Dhruv Trivedi
From the makers of ‘Money Heist‘ comes the blistering tale of 3 prostitutes who suddenly get a shot at freedom and decide to take it. With their ruthless pimp and his men close on their tails, we see Coral, Wendy, and Gina slowly evolve from being scared victims to cunning hunters. Throughout the show, the three regale their stories and experiences of being prostitutes and the unspeakable treatment they face at the hands of their clients, making it all the more satisfying when they take on the men who have “used” them for so long.
‘Sky Rojo’ reflects the creators’ not-so-subtle nod at Quentin Tarantino’s filmmaking style. Pina also referred to the show as “Latin pulp.” This experiment of combining the signature adrenaline-fuelled violence with the creators’ own methods of storytelling, which wowed the viewers globally in ‘Money Heist,’ makes ‘Sky Rojo’ a roller coaster ride unlike any we’ve seen so far. And as expected, the ending is a doozy! Want to know how things might turn out for Coral, Gina, and Wendy? We’ve got you covered! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Sky Rojo Season 1 Recap
‘Sky Rojo’ is based in a brothel called ‘Las Novias’ (“the brides”) on the island of Tenerife in Spain. The story follows Coral, Wendy, and Gina, who, after seriously injuring their savage pimp Romeo, try to escape and make a life for themselves outside the horrors of forced prostitution. However, with no passports (they have been confiscated by Romeo) and after accidentally murdering the “madame” of the brothel, which removes the option of going to the police, the three find it difficult to find help or recourse. Hot on their heels are Romeo’s trusted men, Moises and Christian, who happen to be brothers.
As Coral, Wendy, and Gina try to dodge Moises and Christian, they relate their experiences as prostitutes through flashbacks, explaining to the audience what life is like behind the scenes of a brothel. All three have felt trapped and have had to suffer degrading behavior day in and day out. Plus, whereas Wendy and Gina had been trafficked into Spain from Argentina and Cuba respectively, Coral had volunteered to be a prostitute.
As the women become increasingly hardened and angry at the treatment meted out to them, their objective starts veering more towards revenge than escape. Finally, they come up with a plan aimed at trapping Moises and Christian, stealing the club’s earnings, and retrieving Wendy’s and Gina’s passports. As they put their plan in motion, Romeo, who knows their whereabouts, orders Moises to go and bring back the dead bodies of all three.
Sky Rojo Season 1 Ending: What Happens to Coral and Romeo?
After setting up a trap for Moises by digging a huge hole in which they plan to trap him, the women meet one last time at the bar and set out to complete their plan, agreeing to meet back at the bar once they have accomplished their objectives. Coral heads to the club to steal the money and retrieve the passports, and Wendy and Gina head out to trap Moises and Christian.
As Moises makes his way to the location where the women are supposed to be, he forcibly throws his brother Christian out of the car so that he is no longer incriminated in the crimes that Romeo is forcing them to commit. In the meantime, Coral enters the club to the shocked reactions of everyone there. She is immediately taken up to Romeo’s office, where he is making his way through a pile of cocaine, getting wilder and wilder and brandishing a samurai sword.
As Moises spots Wendy and Gina, the two take off on a motorcycle with him close at their heels. They manage to make it across the hole they’ve dug while Moises drives straight into it. Back at the club, Coral, who thought she had some leverage over Romeo because he cared for her, realizes that he, in fact, will not hesitate to kill her. The two have a brief sword fight, and Coral throws her sword at Romeo, causing him to have a heart attack. Seeing him collapse, she immediately starts trying to revive him by sitting astride and pumping his chest.
At the same time, Wendy, driving an earth digger, starts filling sand into the hole Moises is trapped in, burying him. Out of desperation, Moises fires his gun at her before being completely buried. In the closing scenes of season 1, Gina walks up to Wendy only to see that she’s been shot in the chest by Moises, and Romeo, who is having his chest pumped by Coral, suddenly opens his eyes and starts choking her. Does he kill her? Let’s see!
A subtle yet very important dynamic of the show is the one between Coral and Romeo. A savage pimp to all other women, Romeo opens up to Coral and has been infatuated with her ever since she joined his brothel. Coral, for her part, plays the mysterious woman who volunteers to be a prostitute, and even Romeo, who prides himself on knowing the inner workings of people’s minds, admits that he cannot tell what is going on in hers.
Throughout the show, Coral and Romeo have been the engines for their respective sides, leading the plot and most often deciding on the next steps. It is fitting for the two to have a showdown at the end of the season. However, both these characters are the foundation of the show, and it is very unlikely that either of them dies. If there’s one trend ‘Sky Rojo’ follows, it’s that people who are expected to be dead are not actually dead!
Is Moises Dead?
We leave Moises and Coral (and Wendy!) in very similar situations at the end of the show. From thinking they have the upper hand, the tables are turned, and they suddenly find themselves facing certain death. Moises is buried inside his car by Wendy (and her surprisingly good skills with the earth digger), and Coral is strangled by Romeo when he suddenly wakes up after his apparent heart attack. Whereas it is quite clear that Coral will not be killed off so easily and is in a situation where her escaping alive would be a believable outcome, the same cannot be said for Moises.
There are multiple reasons we can expect Moises to not survive, the first of which is that to trap him and Christian is a part of the girls’ revenge. Since the rest of their plan is not going so well, we expect that they get this one small victory by eliminating him. Hints that Moises is about to die are scattered all over the episode, leading up to his entrapment. From him finally revealing to Christian that he murdered their father to his and Romeo’s relationship breaking down over Moises’ affair with Coral, all signs point to the fact that Moises does not have a reason to go on.
