Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sky Rojo’ Season 3 on Netflix, The Final Batch Of Episodes For The Stylized Spanish Action Drama

Sky Rojo returns to Netflix for its third and final season with the fallout from season two (and season one, for that matter) taking various but often similar forms. Creators Alex Pina and Esther Martinez Lobato, each of them instrumental in the creation of Money Heist, have carried over that international Netflix hit’s knack for character development across a broad palette, with Sky Rojo pitting the fortunes of its trio of former prostitutes against the mania and lack of scruples of their former pimp and his topped-up supply of henchmen. So how are the ladies getting on? Let’s find out.     

SKY ROJO – SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Moises (Miguel Angel Silvestri) is digging a grave, his shovel chopping into the silty, arid soil as the sun beats down. “I’m going to tell you this story from where we left off,” he says in the familiar voiceover style of Sky Rojo. “The day they killed my brother, I buried him in the desert like a dog.”

The Gist: “They” are Coral (Veronica Sanchez), Wendy (Lali Esposito), and Gina (Yany Prado), three women who originally bonded over their shared experience as sex workers beholden to Romeo (Asier Etxeandia), a cruel sex club owner who sits atop a miniature empire of crime. Their escape from Romeo’s clutches has taken many turns, and his determination to find them has never waned. But their killing of Christian (Enric Auquer), the eager henchman brother of Moises, Romeo’s right hand man, has set the pimp on an even more destructive course. Despite having fled Madrid and settled in a sleepy town on Spain’s Mediterranean coast – “No one will look for us here,” Wendy says – they’re doing a lot of looking over their shoulders and sleeping with one eye open. (Or in Coral’s case, barely sleeping – anxiety and depression are her nightly companions.) Because besides their having run out on Club Las Novias, besides the death of Christian, there’s also the little matter of the $14 million in euros they stole from Romeo. And he’s not going to let that slide.

It’s been months since the events of last season, and the women have rented a comfortably ramshackle house on the beach, settled into a routine of relaxing by the pool and throwing Sunday barbecues, and opened a bakery in town. It’s adorable, but also the perfect front to launder Romeo’s cash. Coral’s eyepatch is honestly very becoming. But it’s also a constant reminder of the chaos they’re escaping from. Wendy rides her motorbike up and down the coast, resigned to forget the past but also interested in making new memories, and after buying 46 gallons of petrol just for an excuse, she finally asks the young woman who works at the gas station for a date. And Gina has fallen quickly for a kind, older local man, but what can she really tell him about where she came from? Oh, and she’s also pregnant, which is also another reminder.

Leaving the past behind isn’t as simple as stealing a sack of cash and running for the coast. Not with a guy like Romeo, whose paranoia and generally murderous nature leads to him to stab an underling to death over the mere hint of suspicion. Romeo, who keeps the women at his club in line with unvarnished threats – “I’ll saw you to pieces” – and Moises on a string of his own, a man who remains devoted to him despite the pimp’s complicity in the deaths of his family. There is trouble still brewing. Can anyone in Sky Rojo really escape it?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Joel Keller said it best in his review of Sky Rojo season one: it’s the energy and camaraderie of Thelma & Louise that defines the bond between Coral, Wendy and Gina. Of note here also is Toy Boy, Netflix’s sultry, flinty Spanish thriller about a male stripper who works to clear his name and find justice for the murder of his husband. And you also might recognize Miguel Angel Silvestri from Money Heist or the Spanish period drama Velvet, where he also co-starred with Asier Etxeandia.

Our Take: There’s a fun gaudiness to the look and feel of Sky Rojo that keeps it populated with revolves plunged into faces, the rewarding panache of cheap sunglasses, leering criminals who skitter between buffoonery and wanton violence, and the thrill of living on potentially borrowed time. In other words, Sky Rojo often feels like something Tony Scott could’ve made in the 1990s. And that’s before we get all of the overlit scenes and lurid shadows. It’s all part of the pulpy fun that creators Alex Pina and Esther Martinez Lobato are having with this briskly-paced series that consistently builds beats of drama and companionship into the moments that play out on the edge of bloodshed or tragedy.

As we learn through its many voiceovers told from different characters’ perspectives, nobody in the world of Sky Rojo has any illusions about living in peace. Whether it’s the anxiety which cripples Coral, the purposeful ignorance of Wendy, or even Moises, who tells us about his picaresque life as an ally of Romeo’s daughters that detonated into a million pieces upon his discovery of how deep Romeo’s treachery really goes. And Sky Rojo itself never promises calm, instead always priming for the next act of punctuating violence. Its third season dwells on the fact that Romeo will ultimately find out where the women have run to. It’s just a question of when. (Early on, we see how much manpower he’s invested in doing just that, with detachments of henchmen operating in other countries.) And so it’s really hard to watch Coral, Wendy, and Gina relax and take it easy when the psychopathic pimp whose money they stole is always in the margins, searching for them and his cash. Something bad is gonna shake loose, and then it’ll only be a question of who survives the destruction.

Sex and Skin: Gina is in love with Toni, but unable to share with him the secrets of her past as a woman forced into sex work by Romeo, a past which we glimpse in flashbacks.

Parting Shot: The early going of Sky Rojo’s third season hangs on the near certainty that the women’s new life free of Romeo was too good to be true, and by the conclusion of its first episode, their former pimp is suddenly a whole lot closer to destroying their seaside idyll.

Sleeper Star: Catalina Sopelana brings a sweetness to her scenes with Lali Esposito as Wendy’s crush who works at the gas station in town.

Most Pilot-y Line: “We were going to build our new life on top of a bomb that’d explode sooner or later” – in voice overs that are conspicuously past tense, Coral, Wendy, and Gina each attempt to reckon with the fragility of the new life they’ve created.

Our Call: STREAM IT. With the compelling dynamic between the women at its core, a darkly comedic tone, and brisk run time that keeps the heart rate up, the third season of Sky Rojo is ready to reveal who’ll survive this mess.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges