As an Indian woman, we seriously believe that our country’s TV serial industry should take notes from Colombia and Mexico about how convoluted drama can get. It is all as far-fetched and messy as it can get, with so much running around without a purpose that we get dizzy. And there is enough objectification of women to go around that both industries will be able to justify it with their respective flimsy excuses (this was a politically incorrect joke). We have loved watching “The Marked Heart” in all of its soapy and dramatic glory. The person we had so despised in the first season had us shedding tears for him in the second one with an ending so gut-wrenching that no one could have been prepared for it. On the other hand, in “The Marked Heart” Season 1, we thought we had finally found a teenager on screen we could like, but that goes away in the second season. Either way, the annoyance is a small part of the narrative, and this is how the rest of it goes.
Spoilers Ahead
The Hunt For A New Heart
Camila has been hiding from everyone outside of her country, travelling and photographing, and overall, living the dream life of an artist. But circumstances force her to come back to Colombia, where she meets Lorena Williams, who is organizing her photography exhibition. At the same place, she runs into Simon, who has come looking for her as he knows that the photographer “Lobo” was a name that Camila had once said she would use if she ever wanted to be anonymous. But the reunion doesn’t last long as Simon has to rush to meet Samantha, who has fainted. In his absence, it turned out that Lorena Williams was planted by Zacarias to lure Camila back to Colombia. He tells her that they are bound together, and he wants them to have children together to grow their family. Zacarias is completely deranged at this point, and Camila is furious. He locks her in the house and leaves for a meeting.
In the meantime, Simon is running helter-skelter looking for Camila, and he finally finds her right when she has set her own house on fire, trying to escape the house. Simon rescues her, and they escape from the place, leaving Zacarias to debate his next move. In the meantime, the trafficking ring has found Simon, and they bring him to meet Zacarias, who tells him that he wants him to “walk in his shoes.” The psychiatrist that Sam had been seeing for a year to treat her depression was planted by Zacarias. She has been giving Sam medication that, over time, has damaged her heart. Right now, Sam is in need of a heart transplant, and Zacarias wants to see whether Simon can stop himself from doing the same thing that he did to protect Camila.
Simon is at his wit’s end because he neither has the means nor the money to arrange a heart for Camila. He needs half a million dollars for Camila’s operation, which he is unable to arrange. As for Camila, she reveals herself to her mother and her best friend, Tata, who have been believing for the past year that she is dead. After the happy reunion, Camila confronts her mother for not having taken her side and for being so blind to Zacarias’ faults. Greta understands what her daughter is saying and promises to be by her side through the ordeal in front of her.
Meanwhile, knowing Sam’s condition and the funds needed to save her, Tomas decides to join his friends in a bank robbery. When Simon comes to know this, he tries to stop them, but it is too late, as the robbery is already underway. Things go wrong, and the whole thing turns into a hostage situation. Tomas and his friends, Polo, Sofia, and Perrote, hadn’t thought this through completely, and they were stuck in the bank with a few injured members. That is when Simon thinks of a card to play. He steps outside with one of the hostages, using them as a shield, and tells the media and press present outside that it was all a mistake. It was a desperate act to collect funds for Sam’s surgery. Simon also reveals that his wife had been targeted by illegal traffickers and describes the ensuing chaos it had caused in their lives. Simon, Tomas and his friends are arrested and taken to the station. Meanwhile, one of the cameras caught Camila near the bank, and that raised questions because everyone thought that she was dead. The President has her kidnapped to question her about the whole affair, and she tells Cardenas everything, from the death of Valeria to Zacarias’ involvement with the trafficking ring and the current state of affairs.
Cardenas is furious, and he tells Zacarias to cut ties with the organisation within three days. The thing is that Cardenas has been under a lot of fire ever since he got elected President because now his incompetence cannot be hidden under a veil. There are people waiting in the shadows to take over his post, and Cardenas knows that, though he doesn’t know who they are. One of them is his Secretary of State, who is vying to be the next President. His wife is the aforementioned Lorena Williams, who is having an affair with Zacarias and is his confidante in everything he has been up to recently. These two characters really don’t add much to the narrative and are used more as a filler subplot.
But coming back to the story, Simon is released from prison on Zacarias’ orders because he wants his hunt for his daughter’s new heart to go undisturbed by unnecessary events. By the time Simon has been released from jail, someone has offered to donate their heart to Sam. They had heard Simon’s story on television and had agreed to donate their hearts to save a life. But tragedy strikes again, and before the operation, the donor is killed with a knife through his heart. The organization doesn’t want Simon to take any “shortcuts,” and his situation worsens.
Greta tries talking to Zacarias, asking him to back off, but he has proof of her past working in a few adult movies and threatens her that he would release them if she pushed him the wrong way. But she does what little she can, and Greta uses her position to get Tomas released from jail. When Tomas had offered to reveal the names of the people involved in the trafficking ring, somebody had put up one of his friends, Sofia, to kill him. But as fate would have it, Polo ends up protecting Tomas, and he is killed in the process.
