Angela, the six-part Netflix series, is based on the 2021 thriller Angela Black, written by Harry Williams. The series introduced us to a woman who was a victim of domestic abuse, who lived her life in extreme fear and anxiety. Her fears escalated even more when she found out that her husband was trying to kill her. So let’s find out what happened in the series and if the protagonist is able to save her life and expose the intentions of her abuser.
Spoiler Alert
What did Angela get to know about her husband?
At the beginning of the series, we got to know that an anonymous complaint had been made against Gonzalo Ochoa, Angela’s husband, stating that he had physically abused her. Gonzalo thought that it was Angela who had complained about him, and he made it pretty clear to her that she shouldn’t have gone against him. Angela tried to convince her husband that she didn’t have anything to do with it, but he didn’t believe her. Angela thought that it was probably her good friend Esther, who happened to be a lawyer, who had gone to the police, but Esther told her she too had nothing to do with it. Well, Esther’s statements were partly true and partly false. Maribel, an old lady who used to look after Angela’s mother, had seen marks on Angela’s neck and back, and she had figured out from her body language that she had been abused. Maribel went to Esther of her own accord, and then Esther took the matter forward and used her contacts to file an anonymous complaint. Poor Angela was petrified of her husband. It was disheartening to see the state she was in, but generally in cases of domestic abuse, it becomes almost impossible to prove the guilt of the other person.
Also, Gonzalo was an extremely cautious man who liked keeping things under his control. He was very cautious in his approach, and Angela was so scared of him that she couldn’t even think of going against him ever. Gonzalo was an architect, and he had to travel to Madrid for work quite often. One time, when he was not in town, he sent Angela flowers to make up for his abusive actions the previous day. The man who came to deliver those flowers happened to be an old acquaintance of Angela’s, named Eduardo Silva, aka Edu. Angela didn’t recognize him, but he told her that, back in the day, he had a crush on her. Since Edu delivered the flowers, he had Angela’s number. He took his chances and messaged Angela and asked her out on what could be said to be an unofficial date. Angela, in the spur of the moment, made the decision to go and meet him, as she too wanted a change in her environment. Edu and Angela met on a couple of occasions, and they came quite close to each other. But Angela decided to put an end to her little adventure, as she was scared that Gonzalo might find out about it. But then something strange happened. Edu told Angela that he had been hired by Gonzalo to kill her, as after the domestic abuse complaint, he had gotten a bit paranoid. Angela couldn’t believe her ears, but Edu made sure to provide her with enough evidence to change her mind. Edu told her that the architect, Nekane Lopez, whose untimely demise had become national news, was murdered by Gonzalo. He told her he didn’t know Angela from before, and whatever information he had on her was provided to him by Gonzalo. It took Edu some time, but he was able to make Angela believe that her life was under imminent threat. Angela got really paranoid, and she didn’t know what to do. That’s when Edu convinced her that she couldn’t run away from her husband; she would have to kill him first if she wanted to save her and her daughters’ lives.
How did Angela end up in a mental hospital?
Having her husband killed was a big decision for Angela, but at that moment, she believed that she didn’t have any other option. Edu told her that he would kill him for her, and she just needed to play along and do what he told her. Edu asked Angela to go to his friend’s house with her daughters till he finished the job. He asked Angela to send a message to Gonzalo to meet her at a specific location so that he could go there and do his job. But things didn’t turn out as Angela had planned, and somehow Gonzalo figured out that she had taken the kids to Edu’s friend’s house. Angela figured out that Edu had been killed by Gonzalo; she saw his dead body lying in the house’s backyard. The moment she saw Gonzalo there, she lost her calm. She took out a harpoon from her car and aimed it at Gonzalo in case he tried to harm her. But before that, the police arrived and took Angela into custody. Angela was sent to a mental hospital, and the poor woman did not understand why she was being held in custody when the real killer was her husband. That was when Angela was told by the doctors that there was no man named Edu in real life, and her paranoia was merely her imagination. They told her that the events she said she’d experienced were from a fictional novel that was written by a man named Eduardo Silva. Angela rebelled against the doctors, but she realized that she was just wasting her energy as nobody was going to believe her. Angela started doubting herself, though she knew deep down that she couldn’t be imagining everything. Esther, her friend, was by her side when she needed her the most. Esther took up Angela’s case, and she told her to do exactly what the doctors were telling her to, if she wanted to be released from the mental hospital. Esther knew that it was very easy for Gonzalo to prove that Angela suffered from schizophrenia, since her mother had it too. Angela got a clean chit from the doctors, and they concluded in their reports that whatever had happened was a one-off incident and that Angela was of sound mind.
Did Edu exist in real life?
