Aahana Swrup
Ripe with an intriguing mystery and entertaining drama, ‘Thursday’s Widows’ is a Netflix Mexican thriller show that revolves around a community of rich people obsessed with their status. Five families, each with their own secrets, live within the gated community of Los Altos de las Cascadas, a secluded club of affluent people separated from regular life outside. Within its gates, people are obsessed with maintaining the perfect image. Thus, the community finds themselves stunned when the December 26 night uncovers three dead bodies of Tano, Martin, and Gustavo in a pool.
Amidst the shocking discovery, Mavi Guevera, the resident real estate agent, remains privy to the families’ secrets that may just hold the key to exposing the truth behind the mysterious night. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Thursday’s Widows Plot Recap
Real estate agent Mavi Guevera has helped numerous people find their dream homes within Los Altos de las Cascadas over the past few years. Therefore, when Gustavo Maldonado— the definition of the new rich, comes looking for a house to surprise his wife, Carla, on her birthday, he finds his way to the community through Mavi.
Divided from the outside world through a fence, Los Altos de las Cascadas, a paradise and a haven, promises a world of security, privilege, and happiness to anyone who can afford it. Within its walls remains a connection between one’s self-worth and sense of belonging. Therefore, the Thursday’s Widows club and the subsequent Thursday night men’s group exist at the highest within the high society.
A group of women, most belonging to the community committee akin to a homeowner’s association, gather every Thursday to catch up on the local gossip. Since their meetings take them away from their husbands for almost the entire day, the people start calling them “Thursday’s Widows.” Meanwhile, their husbands meet at Tano Scaglia, Teresa’s husband’s house.
Although unique problems plague each family in the community, they maintain a calm public image, unwilling to let anyone see their weaknesses. The Scaglia’s, an influential couple in the neighborhood, have big ambitions, and Tano has a reputation for going after what he wants and getting it. However, he recently discovered that his firm had dissolved its entire Mexican branch, starting with firing Tano.
Martin de la Luna, born and raised in Los Altos de las Cascadas, descends from a family of politicians. Still, after wanting to make a name for himself, Martin quits the family party and tries to campaign for Governor on his own. Nonetheless, Martin learns that campaigning for Governor without a big party to back him is harder than he imagined. Meanwhile, the new resident, Carla, goes through her own issues, faced with Gustavo, who reveals himself to be possessive, manipulative, and physically abusive.
Lastly, Mavi married a talented and promising man, Ronnie. However, along the way, Ronnie lost all his aspirations and became hooked on marijuana, spending all his time tending to his greenhouse. As such, Mavi had to become the family’s breadwinner, as it kept drowning in crippling debt. Nonetheless, the families’ mounting problems eventually come to a halt on the night of December 26, when Tano, Gustavo, and Martin are found dead in Tano’s pool, with Ronnie in the hospital after he tried to jump off his house roof.
Thursday’s Widows Ending: What Happened on The Night of December 26?
Despite all of the joy and merriment that Christmas brings, the next night, December 26, only brings tragedy for the Los Altos de las Cascadas. Mariana’s daughter, Ramona, and Mavi’s son, Juandi, often sneak around the neighborhood to spy on the other residents. As a result, the teenagers find themselves in the bushes near Tano’s house on the fateful night. Through obscure vision and out-of-context conversation snippets, Ramona and Juandi witness drunken Tano and Martin wading through the former’s pool while snow machines run rampant in the background.
Despite Gustavo’s hesitance, Tano and Martin encourage Gustavo to join them in the pool. Consequently, when Gustavo tries to run away, half-crazed Tano punches the man and holds him down in the water until he dies. Before Tano or Martin can realize the gravity of his actions, one of the snow machines drops into the pool, electrocuting the water. As a result, the neighborhood experiences a brief power outage, and as the lights come back on, Tano, Martin, and Gustavo lie dead in the pool.
As it would turn out, Tano orchestrated the entire night as a part of his grand plan. Tano has a perpetual thirst for success and doesn’t know when to back down. He and his family have a reputation around Los Altos de las Cascadas that Tano simply can’t afford to lose. Furthermore, his wife, Teresa, is attracted to the power Tano holds. She knows Tano is a winner and admires him for it.
