Netflix’s Sky Rojo Finale Is Bloody As Hell. Just How Worried Should You Be About Your Faves?

Netflix’s Sky Rojo starts bloody. The crime drama’s very first episode, series premiere “Red Leatherette Sofa,” houses what we’re led to believe are two deaths: the self-defence killing of Las Novias Club owner Romeo (Asier Etxeandia), and the dead-on-impact manslaughter of the brothel’s madam, Charlotte (Carmen Santamaría). From there, Sky Rojo’s leading ladies — Coral (Verónica Sánchez), Gina (Yany Prado), and Wendy (Lali Espósito) — are forced on the run in a series of ever more violent scenarios. 

It should be no surprise, then, that the season 1 finale, “Bear Trap,” raises the bar on gruesome. One character is shot. Another character is buried alive in the episode’s titular “bear trap.” Two characters are left in a battle of wills (and decorative swords) that is splattered with gore and cocaine-caused mouth foam. 

Despite the horror of “Bear Trap,” Sky Rojo — whose second season was confirmed by Netflix before season 1 was even released — leaves you reason to be hopeful that its heroines may just survive their latest brush with death. 

The women of Sky Rojo have one straightforward goal in the finale: to escape Romeo and his henchmen Moisés (Sense8’s Miguel Ángel Silvestre) and Christian (Enric Auquer) for good. Because, as we learn over Sky Rojo season 1, Romeo didn’t actually die in the premiere when Coral cracked his skull open for attempting to murder Wendy. Instead, Romeo is left disabled and returns to Las Novias club in penultimate episode “Thinking With Your Dick.” 

Coral, Wendy, and Gina decide that the only way to eliminate the Romeo threat permanently from their lives is to mix Looney Tunes trickery with heist movie scheming. Together, they steal a construction excavator and build a hidden trap hole in the middle of the desert. Their aim is to get Moisés and Christian to drive into the hole without realising the imminent danger ahead of them (an “accidental” GPS ping and a big sand-coloured sheet are involved). With the brothers occupied, Coral’s job, as Romeo’s former favourite employee, is to visit him at his office and distract her boss long enough to access the Las Novias Club safe. Once inside the safe, Coral must steal back the women’s passports — which Romeo hoards as a form of leverage — and the money they made him through sex work. Since this complicated plan is rapidly explained in a drugged-up, drunken burst of chit chat, it necessitates reiteration. 

Surprising no one, this strategy disintegrates in the closing minutes of the finale. Due to family drama, Moisés and Christian split up before reaching Wendy and Gina, who are tasked with getting both men in the sand trap. Only Moisés is buried, leaving Christian free to save his brother or attack Wendy and Gina. To make matters worse, Moisés, desperate to flee the burial scheme, shoots Wendy, who is sitting in the excavator. The last time we see Wendy, she is bleeding out as Gina looks on in shock. 

The situation is no better at Las Novias Club. Romeo is not as pleased to see Coral as the women expected since he has just learned that she was sleeping with Moisés. Romeo is seething with jealousy and also high on a nearly impossible amount of cocaine. When Coral gives Romeo the detail she believes with return her to his good graces (the location of her friends, which he can verify with GPS) he responds by chasing her around his office with a sword. A fight ensues and Romeo — still disabled and now filled with cocaine — hits his head. Romeo has what appears to be a heart attack, starts bleeding out of his nose, and foams at the mouth. Coral could leave Romeo to die on his office floor, as she did at the beginning of Sky Rojo. But she chooses to save his life with CPR. When Romeo awakens, he thanks Coral by starting to choke her to death. That is how Coral ends Sky Rojo season 1. 

Yet, the narration over these seemingly fatal situations is ultimately optimistic. “We all were so sure [in] that moment that the game was up,” shooting victim Wendy says in voiceover. “That we had lost. That we were going to die for real. But we were wrong.” Because, as Coral adds in voiceover to close out season 1, “The game had only just begun.” 

Sky Rojo itself promises you its heroines will be alive come season 2. Hopefully, we can’t say the same for their many misogynistic, vicious enemies.