a film crew to be turned into a documentary. The generations of miners have grown up with the legend of the Black Virgin, and now, with the discovery of the cult, it’s hot in Levionna despite the freezing temperature of the Alps. Ida’s own interview is interrupted when someone from iData sends CCTV footage of a lady opening a mysterious box. When she opens it, she’s terrified by whatever’s inside the box. Ida drops the interview to check on the source, and it leaves room for a lot of speculation about the contents of the box. 

Now that she has a life to look forward to, Ida and her team of web sleuths can actually crack whatever secret that box is hiding, and it’d be interesting to see if this leads to a renewal of the show. The box can either be connected to the Ecrins cult or some other mystery lurking behind the shadows. Right now, I can only think of Brad Pitt shouting, “What’s in the box?”


Aniket Mukherjee
Aniket Mukherjee
Aniket is a literature student pursuing his master's degree while trying to comprehend Joyce and Pound. When his head is not shoved in books, he finds solace in cinema and his heart beats for poetry, football, and Adam Sandler in times.


 

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