In Snakes and Ladders’ ending, Dora gets an unexpected promotion, but is this what she’s been looking for? Netflix’s Mexican comedy series tells the story of one power-hungry woman’s rise to the top. Dora is a single mother whose ex-husband mooches off of her through their closeted son. Dora always knew of her son’s leanings, but when her husband finds out, he blames Dora for how their son turned out, but eventually dies while he’s raging, falling down the stairs and smashing his head into the only trophy he ever got. Meanwhile, Dora finds an unexpected friend in a chocolate tycoon named Olmo Muriel, father of one of the kids at the school where Dora is a prefect. I suppose this is a kind of supervisory role. Anyway, Dora wants to become headmistress of the school and will go to any length to achieve this dream. So, I guess we see a woman of God turn to something akin to “evil” just to gain power. Dora’s journey is riddled with obstacles. For one, there’s Olmo’s ex-girlfriend Tamara, who brought her right-wing Spaniard husband, the consul for Spain, Vicente to Mexico. Not to be confused with the son’s name, Vicentin. Does Dora turning into a snake help her climb the ladder of power while dealing with all these people? Let’s find out in Snakes and Ladders’ finale.
Spoiler Alert
What Do Tamara and Vicente Plan?
I suppose when it comes to a comedy of errors kind of show, you just end up seeing some crazy stuff going down, and that’s exactly what happens with Tamara and her husband. After they attempt to get Roque to join them in bed, they end up doing the deed without him, leaving him feeling kind of heartbroken and super used. But, having realized that they’re by themselves, Tamara and Vicente decide they want to start a sexual wellness clinic back in Spain and take Roque with them. Of course, they give him a day to make this massive decision again, but Roque is just left confused. When the video of them sleeping together in the hotel room gets showcased at the goodbye event, they’re unbothered by it and end up getting the hots for each other right there all over again (guess the video also became marketing material? I don’t even know). So, they go back to Spain with their son, but what about Roque? Well, Martha Sanchez, the tarot reader, finally confesses her love for him, and they will probably live happily ever after, eh? Good for all of them, I suppose, except Chiquita and Vicentin, because they’ve just lost each other in this adult mess.
What Happens To Olmo?
Olmo’s daughter is an influencer, so anything she does generates a ton of attention. She lets everybody know that her boyfriend, Nico, turned out to be gay, and since we’re in 2025, she gets canceled for it. But her father doesn’t understand what any of this means. But, to make matters worse, Juana also frames Tono for robbing a house out of jealousy. Fortunately, though, Olmo is a good friend to Dora, so he gets her daughter to admit the truth at the police station, and Tono is set free. But this entire thing sets off a chain reaction for Nico, whom the governor asks to become the face of queer right-wing politics. I know, super contradictory, but apparently it works, so I guess anything can change, eh? Nico is power-hungry, too, so he’ll take anything. Interestingly, he doesn’t even think twice about this situation. Interesting parallels between Dora and Nico there, but hey, we’re not Freud.
Later, when Tamara and Vicente’s video is leaked, so is the fact that Olmo does drugs. A video of him doing drugs with a missing man is leaked, thanks to Lopez, tying him to a murder. I don’t know why Dora chose to betray him, because he was always very nice to her. But it seems her hunger got in the way. Olmo ends up alone with his two daughters and has to run away. I thought it would’ve been interesting if Vicentin invited Chiquita to go with him, but I guess the show decided to be more realistic there. Olmo runs away with both his daughters, I suppose, to somewhere his chocolate exports never went. We can assume his chocolate business is finally drowned, and the indigenous people are finally free of this man. Guess his karma caught up to him.
Who Becomes Headmistress?
Now, Dora’s big dream isn’t to be an explorer; it is to become the headmistress at school. But after watching the whole show, I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not like we see that she loves the kids or that she loves educating them. She simply wants to make her way to the top of the chain. Guess it was all just for money, but there’s no real motivation in terms of giving her son and herself a great lifestyle or anything; it’s simply that she wants to be powerful. Guess we can respect that. But, after everything she does, Dora ends up losing to her “friend,” who she never actually cared for, Maria Sanchez. At least she likes the kids.
In Snakes and Ladders’ ending, Dora teams up with the governor, despite basically hating him the whole time before, so that she can become a powerful person. So, the governor makes her the leader of the Ministry of Public Education. No background in politics, but she has a background in looking after kids, so she can make it. But the one real victor in all of this, in my opinion, is Lopez, who retired from working with Olmo, who called him Lopito and didn’t care about him, to possibly become a politician. In the end, it all works out for Dora, the governor, Nico, and even Tamara, but Olmo will probably return to take revenge. I guess the show’s a comedic lesson in corruption and how sometimes in trying to be a performative liberal, you end up actually doing the right thing (the governor with Nico). I guess in Tamara’s story, we’re meant to see that the idea of conservatism is different today than it was before? Or that people are just pretending—I’m not even sure. But hey, family first. I think having Vicentin chant all those things at the end of the show just goes to show that all of the corruption and the betrayals that have happened over the course of the show will continue, because as humans, we’re doomed to repeat our mistakes.