Angela was discharged from the hospital, and meanwhile Gonzalo had gotten a restraining order against her, stating that she was not fit to be around her daughters. Esther told her to be patient and take it one day at a time till she figured out how to get that restraining order quashed. Angela would have believed that she had imagined everything had she not noticed a scar on her leg. She remembered that one time, she burnt her leg on the exhaust of Edu’s bike. She connected the dots and realized that if that scar was real, then Edu was too. Angela and Esther did some background research and came across Edu’s social media profile. Edu’s real name was Roberto Irigoyen, and he was the owner of a bar named Red Fish. Edu had told Angela that he had agreed to kill her because Gonzalo had promised to give him 200,000 pounds. He said that he needed money for the medical treatment of his sister, Rosa, which was why he took Gonzalo’s offer. Angela and Esther found out that Rosa was actually his partner and not his sister. They found Rosa and figured out that Red Fish had been reopened the day Angela was admitted to the mental hospital. Angela and Esther confronted Edu, aka Roberto, but the man pretended that he didn’t know them. He immediately informed Gonzalo that Angela had found him, and that’s when Gonzalo started to cover his tracks. Now that Angela and Esther knew that Edu existed in real life, they just needed to find evidence to link Gonzalo to Roberto. They were able to track the money trail, and through it they came to know that a payment of 30,000 pounds had been made by Gonzalo to a company named Soul Landscape, apparently to get his backyard fixed. They realized that the owner of the company was the husband of Gorka Santos, the urban planning manager. Angela understood that Gonzalo had bribed the officer so that he would give Roberto the permit/license to reopen and run his bar. In addition to that, Angela and Esther were able to get their hands on the CCTV footage from the dock, where Gonzalo and Roberto were seen on the same boat. Esther believed that they had enough evidence to prove that Gonzalo not only abused Angela but also framed her by hiring Roberto Irigoyen.
Was Angela able to put Gonzalo behind bars?
The trial started, and Angela had a lot of faith in the judiciary, and she believed that justice would be served. But even after presenting all the evidence, the plaintiffs were not able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gonzalo was directly involved in whatever had happened. Maribel came to the court and gave testimony about Angela being abused, but that too didn’t work. The problem was the evidence presented in the court couldn’t link Gonzalo directly to what had happened. Yes, the judges might have suspected the truth, but they couldn’t give their judgment based on their perception. They gave the plaintiff ample opportunity to prove their point, but Gonzalo’s attorney was quite good, and he was able to find a flaw in the plaintiff’s narrative every time. Angela was frustrated beyond any measure, and she didn’t know what to do next. Call it fate, but just when the battle seemed lost, Angela remembered something. Her mother had told her a few days back that Gonzalo had arrived at her house unannounced and searched for something in the shed. At that time Angela didn’t know if that had actually happened since her mother was suffering from schizophrenia. But after the case ended, she realized what Gonzalo could have been searching for. She realized that Roberto knew things about her that she hadn’t even told Gonzalo. She figured that Gonzalo had stolen her diaries, as back in the day she had a habit of journaling every day. She went to her mother’s house and realized that she was right. That’s when she decided to lay a trap for Gonzalo, though she knew that it was a risky move and it could totally backfire. But she wanted custody of her kids, and additionally, she wanted to prove to the world that the man she lived with was abusive. She went to meet Roberto and told him to do as she asked if he didn’t want his permit revoked.
Angela had realized that even after getting the permit, Roberto hadn’t complied with the fire safety codes. So Roberto came on board, and he gave a call to Gonzalo, telling him that somebody had broken into his cafe and he needed Gonzalo to go there and check it out since he was at the hospital with his partner. Roberto told Gonzalo that he had a digital copy of Angela’s diaries saved on his computer system and he was scared that someone might access them. Gonzalo got mad at him, as he had told him to destroy it. Gonzalo didn’t have any option other than going to the cafe and figuring out what had happened. In reality, there were no digital copies of the diaries, and Angela had just used them as bait. Angela arrived at the cafe, opened her laptop, and joined the online parent-teacher meetings that her daughters’ school had scheduled. Unaware that the camera was switched on and everybody could see each other, Gonzalo walked into the cafe and physically assaulted Angela. The entire act of him ruthlessly beating Angela was observed by every parent and teacher. Before Gonzalo could realize what had happened, the police arrived at the scene and took him into custody. He was dumbfounded, and he just couldn’t believe that he had been played by his wife. Gonzalo was an abuser, a gaslighter who had ruined Angela’s life. That poor woman, for no fault of hers, lived in constant fear. She didn’t deserve that life, and she realized that until and unless she took a stand for herself, nobody would come to rescue her. At the end of the series, Angela set Roberto’s cafe on fire and destroyed it, as she didn’t feel that he should be forgiven for what he had done. The man couldn’t even report the matter, as he had not abided by the fire safety norms.
In Angela’s ending, Gonzalo was put behind bars while Angela got custody of her daughters. She was happy that she stopped blaming herself for whatever had happened at the right time and decided to fight against an abuser before he got away with it. She realized how substanceless the people around her were who never understood her plight. She was grateful to have a friend like Esther, who had stood by her side through thick and thin.
