Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Pact Of Silence’ On Netflix, Where An Influencer Gets Revenge On The Women Who Left Her For Dead When She Was An Infant

Pact Of Silence is a Mexican telenovela that starts with a pretty intense scene: Four teenage girls leave a baby in what they think is an abandoned house. Since it’s a telenovela, you know that things will only get more intense from there. Is that even possible in this case?

PACT OF SILENCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A phone rings. A teenager answers it and hears, “Leave now! You’ve been found!” Four girls, one carrying a baby, run through a courtyard and through a field.

The Gist: The girls leave the baby in what they think is an empty house. The woman driving the van that they’re in yells to them, “Isn’t this what you wanted?” as they all sob and vow that no one will speak of this day.

Some years later, Brenda Rey (Camila Valero) is looking at a picture of the private school class those girls were in and thinking about her rough upbringing after she was abandoned as a baby. She knows four women who were in that class were the ones that abandoned her, but does now know which one actually gave birth to her. As she reiterates to her friend Alex (Martín Barba), who is helping her find the women, her goal is payback.

In a flashback, the woman driving the van is the school’s headmistress, Ramona Castro (Chantal Andere). She confronts the four girls, knowing one of them is pregnant and is binding her belly to not show. But all four of them show binding, swearing to her that they’ll never reveal which one is the mother.

Back in the present, Brenda, who is a social media influencer with over 10 million followers, goes to a presentation Ramona, who left the school 15 years ago, is making for her foundation, and confronts her. Under threat of physical harm, Ramona gives her three of the four names before Ramona’s friend Gloria (Sophie Gaelle) interrupts.

Fernanda Alarcón (Adriana Louvier) is a wealthy housewife whose Instagrams make her life look happier than it actually is. Martina Robles (Marimar Vega) inherited her family’s real estate company and generally has booty calls with younger men. Sofía Estrada (Litzy) has been off the grid since writing a novel 15 years ago, but Brenda finds out she’s been living with a lot of debt.

Instead of confronting the three women, Brenda puts her various plans in motion to integrate herself into their lives. In the meantime, Ramona contacts all four women, including the fourth, unnamed person (Kika Edgar). She wants out of this pact, but as we see in a flashback, the girls have something on Ramona which compelled her to cooperate.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Any time there’s a show about revenge we relate it to the ABC series Revenge, so there’s that.

Our Take: Nothing is simple in the world of telenovelas, and that’s what we get in Pact Of Silence (Original title: Pacto De Silencio). When Alex asks Brenda why she doesn’t just confront the women Ramona identified, Brenda has a ready excuse: “They’d just deny it.” Besides, it wouldn’t give Brenda a chance to infiltrate their lives and ruin them from the inside!

We’re not 100 percent sure how Brenda being an influencer affects the show’s plot. It gives her the financial means to track these women down and play in the same spheres of influence as they do. Her visibility will help and hurt her at the same time, but it seems that along the way, we’ll see her puncture the veneer of respectability of these women’s lives. Will she confront them or merely destroy everything they know and love? That’s the most intriguing part of this series.

This being a telenovela, though, it’s not a stretch to think that there will be some sexy times for Brenda and others as the story continues, and likely more than a few situations that are patently ridiculous but fun to watch. What we want to see more of, though, is how Brenda managed to overcome her rough upbringing to become a successful influencer. There are hints of that in the first episode, and the hope is that fills out more of Brenda’s story; sure, being abandoned as a baby is enough to fuel her anger, but her childhood on the streets will also influence just how she goes about getting her revenge.

Sex and Skin: Martina is shown having sex with a random guy, but nothing much in the way of skin is shown.

Parting Shot: Brenda follows Ramona to the dilapidated site of the women’s school, and sees something shocking. As she runs, we see that she’s being watched.

Sleeper Star: Martín Barba is Alex, a friend of Brenda’s who helps her find the women and develop the schemes she uses to ruin their lives. But it’s not a stretch to think he does it because he wants to be more than just a friend, right?

Most Pilot-y Line: The blackmail the girls had on Ramona made sense in the flashback, but we’re not sure why Ramona still felt the need to stay silent in the present day. It’s a plot hole, but one that gets closed pretty effectively by the end of the first epsiode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Pact Of Silence is a bit outlandish and has the potential to go off in a lot of crazy directions, but we wouldn’t expect anything different from a telenovela.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.