MGM+’s Nine Bodies in A Mexican Morgue is a run-of-the-mill survival thriller centered around nine survivors who end up in the middle of nowhere. Eight passengers had boarded a flight at the Aurora International Airport in Guatemala headed to Houston, Texas, but before they could reach their destination, the pilot, Octavio Fuentes, lost his bearings due to a faulty GPS system. He tried to contact the authorities and sent numerous requests for immediate help, but no one responded. In the end, the plane ran out of fuel, and Octavio had to make an emergency landing in the Mexican tropical forest.
Spoiler Alert
The Bodies Arrive At The Morgue
The first episode of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue begins with nine bodies arriving at the Mexican military camp in Los Trios. Lopez, an officer, informed his senior, Captain Gabriel Vega, that they’d found these dead bodies in a pit all lined up together. He wasn’t exactly sure who’d killed these nine people or how they ended up dead, and I guess that’s what we are going to find out over the next five episodes. Vega wasn’t very keen on having these bodies in his camp, but it seems like they had received orders from their higher-ups. It was kind of obvious that someone was trying to cover up the whole mess, which was why they’d sent these corpses to a rundown camp in Los Trios. The episode also introduced a couple named Emilio and Cora De Léon, who were keeping an eye on the camp from afar. These two seemed to be interested in the nine bodies as well, and decided to wait for the authorities to take the bodies to the morgue. It is likely that they want to steal the bodies, or maybe steal something from inside them. Well, whatever the case might be, they didn’t seem to have any good intentions.
Someone Kills Octavio
As soon as the plane crashed in the woods, the passengers realized that they wouldn’t be able to make it out of there unless they worked as a team. So instead of being strangers anymore, they decided to introduce themselves to each other, and in doing so, to the audience as well, so that we also get to know a bit about the characters’ backgrounds and their motivations.
The first passenger is Amy Maclean, who got married to her husband, Dan, in Vegas some five weeks ago. They were on their honeymoon in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala and were traveling back to the US when they boarded the plane from Guatemala City and ended up in the forest. A brief conversation between Amy and Dan suggested that Amy’s father is kind of a tough guy, likely a dangerous man who often makes the rounds in the media. Dan has never met Amy’s father, but has read about him in the newspaper and saw him on television. Well, it seems like an Anora story but with genders reversed.
There was another American couple on the plane, Travis and Lisa Davies, MAGA supporters who ran a chain of motels across Kansas and Oklahoma. Just like Amy and Dan, they too were vacationing in Guatemala and were returning home. The fifth passenger was Zack Ellis, an insurance investigator who was visiting Guatemala for work. He had to file a report for a fire in a depot in the city, which he believed was not an accident but an act of arson. He, too, was returning to the US after filing the report. There was also a doctor (sort of) on the plane named Kevin Anderson, who dealt in medical equipment. He bought surgical supplies from Guatemala at a low price and sold them in the US for a profit. While we get to know most about these 6 passengers, there are two other passengers who refuse to share personal details. There’s an English woman named Sonja who said she was traveling to Guatemala just like everyone else, but you have to take her words with a pinch of salt. And then we have the most mysterious Carlos Luchador, who said he was a Mexican wrestler, Lucha Libre, though I am not quite sure what he’s up to. Also, he had been keeping his luggage quite close, which already made the other passengers suspicious that he might be hiding something. Yes, the obvious guess is that he’s hiding drugs, but that’s too cliché. And last but not least, we have Pilot Octavio and flight attendant Beatriz Ortega, but we don’t get to know much about them because both of them died on the first day itself. Beatriz broke her neck during the crash, while someone suffocated Octavio to death after Kevin operated on him to treat his punctured lungs.
So, who killed Octavio?
I believe it wasn’t a coincidence that the GPS system failed out of the blue. It might have been tampered with long before the plane took flight, most likely because someone wanted the plane to crash in the middle of the forest. One potential reason why our mystery killer murdered Octavio in the dark is because he was a local who might have known the killer, or at least could have let something slip, which was why the killer got rid of him; he would just make their job more complicated. I know, as of now, everything is pointing towards the shady guy, Carlos, who, to add to our suspicions, was doing pull-ups at night, but I still believe there’s more to this mystery than what meets the eye. It seems like Amy’s husband, Dan, might be hiding something. Or maybe it’s the English woman who’s at fault here.
The ending of Nine Bodies in A Mexican Morgue episode 1 entertained the possibility that one of these 10 people might have survived the wilderness, and this could be our killer who had been taking out the survivors one by one, and in the end lined up their bodies in the pit. The officers at Los Trios already had 10 passports in their custody, but I don’t think the person who killed the rest of the passengers would be carrying an original passport. But if they were, then the officers could easily match the IDs with the corpses and find out who is missing, right? But, in that case, there won’t be any mystery there, and if they care to investigate, then we can find the identity of the killer in the next episode itself. Well, let’s see how it all unfolds in the next episode, but until then, do share your thoughts in the comments below about whom you think could be the killer.
