Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s true-crime film, ‘A Widow’s Game,’ begins with the discovery of a man’s body in the parking lot of his building. The gruesomeness of the act takes everyone by surprise. The crime scene itself is enough to convince the cops that this was no random act of a robbery gone wrong. The murder weapon, which turns out to be a big kitchen knife, is one of the many things that show that the murder was planned, and the victim did not die because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Another thing that catches the cops’ eyes is the passion that reflects in the murderer’s actions. Considering all this, it becomes clear that someone close to the victim killed him, but the question of why and how linger for a while before the whole truth comes to light. SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Widow’s Game Plot Synopsis
When Arturo Ferrer Puig is found murdered, the cops quickly rule out most of the possibilities surrounding his death. It seems that the man led a relatively gentle life and never had any beef with anyone, at least not enough for them to want to kill him. Eventually, the only problem in his life seemed to be his wife, Maje, whose string of infidelities soon come to light. First, she tries to turn suspicion towards her dead husband by claiming that he may have been cheating on her. But then, one of her friends spills the beans about her dalliances.
When the cops start looking into Maje’s secret lovers, they discover that she had been involved with more than one man outside of her marriage. Not only this, she had already cheated on her husband before they got married. Arturo had forgiven her the first time and married her, but even after that, she continued to deceive him. She was involved with a man named Daniel, whom she had met in a bar. She was also involved with Andre, one of her colleagues, even though he knew she was married. But the cops figure out that neither of them could have been involved in Arturo’s murder.
Eventually, a new lover, Salva, comes to light. He is also Maje’s colleague, but he is a much older man with a family of his own. It also turns out that she had lied to her lover about her husband, claiming that Arturo was abusive towards her. She had propagated this lie with her friends as well, which got her a lot of sympathy. Eventually, however, Arturo found out about one of her affairs and decided to leave her, which would have ended Maje’s life on several fronts. So, instead of going through with the humiliation of the divorce, following which she would have received nothing from her husband because of the prenup, she decided to have him killed and get everything in her name.
The Cops Wait for Maje and Salva to Incriminate Themselves
Arturo’s murder could have been a perfect crime. There was no evidence linking Maje and Salva to the crime scene. And while Eva Torres could tell that Maje had something to do with the murder, she couldn’t have been able to prove it if the woman and her lover had been a bit more careful. During the investigation, the cop knows that the killers are bound to slip up somehow, so she gets permission to tap into Maje’s phone and waits for her to make a mistake. While listening to her conversations, she can see that the young widow isn’t particularly heartbroken by her husband’s death. She seems to revel in her newfound freedom by diving further in with Daniel, whom she tells about Arturo’s death while leaving out some key details.
Following the murder, the plan was for Maje and Salva to keep a distance from each other. She knew that as long as the investigation was ongoing, the cops would keep an eye on her. And for a while, Salva seemed to agree with her logic. Soon, however, he gets impatient and starts coming up with excuses to see Maje. He even decides to come to her house and help her with the floor, and while Maje agrees, she never shows up for their meeting, leaving Salva to clean up behind her. This is when he gets a glimpse into her emails and discovers that she is having an affair with Daniel.
Salva is heartbroken to see her with another guy, but her logic is also pretty tight. He has his family, and even though they are secretly seeing each other, she needs a family of her own, too. He gets her to confess about Daniel by telling her about his cop friend, who gave him the details about Andre and Daniel, and this is the slip-up that the cops had been looking for. This conversation clearly suggests that Salva is worried about getting caught, which means he was in on the murder. Still, they don’t have a confession yet, so the cops bide their time and make Maje and Salva even more desperate by letting them know that they are on the verge of being caught.
Eva knows that Maje will break more easily, so she lets Arturo’s brother know that they know who the killer is. When this news reaches Maje, she becomes desperate to cover her tracks and immediately calls Salva and incriminates herself enough for the cops to get the permission to carry out a sting operation. From the call, they know that Maje and Salva are going to meet at a restaurant to discuss their situation. The cops wiretap the box of tissues at their table and listen in on every word, which gives them enough grounds to issue the arrest. The next day, Salva is arrested from the hospital where his mother is admitted, while Maje is arrested right outside the house she’d been sharing with Daniel, with whom she had already started planning a new life.
Why does Salva Testify Against Maje?
When Maje and Salva are arrested, he is more composed than she is. While she starts to break down, he keeps his calm. The cops try to get him to turn against his lover, but he is steadfast in his stance to protect her, which is why he killed Arturo in the first place. He is so blinded by Maje’s love that he still cannot see how she has used him and is ready to take all the blame on himself. When he is told that Arturo never abused his wife and she lied to him, Salva brushes it off as a trap by the cops to turn him against her. Meanwhile, it doesn’t take much for Maje to try and pin everything on Salva, but because the cops already know how cunning and manipulative she is, they don’t buy it.
Eventually, both go to prison, receiving 22 and 17 years. Because Salva accepts his guilt and cooperates with the cops, his sentence is reduced. What makes his cooperation even better is when he finally turns against Maje. It is revealed that when both of them are thrown in prison before the trial, their love remains intact. They send love letters to each other, which perhaps gives Salva the consolation he was looking for to justify his actions as devotion to the woman he loves and wants to protect. Maje, however, remains that same old woman who continues to deceive him and everyone else around her. Even in prison, she finds someone to have an affair with, and when Salva finds out about it, he finally snaps.
He realises that she had been playing him since the beginning and used him to do her dirty work. He gave up everything for her and was ready to go to prison if that meant it would save her. But she seemed to have no regard for his love and devotion for her, so he decides to make her pay for the betrayal and ruining his life. In the beginning, he tells the cops that he killed Arturo of his own accord. But when the time comes to testify in court, he retracts his statement and reveals that he and Maje had planned to kill Arturo together. This gives the prosecution all the leverage they needed against Maje to send her to prison for a very long time. The cooperation works well for Arturo, but it also leads to an increase in Maje’s sentence, considering that she was the victim’s wife.
Why Does Eva Torres Leave the Homicide Unit?
At the end of the film, it is revealed that after solving the mystery of Arturo’s murder, Eva Torres did not stay with the Homicide Unit for long and went back to patrol duty. Considering that the department’s success rate was through the roof under her reign, it would have been a huge loss for the Homicide unit to let go of her, but this decision seems to be more personal than professional for her. While she is completely engrossed with the investigation into Maje and her lover, she also bears through a personal tragedy when her friend and colleague, Berni, is killed in the line of duty.
To avenge him, Eva wants the case to fall into the hands of the Homicide unit, through which she could ensure that Berni’s murderer would be caught and brought to justice. However, due to a change in command, Eva gets a new boss who believes that she is too close to the case and hence must not be put in charge. Instead, the case is transferred to the Organised Crime unit, which does not sit well with Eva and her department. While we don’t find out what happened in Berni’s murder investigation, it is clear that his loss impacts Eva profoundly. The death is so sudden and unexpected that it takes a lot more time for her to process it.
At the same time, she also feels some sort of guilt because she didn’t accompany Berni and Turri that day. If she hadn’t had to go to her daughter’s school, she would have been there, and things could have turned out differently. Another thing that may have impacted her decision is her new boss, with whom her equation is already ruined when he doesn’t give her Berni’s case. This moment proves that they don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and it is possible that over the course of the next few months, they clash over more and more stuff, which eventually convinces Eva that she doesn’t want to work under him anymore, so she decides to leave the unit for good.
Read More: Where is A Widow’s Game Filmed? Shooting Locations of the Netflix Movie
