Control Z, a Netflix Spanish original series, explores the shadowy side of our parallel reality—the digital one. Most millennials utilise these digital platforms as an escape from their sad reality, and since most content is published anonymously, it frequently ends up being a place where they can be authentic or reveal their darkest secrets without worrying about being judged. But what if someone hacks into your digital life and tells your friends, family, and neighbours your secrets? Will you possess the fortitude to confront reality? Are you going to be able to escape those revelations? Most importantly, will you be able to Ctrl+Z or reverse previous actions? These are the issues that the story of Control Z examines through its ensemble cast of college students at National School, each of whom is harbouring a secret or possessing a past that has the potential to ruin their present and future.
Control Z Season 1: Recap
Sofia Herrera, a young college student who had no acquaintances, was introduced in season one. She used to wander around by herself and sit on the terrace, watching her classmates and the small nuances that nobody else noticed. After her father perished in a house fire, Sofia was previously given a clinical depression diagnosis and confined to a mental health facility. However, it was later discovered that Sofia was the only person who knew her father had faked his own death and that she had been keeping the truth from everyone, even her mother Nora.
Everything was going smoothly in the present until a hacker posting a video of a student called Isabela de la Fuente. According to the video, Isabela was born a boy but later made the decision to undergo surgery to change her gender. She relocated to a new city shortly after the operation and began a new life there. Her life, however, was completely shattered as soon as the hacker’s footage was made public. Following the event, a hacker going by the handle _allyoursecrets_ began contacting students on social media and threatening to divulge their secrets if they didn’t comply with his instructions, gradually pitting them against one another. The National School community, which had previously lived in a pompous tranquilly, was suddenly forced to deal with a chaotic reality from which they had no way of escaping.
In the midst of all this confusion, there was a student by the name of Gerardo Gerry Granda who was homosexual but had been hiding his actual nature since his abusive father wanted him to be a man like him. When Luis Navarro, a classmate who was incredibly fragile and secretly admired Gerry, sought to communicate his affections, Gerry beat him up in front of his peers to protect his identity and avoid becoming a laughingstock among his peers. Luis was hospitalised after Gerry’s physical abuse of him became too severe, and there he eventually passed away from a stroke. While other National School students were troubled by the news of Luis’s passing, Sofia and Javier Williams, a new student who also happened to be her love interest, looked into the anonymous hacker and eventually discovered that it was none other than their classmate Raul Leon.
Raul, the son of a dishonest politician, once overheard his classmates talking, and he concluded that they were only acting like his buddies for the money. The same day, Sofia told Raul, who was inconsolable to see her, that she was tired of pretending to be someone she wasn’t on the patio. If everyone had told the truth rather than lying to the people they cared about, she believed it would be simpler to exist in the world. After giving the idea some thought, Raul was startled to see Bruno, the school’s IT specialist, pulling cash out of the trash that Raul had just thrown out. Earlier, Bruno tried to extort Raul by hacking into his phone. Raul was inspired by this incident to reveal the secrets of all of his pals. Together with Bruno, he created the social media account _alloursecrets_ where he gradually shared the secrets of his friends. But his act of vengeance went too far, and the events he sparked resulted to the death of an innocent Luis. Raul admitted to Sofia that he did everything in Control Z Season 1 to win her over and make her happy. However, at this moment, Sofia revealed that she already knew Raul s secret identity as she saw a mask under his bed, which he used to threaten Sofia while he kidnapped her from his house party. While Raul was confessing the truth to Sofia on the terrace, Javier, standing at a distance, recorded Raul s confession on a video and released it at the NONA party that was attended by almost all of the students of the National School. The students went hysterical and created havoc under the roof, from which Raul somehow escaped. However, outside the premise, Gerry, who had also seen Raul s confession, confronted him and revealed to him that because of his prank, Luis had lost his life. Gerry wanted to shoot Raul, but Sofia and Javier intervened, and in the fuss, Gerry accidentally shot Javier in the stomach, while Raul used the opportunity to escape from there. The season ended without revealing the fate of these four lives interconnected with each other.
Control Z Season 2: Recap
The second season didn t have many twists and turns and was rather stretched too far. The opening montage quickly established that Javier survived the gunshot and returned to school two months later. Gerry, on the other hand, was still on the run, and police had been searching for him. And last but not least, Raul had escaped to some secret place where he was enjoying his father s money and living a happy life while his fellow classmates mourned Luis s death. Similar to the previous season, as soon as episode 1 began, another video was released by an unknown hacker who called himself/herself The Avenger and swore to take revenge on all those people who directly or indirectly caused Luis s death. And Sofia and Javier once again teamed up to investigate the attack on their classmates in order to find the identity of the avenger and stop him/her as soon as possible.
