The first season of ‘Welcome to Edén’ was one of the great Spanish successes of Netflix from last year. It worked so well that it became the most watched series on the platform worldwide during the week of May 9 to 15, 2022, so its renewal was inevitable. In fact, we haven’t even had to wait a year to see the second batch of episodes starting this Friday, April 21.
For my part, I understand the reasons why the series could arouse curiosity, since its premise is striking and also there are several familiar faces in its cast. Unfortunately, the stimuli end there, since this dystopia was a constant disappointment, since it insisted on going around the same thing, making the viewer desperate. Season 2 continues on a similar path and makes it clear that we are still facing a huge missed opportunity.
A bad mix
The main cliffhanger that the first season left us was the arrival on the island of Foa’s sister, thus complicating everything more for the character played by Amaia Aberasturi. As expected, the second season pulls on that thread to create doubts in Gabi about whether something dark is really happening in those separate societies halfway between dystopia and being a sect. A curious resource to influence more in the limit situation that the protagonists face, but that at the moment of truth becomes an excuse to continue stretching the gum.
In the 4 episodes that I have been able to see -those that Netflix made available to the press-, it is true that those responsible for the series begin to give some answer about what is behind that kind of sect headed by Astrid (Amaia Salamanca) and Eric (William Pfeng), but they feel like mere distractions to try not to completely lose the viewer’s attention. More or less the same thing that happened with the endings of several episodes in the first season that later led to nowhere.
Another of the weapons used by those responsible for ‘Welcome to Eden’ in this season 2 is increase the importance of personal plots, although that is often confused with enhancing the sentimental without developing it satisfactorily. To that you want to add a touch of spice, but you can almost always tell that they go with the handbrake on so as not to go beyond what is easily tolerable by any type of spectator. The use of parallel montage to show us the intimate encounters between various characters is of no use to me if you have done very little to make me care.
There is another of the problems, and that is that this deficient base is essential for the construction of the plots, which limits them enormously before starting to walk. Yes, there are specific moments in which the series is close to achieving what it is looking for -I am thinking, for example, of a sequence in which a certain character has to rescue something from the bottom of the sea-, but the most common thing is that it falls on deaf ears.
Nor does it help that the construction of the characters from the script oscillates between the rickety – have they seriously signed Nona Sobo after the success he achieved in ‘Entrevías’ for this?- and the inconsequential. There are only a few cases in which that key emotional connection is sought for one to get involved with their stories and there it often falls into the generic. I have to care because they tell me, not because they did anything to earn it.
That also ends up condemning its cast, where practically all of them end up scratching at the same level. A mediocre one, and being generous. There I will not go into assessing which members of the cast are more talented than others -although it hurts especially that lola rodriguez has gone from shining in ‘Veneno’ to what he does here-, but I am clear that there is more than one person who knows how to interpret much better than what he shows here, surely in part limited by the material at his disposal. For example, the dialogues lack naturalness in most cases.
This brings us to ‘Welcome to Eden’ follow without being an agile series and that trusts more than necessary in the curiosity that we may have about how everything is resolved, while gaining time so as not to give a solution to everything in a reasonable amount of time. This morbidity is also partially fed through the increase in sexual relations in the series, but when it comes down to it, seeing an empty series prevails in which, in addition, its packaging, which at first seemed one of its virtues, makes time it stopped showing.
For the rest, it is as if he wanted to play at being several things at the same time without paying special attention to any of them. Thus, his most sinister side is quickly diluted, while his youthful component is too obvious. To that you add the poor development of its suspense component and we are left with a series with very little to offer.
So is it worth watching?
It is clear to me that I have come this far with ‘Welcome to Eden’, because the series does not offer me anything for which it is worthwhile to continue investing my time in it. I might worry about how it all works out when that happens, but watching beautiful but insubstantial people grapple with such a poorly posed mystery and so poorly understanding intensity is not something that interests me. Of course, I admit that it is not horrible, but it is as insubstantial as always having to eat food without salt.
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