It was quite a task to keep track of everything that was happening in Rotten Legacy, and I felt that the makers made everything unnecessarily complicated, to the point that the essence of the series was lost in the process. So let’s try to ascertain what the motivations of the various characters were and what they sought to achieve through their actions.
Spoiler Alert
Why did Federico go against his children?
Federico Seligman was diagnosed with cancer, but the man was a fighter, and he refused to give up so easily. Fortunately, he got well in a couple of years, and he came back to his hometown. Federico had founded the newspaper El Baltico, and for years he’d served as the editor there. When the time came, when he felt that his son Andres was ready to take the responsibility and take his legacy forward, he stepped down from his position. Andres, over the past couple of years, had had to make certain choices, which made Federico extremely unhappy when he found out about it. For Federico, truth and justice prevailed over anything else, even if it meant self-sabotaging one’s career or reputation. It wouldn’t be wrong to say here that Federico was a kind of idealist, and when he found out about what was happening at his paper, he decided to teach his children a lesson. Anders told his father that having an online presence had cost them a lot, and the transition hadn’t been easy for the company. He said that the revenue stream had declined, and he’d had to take certain risks in order to keep paying his employees. Andres had taken money from 4 millionaires, who’d seeked to invest in the company, but instead he had given it to his sister, Guadalupe, for making her conservatory. Guadalupe was a politician, and so she made sure that her brother got all the support that he needed from people sitting higher up on the food chain.
Moreover, Andres had faked 20,000 subscribers with the donations that he got from some influential people for favoring them, just so that the people didn’t start questioning the credibility and the popularity of the media house. The internal management, board of directors, and everybody else knew what Andres was doing, but since they were all going to benefit from it, they didn’t utter a word against him. Yolanda, Federico’s other daughter, was in charge of running a channel that was owned by El Baltico itself, and she, too, knew about the entire scam. The moment Federico found out about what Andres, Yolanda, and Guadalupe were up to, he told them that he would expose them if they did not resign from their positions. So the tug-of-war between the father and children went on for a couple of episodes, where Andres was adamant to prove that his father, after his illness, had become mentally unstable, whereas Federico went and gave an interview where he spoke about each and every malpractice that the company was involved in. The interview was recorded (by Federico’s longtime colleague and love interest Enrique), but it was never aired, probably because Federico wanted to give his children a chance to make up for their mistakes.
Why did Yolanda leave her husband?
Yolanda’s case was a peculiar one, and I could never really understand what her problem was. At the beginning of Rotten Legacy, we got to know that Yolanda was happy with her husband’s decision to have an open marriage. Her husband, Ricardo, wanted to go out and indulge with people sexually, and he didn’t want to keep his relationship with Yolanda exclusive. Yolanda at first agreed to it, but later she felt very insecure because of the entire dynamic. She was not somebody who was fine with her husband sleeping with some other person. She tried telling Ricardo how she felt a few times, but every time he was able to influence her and make her give in to what he wanted. Then came a time when Yolanda decided to actually go out with other men and see if she could have some fun herself. Yolanda expressed her feelings to an intern in her company, Luis, and ended up getting intimate with him a couple of times. Yoland had no clue, when the affair started, that Luis was actually dating her half-sister, Lara. Luis didn’t dare to go and tell Yolanda about it, even when he was completely aware of the repercussions it might have.
Things became bitter between Yolanda and Luis when the latter was threatened by Leon Escudera, who happened to be a friend of Lara’s, to go and tell the truth to Yolanda. Luis didn’t know what to do or how to tell Lara the truth, so he played the victim card and made sure that he got all the sympathy. When Yolanda got to know that her secret was out in the open, she firstly went and apologized to Lara about it, and then she called her lawyer to make a deal with Luis so that he wouldn’t be able to tarnish her image. But Luis had other plans. I believe Luis was with Yolanda because he wanted to be in a position where he could take advantage of her. There were times when it felt like he just wasn’t interested in her, and he stayed with her just because he got to live that opulent lifestyle. Yolanda, in Rotten Legacy’s ending, got rid of him, as she realized that he was just not good for her. Yolanda also made the brave choice of leaving her husband because she knew that she wouldn’t be able to lead that life of compromise for much longer. Yolanda might not have been an excellent entrepreneur, but she was a good human being. We saw how she went and confessed to whatever she had done in front of Lara. There was a certain degree of innocence still left in Yolanda, and her conscience wasn’t as corrupted as that of the people around her.