By this time, Simon is out of options, and he finally gives in to the organization’s ways. Zacarias has agreed to pay for the surgery if Simon gives his consent. Simon chooses a woman from a file and asks them to go ahead with it. As he is sitting down, drinking away his guilt, Camila meets him and tells him that they will find a way, and she convinces Simon not to go ahead with the plan. But by that time, the organization had already kidnapped the woman who was supposed to be the donor. Simon doesn’t want to go ahead with the procedure anymore, but Sarmiento tells Simon that only Zacarias’ word will go since he is the one paying for the surgery.
Sarmiento tells Simon that the donor will be killed anyway, and it is Simon’s choice to make sure that her death is not in vain. Simon agrees to bring his daughter, but instead, he goes with Tomas to try and rescue the woman, killing Mariachi in the process. He is not able to rescue the woman, but he and Tomas are captured by the rest of the gang, and they are tied up in the club along with Nicky Guerra.
‘The Marked Heart’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Why Did Zacarias Give His Heart To Samantha?
When Zacarias goes to meet Camila, he finds Sam, who confronts him about how much he has harmed her family. Even Lucas gets into a word about his dislike for him. Sam makes sure to tell him that Camila, the woman for whom he has done all this, would never love him. Throughout “The Marked Heart” Season 2, we have seen Zacarias struggle with his feelings for Camila. His love for Camila has always been obsessive, and we believe that, in his eyes, his own actions are a way to prove that he is not a monster, but a man stuck in a bad place. When he tells Camila that it is her heart that loves Simon and not her, she replies that it is what it is. But that very heart hates Zacarias for what he has done, and that will never change. Something seems to flip in Zacarias. The confrontation with Sam and Lucas, followed by Camila’s words, did a number on him. That is why, when he gets the call from the organization saying that they are looking for Sam to transfer the heart to her, he says he doesn’t know where she is.
In the meantime, the police come cracking down on the club where everyone is being held hostage. Once Tulio knew that Nicky was in danger, he wasted no time in rescuing her and the others onstage. Once Tulio knew that Nicky was in danger, he wasted no time in rescuing her and the others. She was shot by one of the goons, but they took her to the hospital in time, and she was rescued. The inspector, Tulio, has been in love with Nicky since we first saw him in “The Marked Heart” Season 2, and though Simon tells him that she never forgave him for making her “the mistress,” it looks like he is wrong. Once Nicky comes back to consciousness, she and Tulio get back together.
But the biggest loose end in all this is Zacarias. A scorned Lorena, who had turned sapiosexual for Zacarias, collects all the incriminating evidence against him. With her husband and former presidential candidate, Julia Moncada, who wants to be the vice president when Faust comes to power, they have enough evidence between them to take down Zacarias. Even the President has issued an order for his arrest on charges of treason. But Zacarias is nowhere to be found. As for Sarmiento, he is arrested along with Dr. Carracos. Though he was confident that there was no evidence against him, the inspector told him that Zacarias had given them all the evidence they needed. Sarmiento is going to jail for a long time.
As for Lorena and Faust, they hold a press conference where they reveal all the dealings of Cardenas and Zacarias to the world. Julia Moncada is going to request the censure of the President; therefore, it looks like Cardenas might just lose everything. Though we don’t feel bad about him, we believe that Greta did not deserve to have her video brought back into the public eye the way it did. But Lorena deserved what she got. She was involved enough with Zacarias that there was proof of her being complicit with Zacarias in his corruption. Faust brings it to the attention of the police, which is his way of taking revenge for her infidelity. It is funny, however, that he never had to pay for his own cheating. Lorena did mention that he had his own affairs that she knew about. We suppose only Lorena paid the price for a bad marriage, though.
In the meantime, somebody volunteers to donate their heart to Samantha. This is the light at the end of a long tunnel for Simon and Camila, and the surgery goes smoothly. While Sam is recuperating, Camila goes to Zacarias’ house, where she finds a recording left by him. He tells her that he just wanted a happy life with her, but that changed when Valeria’s heart found a home in Camila. Camila Zacarias knew that was long gone, and he just wanted to atone for his mistakes and let his obsession go. That is why he decided to give his heart to Samantha. Camila is in tears, and when she finds Zacarias’s body, with the scar over his heart, she breaks down at the cost each person has paid simply because of the choice of a heart, the marked heart.
At the end of “The Marked Heart” Season 2, Simon and Camila decide that they will never tell Samantha that the heart belongs to Zacarias. As their ordeal comes to an end, the question still remains whether Camila and Simon’s love is their own or the one between him and Valeria. Additionally, we also don’t know if Zacarias managed to prove his point with Simon. Yes, Simon tried to save the woman’s life, but there is no telling what he would have done if he had never received a donor for her, even in the future. With this ambiguity, Season 2 ends, panning out to show Camila and Simon sitting near the edge of a cliff, with Valeria’s presence with them.
Final Thoughts
“The Marked Heart” was amazing, but it could have been better if there had been more of Zacarias’ perspective. He was the most complicated character of the entire lot, and there was a sinister grace in the way he dealt with things, more of which could have elevated the series as a whole. To be honest, right from the beginning, we have never understood the attraction between Simon and Camila. They had chemistry, but it almost felt like they were together for the sake of it, as they were the good guys. But Zacarias is the one we wanted to read. His guilt, his decision-making, and his ways of navigating a “dog eat dog” world deserved a lot more screen time than any of the other vanilla characters. Other than this one thing, the series was good, and if you have the patience to watch 24 episodes (Season 1 and 2 combined), we would recommend this.
