Unless and until you have a taste for the “unexpected wealth bringing unexpected bad luck” genre, you might want to skip Turn of the Tide. With an extremely cliché narrative that we have to struggle to like, the series is saved more by its villains than its heroes. Also, writers and makers need to have some self-awareness of how much a story can be stretched when they are just making something out of popular imagination instead of anything new. Let’s look into the detailed recap of Turn of the Tide and discuss its ending.
Spoilers Alert
How Do Eduardo And His Friends Run Into Trouble Because Of Drugs?
We love it when the title of a movie or a series is clever. It was literally the turn of the tide that brought the drugs to the shore and, figuratively, turned the tide in favor of the protagonists’ fortunes. Gianluca and Francesco Bonini are two smugglers who are going across the Atlantic to deliver drugs. The Italian mafia is the OG, and it always hits different with its policies and rules. In “Turn of the Tide,” the drug mafia kingpin is a man named Monti, and it is his brother-in-law, Bonini, who is the captain of the ship carrying the drugs. Once he loses the cargo, he is arrested by the police, which forces Monti to come down to the island to retrieve the cargo and save Bonini.
Meanwhile, some packages from the cargo have reached the shore. But it was only Eduardo who moved fast when he realized that the packages must be coming from somewhere. True to his guess, he finds the rest of the drugs stuck in one of the caves and brings them back to the island. He includes his friends in the plan to sell the drugs and make money that would transform their lives. Rafael had to give up on his dreams due to his injury; Carlinhos is treated poorly by a largely homophobic population; Eduardo needs the money for his father’s operation so that he may finally go to America; and Silvia wants a better life for herself and her mother. They all agree to be a part of the plan and start figuring out a way to sell the drugs they have, which proves especially difficult since the island is flooded with them right then. The local don, Arruda, tells everyone to bring the drugs they have found to his place so that there is a single selling point. While most people comply, Eduardo and his friends keep their secret. They locate two small-time buyers, Ian and Bruna, at a party, who lead them to a bigger buyer on the mainland. There is a bit of a hitch when Arruda figures out that these kids are selling drugs in his territory, but Eduardo and his gang are able to get away with it with a very small loss. They reconfigure their delivery model by transporting the drugs through the fish, and things finally start looking up.
But it will not be long before everything gets messy again. Rafael is not the brightest tool in the shed, and he mixes laxatives into the drugs being supplied to make up for some cargo loss. This means that he has very dissatisfied customers, and since kids are selling the drugs, Arruda figures out that the gang lied to him, and they still have some stock left. He is especially incensed that his daughter, Silvia, is in the hospital due to a drug overdose. Amidst all this, Monti tracks down Eduardo and tells him to give him back his cargo in exchange for his father’s life. Jeremias has just gotten surgery for his eyes, and sadly, he knows that his son has paid for it with “unclean” money.
When Eduardo sees his Father in danger, he decides to give Monti what he wants, but by that time, Arruda has cleaned out the stock with Rafael, whom he later kills and dumps his body in the sea. As for Eduardo, he begs Monti that he will get him back his drugs. However, he double crosses him and throws him into the sea, then escapes with his Father. This is when the narrator comes into the picture. He is none other than Joe, Eduardo’s uncle, and he takes on the role of a fixer for everything going wrong in the protagonists’ lives. It is at this point that we realize how an entire episode was unnecessary and should have been condensed into 10–15 minutes, to be adjusted in the other episodes. Let us just say that since the drugs are with Arruda, he gets the buyer on the mainland, except that it is all a ruse staged by Eduardo to get back the cargo, and it works. In the aftermath of this fiasco, they seek refuge with Eduardo’s Uncle Joe, a man who is as grumpy as he is helpful.
How Did Monti Get The Drugs? What Happens To Eduardo?
