This article contains spoilers for Anthracite episode 1, "Still on Fire". A brand new limited series has landed on Netflix. Anthracite takes viewers in the French Alps, in a fictional town where the mass suicide of a cult caused quite a stir in the 1990s. Now thirty years later, the murder of a woman who was killed following the rituals performed by this strange community wreaks havoc on the delicate balance restored by the residents.
Let's take a look at how Ida, Jaro and Giovanna get involved in all of this in the first episode of Anthracite: Secrets of the Sect.
It all started in 1994 when a GIGN raid turned into a dreadful discovery. The police were there to arrest Caleb Johansson, leader of the Écrins cult, but when they arrived, he was choking up on blood and everyone else on site was found dead. News clips bring the audience up to speed about the situation, explaining that Johansson was accused of the murder of a young teenage girl named Roxane Vial, following a strange ritual involving her face being smeared in anthracite.
We jump to the present day, 2024. Journalist Solal Heilman is reviewing old footage about the case, revisiting the investigation from a storage unit near the small village where it all unfolded: Lévionna. As he leaves for the night, Solal gets a call from his daughter, Ida, who wants to check up on him. Their conversation is cut short when Solal is attacked by a mysterious figure.
A day or so later. Ida arrives in the Alps, looking for her father. It turns out that she is into collective digital investigating, or “web-sleuthing” as she puts it. She checked her father’s hotel room and found the picture of a young man who she later finds working at the nearby ski resort. This is Jaro, a young man who is currently on parole. Jaro doesn't know what to think about this girl who comes to his workplace full of questions about him.
Jaro is originally from Paris but he had to leave for the mountains to get his life back on track, after turning against some drug dealers who’d like to get rid of him. So Ida pestering him about her missing father is not exactly part of his plan. Neither is flirting with Emma, a young woman who tricks him into gallivanting in the woods with him later on and even kisses him.
Complicated circumstances
While Ida is determined to get answers about her father’s whereabouts, Jaro does his best to keep to himself. After making it clear to Emma that he is not interested in seeing anyone, he goes to his uncle Claude’s. Claude has offered him a place to stay and also has had one of those off days (his sheep were attacked by wolves).
Jaro takes some time to call his ex, Anais. The conversation doesn’t go very well, however, and Jaro finds out she wants full custody of their daughter. It is unclear at this point why Jaro is on parole, but it's obvious that he wants to make things right. Meanwhile, Ida finds a key in her father’s things and asks her network of web investigators to figure out what it opens before being interrupted by a very disturbing phone call.
The next day, local police lieutenant Giovanna comes to see Jaro to ask questions about a missing girl: Emma. No one has seen her since she went into the woods with him: that does not bode well for the young offender. Thankfully, Ida shows up to vouch for him and then offers to give him a ride home.
As they set off, Ida tells Jaro she needs him to go with her to the local asylum to meet Caleb Johansson. It turns out he is the one who called her the night prior, and that he wants to meet Jaro for some reason. The latter is not interested; to make sure he complies with her demands, Ida tases him. When he wakes up, there isn’t much he can do but go along with Ida’s plan (who knows what else she might do to him at this point).
Jaro’s string of bad luck continues when they get to the asylum and Caleb Johansson starts rambling about his mother, Juliette, who we later find out took her own life in a housefire when Jaro was a boy. Caleb says she was “the Chosen One” and goes on and on about how “the flames will come back” for Jaro and “consume” him and his descendants. Needless to say, the young man is quite freaked out by the whole ordeal and gets angry at the former cult leader before telling Ida to forget about him and leave.
Ida's secret
There is something Ida has not told Jaro yet but the audience quickly finds out: she is terminally ill with cancer. It seems she has been battling the sickness her entire life but this time, the end is near. That's why she is so eager to find her father quickly.
While all of this is going down, an ice-skating couple finds a body under a frozen lake that turns out to be Emma’s. Now Giovanna, who has spent most of this episode trying to justify her interest in this missing case, is wholly convinced this is all related to what happened 30 years ago with the Écrins cult. Especially when she sees that Emma’s face is smeared with anthracite.
To blow off some steam, Jaro accepts his coworker Romeo’s invitation to go to a party that evening. And guess where the party is happening? At Caleb Johansson’s old cult house of course! To get in, they need to cover their face with anthracite, and Jaro clearly does not understand what this all refers to. In the meantime, Ida’s internet friends have figured out what the key opens: it’s the storage unit we saw Solal leave at the beginning of the episode! She goes there and realizes he is onto something about the Écrins cult case.
At the party, high on drugs, Jaro starts rethinking his recent decisions and prepares to leave. On his way out, he gets into a fight with other partygoers who accuse him of killing Emma. He manages to get away and goes straight to Ida’s, admitting he needs her help to clear his name.
Ida reveals that back in 1994, Juliette (Jaro’s mother) was linked to the Écrins cult and Roxane’s best friend.. but Juliette didn’t believe Caleb killed Roxane, and Ida came to understand that neither did her father. She then theorizes that her dad was probably attacked because he uncovered new information about that old case, and she wonders if perhaps Juliette’s suicide wasn’t really what it looked like. Could this mysterious attacker also be Emma’s killer?
But before the two characters can dig deeper into this new information, the back wall of Ida’s room explodes, tearing a hole through the space and setting it on fire. Jaro is tetanized with fear (from the PTSD he still has following the fire that occurred in his home when he was a child) and Ida does her best to shake him out of it so they can run to safety. Will Ida and Jaro be safe?
Anthracite is now streaming on Netflix. If you've already streamed it, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best Netflix shows and the best French shows on Netflix to find your next fix.
