Summary
It remains imperfect, but the third — and presumably final — season of Sky Rojo goes out on an action-packed high, delivering a definitive conclusion and heaps of catharsis.
This review of the Netflix series Sky Rojo Season 3 does not contain spoilers.
Sky Rojo was an instant hit for Netflix thanks mostly to it being the work of Alex Pina, the creator of Money Heist, which has – and continues to, in the form of its recent South Korean adaptation – lined the pockets of many of the streamer’s executives. But it was a very different kind of show, a saucy, sun-drenched escape thriller with rocket-fuelled pacing and a female focus, with the trio of women at its heart fleeing from a lifetime of abuses committed against them by men. Some felt like it probably didn’t need a second season, and those who were mixed on that probably weren’t eagerly anticipating the third, but here we are.
Sky Rojo Season 3 review and plot summary
But in many ways Sky Rojo saved its best for last, delivering enough catharsis and narrative payoff in its final eight episodes to justify some of the needless swerves we’ve taken to get here. This is explicitly a final season, with a conclusive ending, and while it isn’t all sunshine and roses, there’s an enjoyably gung-ho quality to this latest outing that I thought was worth waiting for.
Here’s a catchup: At the end of the second season, Coral, Wendy, and Gina had managed to escape from their dastardly former pimp, Romeo, with millions of his dirty dollars. But they weren’t free and clear. Romeo’s right-hand man, Moises, still believes the girls killed his addict brother, Christian, and remained determined to track them down at any cost, his lust for vengeance making him easily manipulable by Romeo, who despite some new physical disadvantages was still running the club and controlling the lives of many other girls.
At the start of the third season, Coral, Wendy, and Gina are living in a swanky beachside property. They own and operate a bakery that they’re laundering Romeo’s money through, and while they’ve mostly put their past behind them, none of them can quite escape from it. Gina is heavily pregnant, Coral still has a drug addiction that she’s keeping a secret, and when she goes to bed at night, she imagines the walls closing in and crushing her to death. When a mistake gives away their location to Romeo, he sends Moises and his psychopathic new assassin Darwin to kill them.
As ever, Sky Rojo’s greatest strength is its pacing, with episodes clocking in at just over half an hour, which is refreshingly breezy. After spending an episode establishing the new status quo and introducing some fresh faces such as Darwin and Wendy’s new lover Greta, we’re off and running, and things don’t let up until the finale, which brings everything full circle without feeling the need to leave us on an unsatisfying cliff-hanger. That makes a nice change for a Netflix show.
And the characters remain compelling, even if we’ve seen most of their arcs play out already. Coral grappling with her addiction feels old hat, but Gina gets some great moments, and Wendy’s new romantic attachment gives her character a new contour. On the villain side, the show remains undecided on whether it wants us to consider Moises a hero or a villain, or Romeo a legitimate threat or a comic-relief idiot, but Darwin is a terrifyingly sadistic new antagonist who helps to raise the final season’s stakes with his violent unpredictability.
Is Sky Rojo Season 3 good?
Because of how quickly we tear through the plot, some characters and subplots feel as if they pop up out of nowhere, and the dynamics they result in feel a little unearned, especially towards the end. But Pina and his team are willing to devote an entire episode to a set piece such as an excellently tense boat shootout, which allows the action to really sing. In its third season, Sky Rojo seems to have morphed into an action thriller more than anything else, and in finally putting that kind of power in the hands of women who have spent two seasons being victimized and abused, we finally get to turn the tables and enjoy a cathartic finale. If this is the last we’ve seen of these characters, which it should be, then they’re going out on a high.
What did you think of Sky Rojo Season 3? Comment below.
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