Uncle Joe comes across as a brute and a loner. He served seven years in prison in America for a robbery, but he couldn’t care less about it, so much so that he was reciting lines from The Shawshank Redemption when the judge was supposed to decide on his release. Joe did not wish to come back to the Azores but was forced to, and he has lived alone in the woods since, hunting and fishing. While we don’t mind Joe, Episode 6 of Turn of the Tide makes the characters permanently unlikeable for us. Silvia and Eduardo start their affair even though it hasn’t even been days since Rafael passed. Maybe Carlinhos is decent enough, but Eduardo can never be forgiven for leaving his Father alone, despite it being the latter’s wish. Jeremias is killed by Monti, who has found his way back to the island.
The group still doesn’t know this, and Eduardo is planning his next move, which is moving to America, but his uncle doesn’t want him to do that since he believes that the racism of the country would still put him at a disadvantage. But he comes around eventually when Arruda dies at Edurdo’s hands. Arruda discovered where the kids were hiding when he held Carlinhos’ mother at gunpoint. At Uncle Joe’s place, in the fight that followed, Arruda finally dies, clearing away one problem from Eduardo’s life. However, he still has Monti to deal with.
Monti is a man out of patience, but he is not the only one closing in on Eduardo. Inspector Paula Frias brings in Eduardo and his friends for questioning, though she gets nothing out of them. Joe is able to arrange for Eduardo’s transport because of his past connection to Feliciano. Him, Joe and Jeremias were in America together, working odd jobs when Feliciano started the canned food business. However, he also planned a robbery, probably as an investment or to cover some losses at work and Joe took the fall for it, by going to prison. That is probably why Jeremias never wanted to get involved with Feliciano. However, Feliciano has carried the weight of that debt and had even offered to pay for Jeremias’ surgery, only to be rejected. But he decides to help Joe and Eduardo, by helping the kid escape on his boat and store his drugs in his cans. Eduardo asks Carlinhos and Silvia to accompany him, but both are reluctant, though Carlinhos changes his mind later. As for Silvia, she discovers that she is pregnant, and she decides to stay back on the island to raise her child. However, she doesn’t get the chance to communicate this to Eduardo. Meanwhile, Carlinhos is held hostage by Monti when he went to say his goodbyes to the Father. Eduardo seeks the help of Inspector Frias and promises her that he will lead her to the mafia kingpin himself. He goes on to meet Monti without him knowing that Frias is tailing him with the police force.
Turn of the Tide ends with Eduardo escaping with Carlinhos as he gets on the boat just in time, and leaves for America. This has been his long-cherished dream, and it is finally coming true. As for Carlinhos, he can finally live a life of greater acceptance than he has so far. Back on the island, Monti is furious to discover that the drugs that Eduardo was supposed to deliver to him are not there. Even Joe believes that they have either been destroyed or lost, but in the final few minutes of the series, he finds a clue left for him by his nephew. Eduardo has left a crudely drawn map for him that leads him to all the drugs stored in the Feliciano cans. The drugs are safe, and money can be earned from them, with Eduardo and Carlinhos happy in America.
What Can We Expect From ‘Turn of the Tide’ Season 2?
One of the biggest letdowns in a moderately engaging series is that Jose Condessa, who plays Eduardo, did not show the confidence and determination one would expect from someone who is risking his life. Additionally, the character of Silvia was so reductive to being the love interest. She added nothing to the script—no heartfelt emotion and not even some humor. They should have just given Carlinhos and the Father more screen time. Turn of the Tide was a particularly average series that should have been somewhat shorter, but there are some loose ends that hint at more seasons. For example, Monti is not going to stop until he has his drugs, and if not that, then he will kill the group of friends. Since Eduardo and Carlinhos have escaped, he is going to come after Silvia. We also can’t be sure that Uncle Joe will be safe. He has all the drugs, so he would be starting a system to sell them on his own. This might mean that he will stay in touch with Eduardo to split the money. There is a high likelihood of a Turn of the Tide Season 2, and we suppose it will happen on a bigger scale than this one.