Who got Vargas killed?
I feel that a strong subplot strengthens the foundation of any narrative if executed properly. But in Rotten Legacy, subplots were a tool to divert your attention from the main conflict and make the entire narrative needlessly complicated. I believe Vargas got involved in the entire facade after he was approached by Lola, Federico’s first wife, who asked him to protect the future of their children. Lola didn’t want Federico’s interview to be published, as she knew that her children’s lives would be completely destroyed. But a problem arose when Vargas started acting on his own accord, as he realized that he could make a lot of money in the process. Vargas got hold of that unpublished interview, and he also found out that Manuel, Guadalupe’s husband, had built one of his properties on a burial site where the skeletons of approximately 27 people had been found. Things started to get a bit serious when Vargas’ men brutally thrashed Manuel, so much so that the man almost succumbed to his injuries. Moreover, Vargas got to know that Andres and his colleague, Blanca, were trying to interview Dr. Pino, somebody who knew about Vargas’ violent past and wasn’t scared to tell the world about it. Vargas, back in the day, had threatened Dr. Pino and made sure that she couldn’t reveal anything to the media outlets.
Federico realized that he needed to find a solution to shut Vargas down, as he had more important matters to tend to. Federico approached Vargas’ wife, and he requested her to testify against the man. Vargas’ wife’s and Dr. Pino’s testimony were enough to put the man behind bars. Everything was fine up until here, but then one day, suddenly, a couple of prison guards entered Vargas’s cell and killed him. They made it look like he had committed suicide, but obviously everybody who knew Vargas was aware that he couldn’t have done that. The weird thing was that nobody ever came to know who actually killed Vargas. A guard had approached Federico when he had gone to visit Vargas in prison and offered to eliminate the man and make things easy for him. Federico, being the man that he was, gave a piece of his mind to that guard, thereby stating that he would never do such a thing. My best guess (and I don’t understand what the need was of keeping the entire subplot so ambiguous) was that some prison guards had a tiff against the ex-commissioner. Maybe, in the past, he’d gotten them transferred or suspended for some reason. Whatever the reason might have been, it was enough to make them want revenge against the man. In retrospect, I believe Manuel too could have used his contacts to get rid of Vargas, though we were never given evidence that proved it.
Why did Manuel go against Federico?
Manuel’s entire storyline felt so inconsequential and absurd at times that it was a task to understand his motivations and intentions. So Manuel was the kind of man who used Guadalupe’s family name to his advantage, and he indulged in all kinds of fraudulent activities. We got to know that one of Manuel’s properties was built over a burial site, which gave Vargas leverage over him. The man was almost beaten to death, and when he came back to his senses, he found out that his wife had told the media that he had a gambling problem, due to which he was in a lot of debt. Moreover, Manuel realized that Guadalupe was not very keen on letting him have custody of their kids, something that enraged him to the point that he decided to betray the Seligman family. Now, how things became so bad between Guadalupe and Manuel was a mystery to me. I felt that, at the beginning of Rotten Legacy, they were just pretending to part ways, primarily to make Federico feel guilty about whatever he had done. Guadalupe wanted her old man to feel that he was solely responsible for her suffering. I don’t think Guadalupe and Manuel ever wanted to separate in reality, but then after Manuel was attacked, things changed. Manuel got so triggered that he decided to become an advisor for Progressa, the fund headed by Aguirre that was backing El Baltico, and spilled all the family secrets. Progressa wanted Federico and Andres to give them some sort of security, as the mortgage rules of the country were quite strict, and the group didn’t want to take the fall for the Seligman family. Manuel made sure that Aguirre asked for very high security from Federico and Andres, just to make their lives miserable. Manuel knew that there were other bidders in the country who would be ready to buy the media house. How a man who was just a fraud was chosen or considered worthy of the position of advisor to a premier financial institute was a mystery to me. Manuel tried to put up as many roadblocks as he could, but still, in the end, Federico proved to be too good for him.
