’30 Coins’, the Spanish HBO Max television series, created, written and directed by Álex de la Iglesia, and co-written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría, has reached the end of its season 2, spilling its supernatural enigmas in the episode ‘The Eye of God’, where all the characters band together to thwart Barbrow’s apocalyptic plans, a high-stakes culmination that leaves ample room for the series to reboot, offering a resolution that only further twists what we have seen.
With its references to Lovecraft, with its Christian symbols and mythology this season has changed pagan cults, possessions and ceremonies to reach pure science fiction of parallel universes, giving an oar stroke to all its Christian theology in a Lovecraftian nightmare with fewer monsters and more science fiction concepts. The plot threads of the seven episodes are suddenly intertwined to combine the plots. On the one hand we have Salcedo, Haruka and Antonio, joining forces to thwart the sinister plans of Barbrow’s supercomputer.
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST EPISODE
As De la Iglesia said in his explanation of his triptych in 2020, Indeed, the comparison with ‘Star Wars’
“Star Wars begins with a thesis, then comes the antithesis which is ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, and then a kind of happy synthesis which is Return of the Jedi. (…) I don’t know if to get The Empire Strikes Back you have to have planted Star Wars first, (…) But it is clearly a fatalistic film. It is a tragic film, with a pessimistic vision and that ends halfway. Let’s say I tried to do that in 30 coins: this first season is actually a second act.”
The comparison was not gratuitous. We see that in the plot of this there are three sequences running at the same time, like in ‘Return of the Jedi’. Indeed Salcedo has to deactivate the servers like Han Solo deactivated the Death Star shield from Endor. Barlow’s purpose is no different, only instead of a shot from the Death Star it is the eye of God that is going to end the earth. The difference is that here what should happen ends up happening. Giamatti, perfect as an eccentric billionaire genius, plans to use the 30 coins and other religious and supernatural constructs to destroy the world and shape a new one.
Simultaneously, the central plot unfolds with Vergara and Elena trying to free Paco from the clutches of malevolent forces orchestrated by Barbrow, who manages the takeoff sequence for his saucer to take off. When God is invoked, everyone who travels in his ship will reach another dimension, a new world that will have many future implications. Meanwhile, Merche (Macarena Gómez) discovers the stowaways Elena and Santoro and they will try to get rid of them in a fight in which Elena manages to break Paco’s “spell.” (Miguel Ángel Silvestre) before getting into the “ancestral diving suits.”
The end is the beginning
It is at that moment when Santoro bows before Merche in a betrayal that was seen coming, while Vergara, with his Moses-like poncho and his divine staff, rides motorized through the desert and tries to stop the eye of God. But when he exercises the prophetic role it is too late, the saucer has disappeared, everything is over. But there is still an option, and Angelo (Cosimo Fiusco) encourages him to break the staff of the petroglyph to be able to follow those who escape, and verify that eThe reset announced by Barlow in previous episodes is complete.
As De la Iglesia announced in his interviews, andhe end of the third act leads to a return to the roots
“The second is the syndios, it is a huge grotesque and insane nonsense to worrying levels, but equally attractive because it embarks you on a journey that leaves you in diapers. People say I’m very exaggerated… Well, for God’s sake, what did you say when you saw Back to the Future. Part II? It looks like an episode of Rick & Morty, one of those that you have to watch three times to understand. Since I wanted to save myself a third act, the third part of the 30 coin trilogy would be a return to the beginning.”
And indeed, As the director promised three years ago, the epilogue of the season returns to Pedraza, but an apparently current one that would be under the control of the villains. Zombie Vergara wanders the streets and the city hall office to discover that Elena and her alternate self are a couple, as he had always wanted. Santoro Solo’s face appears on the coins, the sign that something is very wrong, and soon the entire town is walking to the outskirts, where Barbrow’s flying saucer has crashed.
A new universe
Although everything seems crazy, the idea of this new reality, this world in which everything is upside down, with Merche and Paco in roles that leave a lot to explain, is not strange in the series, since in episode 3 of the Previously we saw that there are alternative realities on the other side of the mirror, where doppelgangers come from and where you could go through, just like Vergara’s copy that we saw in the demon in episode 8.
The third season will initially be the last, as the director had announced, but we have doubts such as knowing what happened to Haruka, Salcedo and Antonio. Can they simply delete all the characters and start from scratch? Will Santoro’s evil forces still have the same power in universe 2? Are there 30 other altcoins besides the ones Barlow supposedly has? in the UFO, or has he lost them? There are a thousand unanswered questions, but if the series really returns to its origins it should resume its lost horror tone.
In season 2 of ’30 Coins’ the monsters, gothic atmosphere and Lovecraftian horrors that it has boasted about so much are missing, This return to the starting point is a good opportunity to return to what is disturbing. What we do have to recognize is that, being filmed more than a year ago, they have miraculously managed to coincide with the end of ‘Spider-man: Crossing the Multiverse’, something that this great blockbuster by Álex de la Iglesia can expand with the thousand possibilities that open up at this moment.