The only reason for Moises to be left alive would be to keep the show’s taught 3 vs. 3 dynamic, that we see throughout the first season, unchanged. It is possible that because of his lingering feelings for Coral, Moises is not really trying to kill the 3. Either consciously or subconsciously, he lets them escape on multiple occasions through his “blunders,” like leaving the keys in the ignition.
This is something that Romeo also starts to suspect near the end. Therefore, Moises, who has also been shown to be the most level headed of the three, might be crucial in maintaining some form of subtlety in the situation, whereas Christian or Romeo would’ve gone on an all-out rampage to kill the girls and wouldn’t have cared about who they would have hurt and injured along the way.
So, if it is as we expect, and Moises is dead, we can expect the next season to be even more savage as Christian and Romeo have now lost the only calming and level-headed presence that they had. Moreover, both Christian and Romeo are shown to be heavy (and unstable) drug users, and now, with Christian’s brother’s apparent death, they both have another reason to get revenge from the women.
Is Wendy Dead?
Just before Moises is completely buried, he fires off a shot that hits Wendy in the chest. We see her bleeding but are not shown whether she survives the wound or dies. However, it is unlikely that Wendy will die, the biggest reason for which is that her character, apart from being one of the leads and an integral part of the dynamic of the trio, has not been completely explored yet.
Throughout the show, we see Wendy have major realizations that fundamentally change her outlook on life. She learns to be more open to the idea of love from Gina and gets perspective from Coral, who has a much more painful past than her. Near the end of the season, just a little while before she is shot, Wendy concludes that since she doesn’t like men, she shouldn’t have been keeping herself thin and beautiful to attract them in the first place.
She decides to eat a lot of chocolate, which she likes, and get fat. As funny as it sounds, this shows a massive change in Wendy’s priorities as she realizes that caring for herself is more important than attracting men. Her other major realization comes from being raped by an ex-client, despite her telling him that she is not a prostitute anymore.
She realizes that even though she is now out of the club and has the freedom to say “no,” it still doesn’t make any difference, and she is still treated the same. It would be sadly poetic but devastating if Wendy were to die before we can see her put her new perspective to use. And from what we’ve seen of show creator Alex Pina’s work, that’s not his style. We think Wendy’s character will be explored more in the future.
Where Are the Three Women Heading?
The premise of ‘Sky Rojo’ is based on 3 women, Coral, Wendy, and Gina, who are escaping from their lives as prostitutes and also from their violent pimps and club runners who hold them captive through debts, threats, and confiscated passports. But where exactly are they headed? This is never clearly mentioned. From what we know of the characters, Gina may want to escape so that she can go back to Cuba and be with her young son.
However, this plan doesn’t sound as good once she finds out that her mother had arranged for her to be forced into prostitution in the very first place. She is also disappointed by one of her past clients, who she thinks is in love with her, and considers eloping with him until she realizes he only wants her because she fulfills his fantasy.
Wendy, who comes from Argentina to earn money for her lover, finds out she’s been dumped, and her lover has left her, taking all her money. And Coral actually takes up prostitution voluntarily. Needless to say, there is not a lot pulling these women back to where they came from. The focus is on the escape and on moving ahead, not on the destination. We are given further insight near the end of the season when Coral says, “We’d almost regained our freedom and gone back to a life that none of us ever had.”
This line touches on the overarching theme of the show. The plot is centered around them attempting to run away but not knowing where to go. Of having to face the futility and hopelessness of being trapped even when you think you’re free. The 3 women are trying to run away not just from their captors but also themselves. We see this most clearly with Coral, who constantly tries to escape her reality by popping pills.
As they try to run away, they are repeatedly reminded that they cannot escape their past. This is symbolized by how, after fleeing from the club again and again, they find themselves coming back to it for some reason or the other. The fact that the whole situation takes place on an island, where the characters keep running into each other, further enforces the feeling of being trapped with no escape. In many ways, the show gradually reveals to us that it is not about escaping but about revenge and retribution.
What Does the Future Hold for Coral, Wendy, and Gina?
Over the course of the first season, we see that it is not just the escape the women are motivated by, but also retribution and revenge. “To break the wheel.” “To be the fox.” Multiple times in the show, the women have expressed their needs, especially after being subject to the humiliations of prostitution. They want to be the attacker for once and not the prey. This finally materializes in the last episode where they launch an “attack” on Romeo and his men, with Coral walking back into the club and even having a brief sword fight with Romeo, and Wendy and Gina finally subduing Moises, who they’ve been running from the whole time.
With the way things are left at the end of the first season, there is an overwhelming likelihood that we can expect the women to give up plans of escaping and instead engage in an all-out war with Romeo until his club collapses. Whereas in the beginning, the balance of power is completely one-sided, with Romeo holding all the power and the women running scared, they have now evened the odds, and the violent experiences that they have gone through have hardened them, giving them the confidence to take on Romeo and his men.
On the other side, the need for revenge has further been strengthened, as we can no doubt imagine that Christian, after the possible murder of his brother, now has a much more personal stake in killing the women. The odds are further evened out by the fact that the women know Christian’s weak point: his mother. And much like the pimps who threaten the women’s families, we see Coral now threatening to kill Christian’s mother. So what does the future hold for Coral, Wendy, and Gina? We think it’s a full-blown battle to the death against the men that have ruined their lives. As Coral says at the end, while she’s being choked by Romeo, “The game (has) only just begun.”
Read More: Where is Sky Rojo Filmed?