What had happened to Leon’s brother?
Leon Escudero’s entire story just felt like a diversion that could have been avoided. I understand the writers wanted to establish that Federico had also sold his conscience back in the day, but there were other, less tedious ways to do so. Anyways, coming back to the narrative, Leon was tracking Federico’s movements, and he was trying to find a way to take revenge on the family. Back in the day, Bruno Escudero, Leon’s elder brother, worked as a war correspondent for El Baltico. Bruno went to Afghanistan to cover the developments there, when he found that many soldiers of the Spanish army were involved in the smuggling of drugs. He wanted to write a story about it, but before he could gather evidence and investigate the matter, he was killed by the Spanish military, as they didn’t want their secret to be out in the open. From Nunez Navarro, the chief advisor to the president, to many such high-level politicians, everybody knew about the entire issue. Federico was asked to suppress the matter and not print anything about it. Andres, at that time, had just joined El Baltico, and he was adamant about doing a story on the entire Bruno murder case. Federico knew the detrimental effect the story could have on the future of his newspaper, and so he didn’t let Andres publish it. Federico still felt guilty over not doing the right thing. Leon got a whiff that his brother hadn’t died accidentally and that some reporter at El Baltico and even some Spanish soldiers knew what had happened exactly. Leon was quite young, and in his naivety he decided to burn El Baltico’s office down. Unfortunately, there were two female employees still in the premises when Leon set the entire building on fire. Leon’s sole intention behind going after Lara was to take revenge on the family. But things changed when he fell in love with her. Lara also got to know about the entire issue, and she decided to help Leon and, in a way, go against her family. Leon and Lara started spending a lot of time together, and one day they were shooting at targets for fun at an abandoned piece of land. The local people, who probably heard the gunshots, informed the police about it, as they thought there were poachers in the area. That’s how Leon ended up in prison, but a few days later, he audaciously took his chances and escaped from there.
Lara told Leon about a soldier who was posted in Afghanistan at the time when Bruno was murdered. Leon went to meet the soldier, pretending to be a documentary maker, but things didn’t go down as he would have expected. Leon and the soldier had an argument, and things got so heated that he later ended up brutally thrashing Leon. Leon was admitted to the hospital, and at the end of Rotten Legacy, things didn’t look good for him.
Will Lara expose Federico?
After sitting through 7 episodes, which seemed excruciatingly long, we got to know that Federico and Andres were finally able to turn the odds in their favor. The father-son duo were able to convince the leadership, i.e., the president and Nunez Navarro, to give them funds that they could use as security. In order to procure that sum, they had to make Rocio, who, together with Guadalupe, ran a political party that was driven by leftist ideologies, the scapegoat. Federico framed Rocio and told everybody that she was the one who was involved in all sorts of fraudulent activities, some of which had a direct impact on El Baltico. In a way, he blamed Rocio for what had happened and showed that his hands were tied and that he had to do what she forced him to. If there is a season 2 I don’t know how that move will pan out? Rocio seemed docile, but I believe she has the capacity to retaliate in full force. But the point was that Federico and Andes got to keep their media house, though Aguirre tried his level best to make their lives miserable. In Rotten Legacy’s ending, Lara sat next to Leon in the hospital, and she got access to that unpublished interview that Federico had given to Enrique. From revealing the truth about the Bruno Escudero story to explaining how Andres had faked subscribers, the man had described everything. The series left us on a cliffhanger as Lara, after much speculation, sent that video to somebody. Lara’s sympathy towards Leon, coupled with the hatred she had developed for her own family members, made her take that decision. She was too young to understand how the world functioned, and she wanted Federico to pay for what he had done. If there is another season of Rotten Legacy, I believe that Federico, Andres, and even Guadalupe would have to figure it out in order to keep themselves out of trouble. There were predators still out there (like Aguirre and Manuel) who wanted to remove the Seligmans from the position of power, and Lara leaking that unpublished video didn’t help their cause.
