Bad Influence Ending Explained: Do Eros and Reese End up Together?

‘Bad Influence,’ also known as ‘Mala Influencia,’ is a romance thriller charting a classic story of love and mystery between a rich girl and her bad boy bodyguard. The Spanish Netflix film revolves around Reese, a 17-year-old, who has recently become the target of a dangerous stalker. As a result, her wealthy father, Bruce, decides to employ adverse measures and hire a young man straight out of jail to pose as his daughter’s bodyguard. Naturally, Reese doesn’t take well to Eros’ hovering addition into her life, deeming his presence social suicide. Nonetheless, as the duo inevitably gets closer than they expected, they find themselves hurtling down a slippery slope of love and heartbreak. Soon enough, they discover an inscrutable secret about their families’ histories that might just be the key to all their problems. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Bad Influence Plot Synopsis

Bruce Russell, a wealthy businessman, bails a young troublemaker, Eros, out of jail to hand him a new job opportunity. Recently, his daughter, Reese, has found herself as the target of an unnerving stalker who has made multiple plays on her life. For the same reason, the father wants to keep his daughter safe by hiring a 24/7 bodyguard for her. His decision proves to be the right one when he takes Eros out to watch Reese’s ballet performance, and the man ends up saving her life from a loose overhead set light. Even though his friends remain skeptical of the entire thing, the latter is happy to take up the well-paying job.

However, when Eros arrives at the Russells’ mansion the next day, he doesn’t receive the warmest welcome from Reese. The teenager is furious with her father for continuing to treat her like a child with no regard for her social life. Nonetheless, she can’t do much to change his mind. As a result, she ends up walking into school with Eros, who has been enrolled as a new student, simply to keep an eye on her. Consequently, he learns about the concerning bullying situation surrounding Reese at school that seems to stem from her ex-boyfriend, Raúl, who is desperate to win her back. This obsession becomes even more evident at a party the duo attends in the evening.

Soon enough, some of Reese’s snap hostility toward Eros begins to fade in the face of a rapidly forming attraction. Thus, she finds herself skipping school to hang out with him and his other troublesome friends, Peyton and Diego. However, Bruce isn’t all too happy about their growing closeness, which drives another wedge between him and his daughter. Nonetheless, despite his disapproval, the pair continues to grow closer. Reese learns more about Eros’ life, how his parents died when he was young, and how her father sponsored a charity program to be a small part of the young man’s life when he was freshly orphaned.

Eventually, at Reese’s birthday party, which is cut short thanks to another threat from her stalker, Eros makes a peculiar finding. In one of Bruce’s piles of photos, he finds a photograph that has his parents in the background. Yet, the mystery of the image quickly fades from his priorities when Reese tries to make a move on him. Even though they decide to stop before anything could happen, it plants a seed of undeniable attraction between them. From there, all it takes is the adrenaline of crashing one party for the couple to fall into each other’s arms. Predictably, Bruce isn’t happy when he finds out about the whole thing. For the same reason, he ends up firing Eros in an attempt to drive him away from his daughter’s life.

Bad Influence Ending: What Happens Between Eros and Reese?

Eros and Reese’s love story comes with many complications. The pair enters each other’s lives with the former under the employment of the latter’s father. Furthermore, their drastically different life experiences create an initial wall between them that takes some time to come down. Still, even after they manage to arrive at a fairly unwavering place in their relationship after Raúl’s party, reality catches up with their perfect fantasy. Consequently, the two end up spinning out of each other’s orbits once Eros gets fired from his job. Still, their feelings persist, which is what compels Reese to go through his sketchbook after finding it in the guest room. However, to her surprise, the book is filled with mean cartoons about her and her father.

Initially, this makes Reese wonder if Eros could be her stalker, since he clearly harbors some sort of negative feelings for her family. Nonetheless, he tries to explain himself after intercepting her outside her ballet practice. The former bodyguard insists that the drawings don’t mean anything and are just a senseless way to work through his inner demons. Eros has had a difficult life growing up and has developed coping mechanisms to match. Reese understands his situation and, therefore, decides to give him a second chance. As such, the couple ends up returning to her house to hook up. Even though their time together is magical and ripe with romance, it loses some of its charm when Reese brings up her stalker once again.

This time, her theory about the stalker’s identity involves one of Eros’ friends, which ignites another disagreement between the couple, compelling the latter to leave. Even though he means to walk out of the teenager’s life, things don’t exactly go to plan. Reese’s hunch about the stalker ends up being right, leading to a lethal final showdown. In the end, in the aftermath of shocking revelations and near-deadly confrontations, the teenager finally finds her life returning to normal. Furthermore, now that she can make choices about her own life without letting anyone else’s opinion dictate her actions, she decides to give the thing between her and Eros an honest chance. As such, the couple began dating, swapping out their previous near-death experiences for dates and a loving relationship.

