Who Killed Sara season 2's ending explained: What did that final scene mean?

For a while in season two’s dramatic, fiery finale, it looked like we’d been gifted an answer – it was Marifer who slashed the rope that led to Sara’s death 18 years before. Certainly she believes she was to blame, confessing all to Álex and Elisa before being hit by a falling piece of casino ceiling.

Then, in a last minute twist, we cut to Nicandro rifling through a filing cabinet in an undisclosed location. As he opens one of its files, we see a picture of Dr Alanis, Sara’s psychiatrist, and then a photo of Sara with the words ‘SG - First patient of the project’ written on the back.

“Dr Alanis,” we hear Nicandro say, “the money is in your bank account, just like my father promised. I’m very glad you accepted the money, instead of risking your life.” He goes to tell him, “Let [Álex] believe that [Marifer] is the murderer. No one can know that we were behind it. There’s too much at stake. Is that clear, doctor?”

Of course, the big question now is: what is this mysterious project and what does or did Sara have to do with it?

We know that Sara was, in Dr Alanis’ words, a “paranoid schizophrenic”, so was the ‘project’ she was a part of something to do with that? And what is Nicandro’s role in all this? He mentions his father in that closing voiceover, but – as far as we know – we haven’t met him yet. In fact, Nicandro’s role in this season, as in season one, has been pretty minimal.

In the first season, even in the flashback scenes, he seemed a character on the peripheries of the action, and his role in season two looked to be fairly straightforward – he was a street-level drug dealer who got screwed over by Sara who then tried to kill him by cutting the brakes on his motorbike. But it appears something even more sinister was going on…

Of course, this wasn’t the only cliffhanger for season two. We also saw Chema hand himself in, confessing to the murder of Moncho and – somewhat bizarrely – Sara’s father Abel from 18 years before (even though we know it was Cesar who committed that crime). With both witnesses to Moncho’s killing – Lorenzo and Clare – now dead, it appears that Chema (who still looks like Bradley Cooper playing Matthew McConaughey) might be in for a lengthy stretch. It’s difficult to know how he can get out of this one.

We’re certainly in a different place, storywise, now than we were at the beginning of the season.

Cesar is legally dead, and living it up on some sun-kissed island somewhere, Rodolfo has, despite losing his wife and stepson, finally found some balls, Elisa has burned down the casino in an act of defiance against her family and Alex believes he’s solved the mystery of Sara’s murder.

On top of that, Lorenzo, Clara, Sergio, Elroy and (possibly) Marifer are all dead, Mariana has been left sobbing in her mansion, while torturing herself for her many sins with a cilice that she wears round her leg, and Sara, we’ve learned, was a homicidal sociopath with a different father to Álex (but the same father as Marifer).

With so many cliffhangers and rug-pulls, this season finale has proved considerably more game-changing than season one’s closer. When Nicandro tells Dr Alanis, “No one can know that we were behind it,” it’s a puzzler – we certainly saw Marifer cut the rope, or at least *start* cutting it, so in what way was Nicandro involved? And what does he mean by ‘we’, unless Dr Alanis somehow ordered her death? Also, what clues can we glean from the Medusa logo on the front of the file Nicandro was looking at…?

Whatever the answers are, we’ve come a long way from how this series started just two months ago, when the only thing we were asking was ‘who killed Sara?’. Eighteen episodes on, that almost seems like the least important question of all.

Roll on season three.

Who Killed Sara? season two is streaming now on Netflix, check out our guides to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, visit our Drama hub for more coverage, or find something to watch tonight with our TV Guide.