Diksha Sundriyal
With its third season, Netflix’s ‘Turn of the Tide’ brings back Eduardo and his friends, who are on a mission to save their town. The previous season ended with Eduardo going to prison after he took over the responsibility for Fagner’s death, saving Silvia, who is the one who actually shot the guy. When he returns after more than three years, a lot has changed in the town, but for some characters, the time seems to have stood still. Inspector Paula Frias dedicated her life to her job and spent most of her time chasing after the bad guys. In doing so, she left her personal life open to attack, and her daughter, Mariana, paid the price. In the third season, we find Paula still looking for her daughter, and it isn’t until the penultimate episode that she finds the truth. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mariana Met a Tragic Fate Three Years Ago
At the beginning of the third season, when Eduardo returns to town, he sees the pamphlets about Mariana on the walls of the streets. These pamphlets are fresh, suggesting that Paula has not given up the search for her daughter. The only clue she has is the recording of the last call with Mariana. She had called her mother crying, hiding in the bathroom, from two intruders. Their voices were recorded on the call, with one of them exclaiming that they had found what they were looking for. This voice belongs to a man, and Paula hears it over and over again, until it is burned in her memory. She goes around town, hounding regular criminals, whom she suspects, forcing them to say the line. But none of their voices match the one in the call recording, and Paula’s search continues.
The fact that she is no longer a cop makes her investigation even more difficult, and the passage of time doesn’t make things any easier. When her boyfriend, Pedro, reminds her that she still has another daughter, Paula emphasizes that she is working so hard to find Mariana to reunite her daughters. Because more than three years have passed since Mariana went missing, a lot of people, including Pedro, have given up hope, believing that there is no way Mariana could be alive at this point. Paula doesn’t want to believe that, but if it is true, then she’d rather find her daughter’s dead body and know for sure. Eventually, this is exactly what happens.
It turns out that the night Mariana was kidnapped, she wasn’t supposed to be at home. Two people, later revealed to be local criminals, Billy Bob and Natercia, were sent by Banha to break into Paula’s house and look for papers that would prove the shady activities being carried out by some of the most powerful people in town. Because Banha had been corrupt since the beginning, the papers would also have incriminated him, and getting his hands on them was necessary for his self-preservation. The intruders were supposed to get the papers and get out, but then, they heard Mariana in the bathroom. They worried that she had seen their faces and could identify them. They became convinced that she needed to die, and that’s when Mariana’s fate was sealed.
Eduardo Stumbles Upon the Truth About Mariana
While Billy Bob and Natercia aren’t perfect criminals, they executed the job in a way that left insufficient evidence for the authorities to find them. Paula could have spent the rest of her life searching for her daughter and the two intruders who took her, but she most likely would never have come across Billy Bob and Natercia. Meanwhile, the duo continues their criminal spree. They received a hit order from a man in prison who was pissed off at Eduardo while Eduardo was serving his sentence. Their effort to kidnap Eduardo fails, but at the same time, they are also impressed with him because of the crimes he has committed and seemingly gotten away with. Over time, it becomes clear that Billy Bob and Natercia aren’t the victims of their circumstances.
Unlike Eduardo and his friends, they actually like to commit crimes and kill people. They confess how much they enjoy their work when they ask Eduardo to let them join Night Vigilantes. While boasting about their crimes, they talk about how they broke into the house of a police officer and kidnapped her daughter. While he knows enough to know that they are likely talking about Mariana. He takes this information to Paula, who confirms that the voice on Mariana’s last call recording matches Billy Bob’s. Still, they need to know what the duo actually did with her daughter. So, Eduardo calls them to his house under the guise of initiating them into Night Vigilantes. He spikes their drinks, and when they are unconscious, Eduardo and Paula torture them to get the truth out.
Eventually, Billy Bob and Natercia break, especially since Paula is relentless in her torture. She makes it clear that she will kill them if they don’t take her to her daughter. So, they take her into an isolated part of the woods. They reveal that, on the night of the break-in, when they found Mariana, they had a brief discussion about what to do with her. Scared that she would recognize them and cause their arrest, they decided to kill her. They brought her body into the woods and buried her there, believing that no one would ever find the truth. Of course, they underestimated Paula’s dedication to finding her daughter. Now that she knows the truth about her daughter, she knows that the only way to punish her killers is by killing them. So, she shoots Billy Bob and Natercia dead, bringing her tragic story to a shocking end.