Who is Stalking Reese? Why?

Reese’s stalker problem remains one of the driving forces in her story. From the get-go, the character’s life remains in perpetual danger, which is exactly what brings Eros into her life. Nonetheless, discovering the identity of this anonymous stalker remains less important to Bruce than protecting his daughter’s life. For the same reason, there’s initially little to no development about uncovering the identity of the elusive pursuer. Even so, Reese continues to keep an eye out for any clues. Initially, she assumes that her overbearing ex-boyfriend, Raúl, must be behind the stalking since he’s plenty obsessed with her as it is.

Although this thread leads nowhere, Reese’s other guess ends up holding some significance. After scrolling through social media, she learns that Peyton actually works as a cleaner at her high school. Out of all of Eros’ friends, Peyton is the only one who has always harbored a particular dislike for Reese and her other rich friends. She seems unwilling to give them a chance, holding an eternal grudge against them for their privileged lives. Thus, the fact that she never mentioned her employment as a cleaner at their school ticks the teenager off. The job would give the other woman a perfect opportunity to plant many of the threats without detection.

Nonetheless, Eros is unwilling to hear this argument because he doesn’t wish to see his friend in such an awful light. Even so, after he leaves Reese’s house and crashes at Peyton’s, he tries to broach the topic. Surprisingly enough, the latter’s reaction to the accusations remains defensive and avoidant. Therefore, Eros realizes that Reese has been right about Peyton all along. This leads to an altercation between the two, in which the former bodyguard ends up being accidentally knocked unconscious.

Shortly afterward, Reese shows up at Peyton’s apartment, followed by Bruce, who comes to rescue his daughter. Thus, a final showdown takes place in which the newly revealed stalker pulls a gun on the businessman. As it turns out, her grievances had always been with Reese’s father. In the past, Peyton’s mother used to work at Bruce’s restaurant. However, despite the opulence of the establishment, it cut corners in employment benefits and safety measures. Consequently, when the restaurant caught on fire one day, many of the workers cleaning up after Bruce’s party ended up dying. Peyton’s mother was one of these workers.

Moreover, Eros’ parents were also Bruce’s employees who died in this fire. Rather than accepting the blame, the businessman tried to spin the tale, pursuing the authorities to pin the blame on the six-year-old Eros. Since the boy was so young, he retained no memories of the event and ended up believing the accusations himself as well. For the same reason, Bruce had joined the charity program to remain in the boy’s life in a minimal capacity to ease some of his guilt. Still, despite his efforts, Peyton asserts that the man hasn’t been absolved of his sins. As such, she decides to punish him and his family by going after the person he loves the most in the world: Reese. However, now that she’s face-to-face with the man, she decides to up the ante with a gun in her hand.

Who Does Peyton Shoot? Who Dies?

Once Peyton pulls out her gun, which she likely stole from Bruce’s exorbitant and easily accessible collection in his office, the stakes become infinitely higher. She has already shown an appetite and an ability to put others’ lives at risk through the numerous times that she has tried to kill Reese. The same, paired with the near psychotic condition she enters upon confronting Bruce, makes her a loose cannon. Eros seems to know the same and tries to calm his friend down by putting himself between her and the Russells. On their part, Reese and Bruce try to make a run for it while the other man has his friend preoccupied.

As a result, it isn’t long before Peyton chases after them, into the stairwell, where she opens fire twice and breaks down once her bullets hit their mark. This makes for a tense scene because at the moment in time, it’s impossible to tell who exactly fell victim to the fired shots. Nonetheless, an explanation comes soon enough. An epilogue reveals that Bruce was killed in the events of that day. Peyton is probably behind bars now unless she managed to flee from the scene, which would make her a fugitive in the eyes of the law. As for Reese, the teenager is handling the situation well enough.

Before Bruce died, Peyton revealed that his wife and Reese’s mother also died in the same restaurant fire. Yet, despite being aware of the same, the father had hidden the fact from his daughter all these years. Consequently, it’s likely that Reese harbors some complicated feelings about her father in the aftermath of his death. Still, she also continues to remember him with love in her memories, choosing to leave voicemails at his phone number to share updates on her life as a way to cope with his death. Fortunately for her, she has Eros by her side to help her out in these trying times. Ultimately, although she’s affected by her father’s death, she continues to move forward in her life, away from his overbearing shadow.