Sofia discovered that whoever the avenger was, he/she had been using Luis s dark paintings as an inspiration to punish Luis s perpetrators. Luis was a shy and self-centered student who never spoke ill of anyone. However, after Gerry started bullying him, Luis got highly traumatized, and he used his art as a medium to channel his anger onto paper. These drawings depicted how Luis wanted to punish or torture the people who harmed him, and thus the avenger decided to fulfill Luis s last wish. But the avenger once broke the pattern when he/she attacked Raul at his house, and instead of punishing him, the avenger stole all the money that Raul kept in his safe. And thus, Sofia and Javier discussed who needed the money the most at school and finally figured out that it was Alex. She wanted to be with her girlfriend, Gabriela, who was going back to Paris after she lost her job at National School at the end of Season 1 when Raul exposed her secret that she was dating a student (Alex) from the school.
Alex blamed Gerry for everything, as he was the one who bullied Luis in the first place, and because of that, she lost her only friend. It was she who persuaded Luis to share his drawing with Gerry in order to express himself, but because of his own insecurities, Gerry began bullying Luis, which eventually led to his death. Alex just wanted Gerry to kill himself and take away the guilt that had been weighing her down. Finally, Gerry felt that everything was happening because of him and thus decided to give himself to the avenger to end the chaos for once and for all. At last, Alex called Gerry on the school terrace, where she finally revealed her secret identity, and at gunpoint, she forced Gerry to jump off the roof to end the chaos. At the same time, Sofia and Javier arrived on the terrace to stop Gerry from killing himself. Eventually, Raul inquired about his money, which Sofia revealed was kept inside Luis locker, but Javier had already told Maria Alexander and Pablo Garcia about the money, as they needed a large sum of money to save Natalia from some threatening drug dealers. Earlier in Season 1, Natalia lost some drugs during the NONA party, and since then, the dealers have been threatening Natalia to reimburse them for the lost items. However, as soon as Maria took out the money from Luis locker, her new principal, Susana, saw her in the corridor, and suddenly they heard the sound of gunfire coming from the terrace. They all rushed to the terrace where they saw Alex pointing a gun at Gerry while everyone else around was trying to stop Alex, but as soon as they all saw the bag of money, they tried to snatch it from Maria for different reasons. And finally, a tragedy happened.
Pablo, who had been waiting outside the school for Maria to return with the money so that they could go and save Natalia, witnessed a few notes falling from the terrace, and as soon as he looked around, Susana s body hit the ground along with the bag full of money. Susana probably slipped from the terrace because of the argument and struggle between the group. And while Pablo was shaken from the tragedy and was grieving for his teacher, Maria from the terrace looked at him and signaled him to grab the bag and run to save Natalia.
What To Expect From Season 3?
The trailer of Control Z Season 3 reveals that the teenagers have decided to hide the fact that they had anything to do with Susana s death and have promised each other to forget that they were even there on the terrace on the night of the tragedy. However, as usual, an anonymous hacker finds out their secret and starts blackmailing them through the untraceable texts, after which Sofia, Javier, Raul, and others start yet another investigation to catch the hacker before he/she can expose to the world that they were involved in Susana s accident and much more than that, they lied to the authorities and hid the facts from the police. Susana didn t deserve to die in the first place, but at least after her death, her students should have morally told the truth to the police or at least to her husband. What s more disheartening this time is that even Sofia is part of the conspiracy. Because Season 3 is the final season of Control Z, we can hope that there will be no more secrets to discover by the end of the series and that all of the characters will have received their well-deserved closure.
As we can already speculate from the trailer, Raul hosts a lavish party at his place for his friends to forget the tragedy and move on with their lives, when suddenly he receives a mysterious parcel delivered by a drone. Inside the box, Raul finds a camera, and the parcel is marked with the same logo that Raul used to blackmail the students in Season 1. Whoever the blackmailer is, he/she has decided to turn the tables around, and this time it is Raul s own game against him and his friends. The hacker has designed some sort of classic clue/puzzle game which he decides to play with the culprits in Susana s accident, and it will surely add some thrill to the narrative. However, while being a part of this game, the teenagers are slowly losing their minds, and it will be exciting to see who will eventually survive in the end, and whether their secret will come out to the public or be buried forever.
