Muted, aka El Silencio, finale spoilers follow.
While Arón Piper's breakout performance in Élite got us all talking, he isn't saying much of anything in his latest Netflix series called Muted (El Silencio in Spanish). Well, that's not entirely true.
The premise of Piper's new psychological thriller is that a young man named Sergio develops selective mutism after supposedly throwing both of his parents out of a high-rise apartment. Literally. As Sergio refuses to talk about what happened, a psychologist decides to release him from juvenile detention to study his behaviour as he returns to the scene of the crime.
However, it's not long before Sergio starts chatting to a bunch of people in the show, which means he's not as muted as the title might suggest. Still, what's bound to get viewers talking by the end of these six episodes is that ambiguous yet disturbing end scene.
So did Sergio really kill his parents? What is Ana’s secret connection to Sergio? And who actually died at the end? Pry your eyes away from the beauty of co-star Manu Ríos just long enough to find out what actually happened at the end of Muted.
Muted ending explained
The question that's been driving this show from the first scene is whether or not Sergio actually killed his parents. Six episodes later, it turns out he did, although it takes a few twists along the way to reach that point.
According to Sergio, his mother abused him and then his sister Noa by medicating them with various prescription drugs as part of an experiment. To protect Noa, Sergio did attack Blanca, but it was his father who then pushed her out the window. Accidentally though, mind you. His death then followed after he became consumed by guilt and committed suicide just moments later.
However, none of that is actually true. Yes, Blanca did give Sergio drugs, but she did so to treat his anger issues. As a psychiatrist herself, Sergio's mother tried her best to protect her son, and for a while, it was working, until he didn't take his meds one day and flew off the handle.
And nope, Blanca never abused or medicated Noa. Sergio's declining mental health convinced him that his mother was out to harm them both, which is why he eventually snapped and attacked her. When his father confronted Sergio over his actions, he was killed too. And the reason why we know this is because Noa saw the whole thing.
In an effort to pursue the truth, Ana became weirdly obsessed and more than just a bit horny for Sergio, which isn't entirely professional, if we're being honest. Part of this comes from the fact that she relates to him on a deeper level, as she too has psychological issues of a similar nature. Part of it is probably just because she's horny.
Either way, Ana takes things too far, which leads us to that final ambiguous scene at the end of episode six.
After Noa and the police leave the scene of the crime, Sergio takes Ana up to the same balcony where his parents were murdered.
We watch them both via a grainy camera shot as one of the pair falls to the ground below while the other just stands there, looking on. Screams from the street can be heard from a distance, but who just died? And did they jump or were they pushed?
The truth in that moment is unclear, but actually, the truth of it all doesn't really matter. Who's dead is actually besides the point.
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Sure, Sergio might have felt inspired to recreate his earlier crime and push Ana. But then again, Ana may have become frustrated by where this journey has taken them, to the point where she decided to lash out and kill Sergio the same way he killed his own parents.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
At the start, Sergio and Ana are positioned as enemies, or at least opposites. One is a criminal and one works within the law to figure out why said crime was committed in the first place.
However, Ana's obsession soon takes focus, to the point where her own outlook has become almost indistinguishable from Sergio's. Her sense of self evaporates. In a way, it's almost as if she has become Sergio, so making it hard for us to know who's who in that last shot is a very deliberate choice on the director's part.
Over the span of these six episodes, Ana has become the very thing she'd been chasing all this time. Whether she survived this final scene or not, her life was never going to be the same again anyway, so her chapter was for all intents and purposes done with anyway.
Now that's something worth talking about.
Muted is available to watch on Netflix now.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
