Triptych Ending, Explained: Is Aleida Dead or Alive?

Image Credit: Mayra Ortiz/Netflix

Netflix’s ‘Triptych’ is a suspense thriller that takes inspiration from a real-life case to create a fictional scenario that completely upends the lives of three women. The story begins with Becca finding out that two other women look exactly like her. Why she didn’t know about them for the thirty-three years of her life is a mystery that she aims to solve. This leads her down a labyrinth of secrets, uncovering which leads to heartbreaks, betrayals, and some eye-opening revelations. By the final episode of the show, we witness many twists and turns in the story of the triplets. Here’s what the ending means for them. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Triptych Plot Synopsis

Becca works as a forensic expert and is called to work at a crime scene where a patient named Aleida attacked her psychiatrist, Julia. Both of them got shot in the altercation, but only one of them turns up dead. Before she dies, Aleida sees Becca and the fact that they look exactly alike is a revelation to the latter. When Becca tries to find out more about Aleida, she discovers that someone is trying to cover up the case. Becca’s personal struggles make it all the more challenging for her to deal with the secrets that she uncovers.

While Aleida dies, Becca finds out that they were actually triplets. This leads her to Tamara, a performing artist who already knew about Aleida. While they take different paths to discover more about their dead sister, Becca, and Tamara eventually end up working together and getting close to each other. Becca also finds comfort in talking to Julia, who had been treating Aleida as well. Her boyfriend, Humberto, who is her superior and is also a married man, also helps her navigate some tough times. Meanwhile, Tamara gets close to Eugenio, Aleida’s husband who doesn’t want his wife’s death to strip him of the power they enjoyed with her being the head of the company.

Triptych Ending: Is Aleida Dead or Alive?

In the first scene of the series, Aleida ends up getting shot. Her situation is so severe that, at first, everyone believes she is dead. But then Becca realizes that she is still alive, following which she is taken to the hospital. Later, Aleida is revealed to have succumbed to her wounds. When Becca tries to see her dead body, she discovers that it has been taken away by her family and is cremated.

Image Credits: Mayra Ortiz/Netflix

Because she never saw Aleida’s corpse, Becca finds it increasingly hard to believe that her newfound triplet has died. Throughout the season, Becca gets visions of Aleida, which seem more recent and she wonders if the people who had separated the triplets when they were children are working behind the scenes to keep Aleida in hiding so that the truth doesn’t come out to the world. In the final episode, she is proven right.

Becca and Tamara are betrayed by Humberto who kidnaps them under the guise of taking them to a safe house. However, it turns out that he had been working with Julia all along and they end up back at the house where their story had started. Julia keeps them in glass prisons and aims to study them like her personal guinea pigs. Somewhere down there, she’d been keeping Aleida as well.

Julia had been keeping Aleida close and had spun the story of her being neurotic and schizoid. Eugenio wanted to believe his wife, which is why he broke her out of the psychiatric clinic, but he had no idea what was actually going on. By then, Aleida had found out about Becca and Tamara and she wanted to expose Julia’s actions to the entire world. She ended up getting shot, and even though she survived, Julia had enough contacts to fake Aleida’s death. With the help of Humberto, she made sure that no one saw Aleida’s corpse, and the influence of Eugenio’s family made sure that Aleida’s reputation wasn’t tainted. However, Eugenio remained completely unaware of the fact that his wife had actually been alive all this time.

What Happens to Julia?

At the beginning of the show, Julia appeared to be a well-meaning person who wanted to help Aleida and Becca uncover the truth about their past and where they come from. Eventually, however, it turns out that it was Julia herself who had been controlling their lives since their birth. Not only that, but Julia was also their birth mother.

Image Credits: Mayra Ortiz/Netflix

Despite having given birth to them, the triplets were nothing more than subjects to Julia. She separated them just to see if they would suffer from separation anxiety and then sent them to live with different families just so she could conduct her experiment. Over time, she not only closely monitored their lives but also interfered with them. She killed their parents, indirectly flamed Becca’s alcoholism, and drove Aleida to the point of madness. When Becca came looking for answers, she fabricated a tale of how they were born to a teenage mother, almost making Becca think they were clones of a Nazi woman.

Julia could have helped the triplets and eased their pain at any time. She could have made their lives so much easier but that wouldn’t have helped her experiment. She’d rather put them in glass cages than focus on their well-being. In the end, when the triplets succeed in freeing themselves, she threatens to kill Aleida in an attempt to save herself. All of this makes it clear to the triplets that she doesn’t care about them at all, even if she might be the woman who gave birth to them.

Julia had kept Aleida imprisoned in a basement away from her family and friends, making the world believe that she had died. So, when the time comes, Becca and Tamara decide that she should get a taste of her own medicine. When they leave the facility, they lock Julia in the same basement where she’d kept Aleida all this time. Even though there are several cages and whatnot in the house, it is particularly difficult to find this basement, which means that if someone doesn’t know about they probably won’t go looking for it. No one knows that Julia is stuck inside it, which means that the woman will probably spend the rest of her days there, feeling the loneliness and torture that she’d inflicted on the triplets all their lives.

Is Humberto Dead?

Humberto was introduced in the show as Becca’s boyfriend who is married and has kids. They had a passionate affair and the break-up led to Becca’s nervous breakdown, where she ended up burning his car. This further rippled into the lives of Aleida and Tamara as well. Despite their complicated relationship, Humberto tries to be there for Becca at all times. Eventually, it becomes clear that he is still in love with her and they rekindle their romance. Becca lets him in on her investigation, hoping that he will always have his back.

Image Credits: Mayra Ortiz/Netflix

In the end, it turns out that Humberto had been working with Julia and had intentionally ingratiated himself in Becca’s life, just to make things more chaotic for her. He was one of the, if not the factors that led to Becca’s alcoholism and just when she started to do better, he would sweep in and make things a bit more complicated. Eventually, however, everyone discovers his truth, including Eugenio.

When Becca and Tamara disappear suddenly, Eugenio and Pilar become concerned about them. Eugenio tries to track their phones by Humerto destroys them. After his investigation leads him nowhere, Eugenio turns toward Humberto, believing that he loves Becca and would help in finding her. They set out to follow the signal that Eugenio had tracked but then he realizes that Humberto is not what he seems. 

When Humberto takes a wrong turn and doesn’t seem to mind that they are continuing on a desolate road, Eugenio deduces that something is wrong with the man. By now, Eugenio has learned not to trust anyone when it comes to the triplets because he has been in the dark about a lot of things. He fears that he might be driving toward his death and Humberto might be the one who kills him. Before that can happen, he fights Humberto and this leads to a car crash.

In the final scene, when the triplets have survived and all has ended well, a police officer reveals that Humberto’s car was found crashed on a dirt road and that he died in the accident. Generally, this would have been taken as a sign of his death. Because we haven’t actually seen his dead body yet, we wouldn’t be so sure about it. But then, seeing the way Eugenio reacted to the news of Humberto’s death, it looks like he not only witnessed it firsthand but probably facilitated it too. In any case, due to the shady nature of deaths in the show, we’ll stick to the rule that a character is not dead until there’s a dead body to confirm that.

Read More: Where is Netflix’s Triptych Filmed?

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