It’s difficult to figure out who ends Luna Nera’s season 1 finale, “Light,” in a greater state of shock: heroine Ade (Nina Fotaras) or the Netflix drama’s viewers. “Light” wraps by revealing Ade isn’t the Chosen One we have been led to believe she is. Instead, that honor belongs to her “brother” Valente (Giada Gagliardi), who is actually Ade’s sister named Luxor.
The twists could easily make your head spin. However, when you step back and really look at the finale, it solves many of Luna’s greatest mysteries.
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Luxor’s true identity is revealed in the second half of “Light,” when the witches are almost murdered by the Benandanti extremists. Marzio Oreggi (Roberto de Francesco), who is likely Ade’s father, saves her from the execution because he believes she is the Chosen One and therefore can help him read the Book of Kingdoms. The book holds magical secrets Oreggi is unable to learn on his own. Before the Benandanti can burn Ade’s friends, an eclipse — or a luna nera/black moon — occurs. Immediately, the witches are freed from the stakes they were meant to die on. They reappear on the ground, amid the bloodthirsty townsfolk who wanted to watch their murders.
It is obvious “Valente” is leading the witches as they knock everyone out. Only Ade, Oreggi, and Sante (Giandomenico Cupaiuolo), the leader of the Benandanti, are left standing. Oreggi, terrified, feels with the Book of Kingdoms. Valente levitates and attempts to defeat Sante, who in turn tries to choke Valente, a child, to death. Ade saves her sibling by stabbing Sante in the heart, killing him. With Sante dead, Valente recognizes that the witches must leave, and levitates them all out of the Serra town square.
As the witches leave Serra, we see that the unconscious townsfolk are arranged in the same shape as the one Valente draws throughout season 1. That pattern can also be seen on the first page of the Book when Oreggi opens it in third episode “Voices.” This is our reminder that Luna Nera has been signaling the importance of Valente since the premiere.
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After the witches escape, “Light” explains “Valente’s” fully backstory. The child was born a girl and Antalia, mother to both Ade and her sibling, immediately realized her baby was the Chosen One. In order to protect her infant, Antalia created a glamour to make her daughter appear to be a boy. This way, no one would suspect the baby was a witch, let alone the most powerful witch in the world. Antalia understood that people would want to harm such a fearsome girl. To ensure her magic would work, Antalia gave up her youth to make the trade. At the time, she knew the glamour would end upon the next eclipse.
That bargain explains why Antalia became an old woman in the first place. It also clarifies a premiere scene when we see the final time Ade knowingly spoke to her mother. In the flashback, Antalia prepares to leave her new home with Ade and instructs her daughter to trust whoever returns to the house with her brother. You can see Antalia wince from labor pains in the shot. In this moment, Antalia already knew she was about to give birth to the Chosen One and would have to forfeit her youth to save her youngest child. We are meant to assume Old Antalia — aka the woman Ade called “Grandma” in the wake of her mother’s traumatizing “disappearance” — returned later that day with newborn “Valente.”
These realizations bring us to the moment Ade realizes her sibling is the Chosen One and she is not. After leaving the square, Ade sees her magic mentor Tebe baptizing her sibling and announcing their name is Luxor, “like the light that will protect us from the darkness.” Luxor is adorned like a princess, and the ghost of Antalia appears to confirm her daughter is a girl. Luxor has taken her mantle as the Chosen One and is now leading the witches.
Ade is devastated to learn her mother hid the truth about Luxor, among a multitude of other secrets. Ade runs away from her coven, convinced she is different from them. Ade’s “demonic” spell — as captions describe it — to force Antalia to disappear suggests Ade’s anxieties are correct. The final shot of “Light” shows that Ade’s eyes have gone black, in the same way Oreggi’s did earlier in the episode. In penultimate chapter “Weapons,” Tebe says “Oreggi” is the successor to mysterious The Furious, which is suggested to be the ultimate big bad of Luna Nera. The sight of Ade with black eyes hints she could be destined to turn as evil as the man who is probably her father.
Ade may not be the hero of this story — she may be the villain.