Therefore, Teresa expects Tano to secure a promotion that will help the family move to Miami in the near future. However, when the day arrives, Tano learns that his company, The Dutch, has decided to fire him on the spot after dissolving his department. Even though Tano has enough money to live out the following year more than comfortably, Miami is off the table now. The news fills Tano with a deep sense of failure that he can’t climb out of.
During this time, his friend, Alfredo Insúa, plants a sinister idea in his head. Even though Tano can no longer provide for his family in the way he wishes, he can ensure a wealthy future for his wife and kids. As such, Tano prepares his plan to commit suicide and stages it as an accident. By doing so, he can leave behind a hefty life insurance amount for his family.
Once Tano plants the idea in his head, he decides to recruit other people to his self-sacrificial cause. Due to Martin’s political ambitions and persisting incompetence, he has run dry his family funds, with only a failed campaign to show for himself. The man begins the story with six nannies for his six kids but arrives at a place where he can’t even afford to keep the roof over his family’s head. As such, Martin and his family plan to move to Houston to live with his parents. Given his downtrodden state, Tano easily influences Martin to kill himself and leave behind a fortune for his family.
Lastly, Gustavo, the abusive husband, finds himself lost, angry, and humiliated once Carla leaves him after he hits her, giving her a swollen eye. All these men defined themselves by the jobs, finances, and wives they had. Consequently, when they no longer have control over these elements, they lose their sense of self. In the end, they are left only with a desperate attempt to die as martyrs for their families to retain some dignity in their deaths.
Although Tano also tries to recruit Ronnie to his plan on their weekly Thursday meeting on the 26, Ronnie vehemently refuses. However, Tano’s words get to him in the end, and he tries to take his life by jumping from his roof. Ultimately, Ronnie manages to survive, but Tano, Martin, and Gustavo meet their ends in accordance with their plan.
Do The Families Get The Insurance Money?
Since Tano, Martin, and Gustavo carry out their grand plan to ensure their families get rewarded for their sacrifices, their deaths must look like accidents. As such, a drunken post-Christmas pool party gone wrong presents the perfect stage for their accidental deaths. Furthermore, Alfredo Insúa, the mastermind behind the plan, has promised to have things run smoothly after the men’s deaths.
Therefore, when the police come and go, they leave with the verdict that Tano, Martin, and Gustavo died in a freak accident. Nonetheless, Ramona and Juandi have a video on their phone proving otherwise. When the teenagers came across the gruesome scene at Tano’s pool, in their disbelief, they recorded the entire thing.
Eventually, at the joint funeral, Ramona and Juandi share this footage to the Thrusday’s Widow’s group chat through Mavi’s phone. The wives and kids are horrified when they learn the truth behind their husbands and fathers’ deaths. Nevertheless, the families recover quickly after a conversation with Alfredo, where he divulges the importance of making these deaths look like accidents. Everyone makes a pact to keep this secret and deletes the video from their phones. In the end, the community continues to pretend the deaths were accidents and nothing more for the sake of their own futures.
Does Mavi Leave Ronnie?
Throughout the show, every couple has a tumultuous marriage. Still, Mavi’s relationship with Ronnie remains the most turbulent. Ronnie is no longer the man whom Mavi married. Instead, he’s all but given up on life and wastes it away while high as a kite. Worse yet, since their house has an unlimited supply of weed, Juandi has started smoking, which gets him in trouble at school.
Eventually, on December 26, Mavi reaches a point where she no longer wants to put up with her husband and craves something more. As a result, she sleeps with her head of security, Wagner, after months under her husband’s negligent and uninterested gaze. Nevertheless, as Ronnie recovers from his fall, Mavi tells him about her infidelity.
Through the eventual reveal of Tano’s suicide pact, Mavi realizes that Ronnie also tried to kill himself when he fell from the roof in an effort to secure finances for her. Nevertheless, Mavi is glad that her husband isn’t dead since she cannot imagine moving on from his death as swiftly as the other wives have. Likewise, Ronnie realizes that he should not take his wife for granted and wants to be the person she needs him to be so that he doesn’t lose her to another man. Furthermore, neither wants to break their family for Juandi’s sake. Ultimately, Ronnie and Mavi stay together, with the wordless promise to work on their marriage.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Thursday’s Widows Based on a True Story?
