‘Vida’ Ends Its Unique Vision of Latinx Culture With a Masterfully Sublime Voice

Alci Rengifo

For a third and final season “Vida” returns to the streets, homes and changing world of East Los Angeles. The title of the show, which is Spanish for “Life,” was never less than perfect. While it built multiple story threads, they were all about the experience of living in all of its joys, sorrows and contradictions. More importantly, the show focused on U.S. Latinx culture in a way never before seen on television. It culled its drama from the class divisions and social debates going on today in a community facing gentrification. Universally it was simply excellent peak TV, told with style and craft. As cast members tell Entertainment Voice, it was a show that leaves a mark in a special way.

Season three finds sisters Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera) fully running their Boyle Heights bar, “Vida,” named after their deceased mother. There remain tensions with local activists who see the bar as another example of Mexican-Americans selling out to “hipster” culture, slamming them as “coconuts” (brown on the outside, white on the inside). Despite this they carry on, but with the baggage of their own complicated personal relationships. Emma, openly gay now, is still with Nico (Roberta Colindrez), whose ex Zoe (Cara Santana) essentially stalks the bar with an explosive secret. Lyn is meanwhile still seeing Rudy (Adrian Gonzalez), a city councilman whose very bourgeoisie mother looks down at Lyn for her bad Spanish and for running such a plebian establishment. Then comes the ultimate revelation when Eddy (Ser Anzoategui), who was Vida’s partner, lets Emma and Lyn know their father is still alive. Not only that, but he’s still in the area as a Pentecostal preacher. Lyn is inspired to go meet him, but Emma wants nothing to do with the man. Activist Mari (Chelsea Rendon) and her brother Johnny (Carlos Miranda) must also make major decisions when their father passes away. 

“Vida” creator Tanya Saracho was allowed six episodes to finish the Starz series and she never lets one chapter go to waste with the all-Latinx writing staff. All that the show has tried to celebrate and express comes to fruition, from the sibling bond between Emma and Lyn to the show’s wider subject of identity in a shifting terrain. Non-binary living, queer culture and language are just as important as gentrification. Even the ongoing tide of reactionary evangelical culture within the Latinx community is explored through the character of the sisters’ estranged father, Victor (Jesse Borrego), who at one point leads a spontaneous prayer circle against Emma’s “sinful” lifestyle (of course there are more cynical reasons behind this moment you will discover as the plot moves along). 

Colindrez, Anzoategui, Rendon and Miranda all shared about saying goodbye to “Vida,” its importance and impact on them as well as on the kind of stories television can tell. “Working with Tanya is a transformative experience because she believes in people in a way that is empowering,” said Colindrez. “You’re in a show that is so much about Latin empowerment and who we are as people. I’m getting very philosophical about this. Tanya loves the truth, no matter what truth you can bring to a character. Nico and I are so similar…but that’s made me more diligent about learning lines, actually.” 

“It was nice to continue telling this story, but it was also sad that it was our last run at it,” said Miranda. “The show was all of ours. Every year it was like we’re going through this together. But the show is so universal, it’s about how everyone goes through the same situations and circumstances.” 

“The writers were able to write it up a little bit, not in complete bows, more like the end of a chapter and not necessarily the end of a book,” said Rendon. “At least we were able to go in ready to say goodbye instead of discovering later that it was cancelled. The most important thing about this show is that it’s Latinos writing for Latinos. The authenticity is then what translates for everyone, not just Latinos…hopefully this can help show non-Latinos a side of us they haven’t seen before, because Hollywood has been very stereotypical in the way they portray Latino characters. You could put this story in any other town.” Rendon’s Mari must ask herself this season if she’s still cut out for barging into gentrifying businesses with her comrades, when her own activist videos begin to catch fire online. When she films an ICE raid against an immigrant father it even lands her an interview with a multimedia site seeking new, socially conscious material. But with success there’s also pain and when Mari’s father dies quietly in bed, her and Johnny have to deal with old patriarchal habits when the deed to the house is under his name, not Mari’s despite her having been their father’s prime caretaker. “We’re just human beings, and the same way that you bleed blood, we bleed blood. The same way you feel, we feel.” 

A key theme is how communities become more labyrinthine the deeper they are explored. Activists slam the Vida bar, but Lyn herself is discriminated against by Rudy’s classist family. It takes her a while to notice how he himself treats her more as an object, a pretty working class trophy. Eddy even faces the curious experience of Gen-Z and millennials judging her for not being more in touch with current gender-defying terms. “It’s about how there’s the introduction of the millennial queers,” said Anzoategui, “Eddy knows the language because other people her age have picked it up, but when it comes into the bar it sort of feels like this unfamiliar queerness coming in. And the way they deliver it has a bite it to. Catty, I think that’s the right word for it. It’s that clash that can happen, I’ve experienced it.” 

“I can’t wait for the day where we don’t have to say ‘oh were the show that pioneered all this stuff, because by then it will be so comfortable to see Latin people onscreen, telling all different kind of stories and not the current narrative which is usually violence,” said Colindrez, while adding, “season three is so much fun. There’s a lot of fun stuff. Sure there’s the usual family drama but it’s really fun and grounded. The characters have reached the lowest point that they could reach and achieve new things. Everyone grows up very quickly in season three.”  Much of the intense drama is punctuated with moments of near surreal joy, as Saracho and her writers subvert Latinx stereotypes, machismo and custom. There is live karaoke mariachi, a queer-themed quinceañera that turns into a shroomed orgy and dialogue piercing in its universal human touch. One of the season’s most profound character shifts occurs with Lyn, who always wore her sexual freedom like a diamond studded dress in comparison to Emma. This time around she stops, either after a debauched party or sex with Rudy and seems to ask herself, is that all there is? It’s not the narrative passing judgement, but contemplating how inner needs are just as important as the physical. It’s another example of the fine balance Saracho’s writers find when giving these characters deep complexity.

“The most that I hope that audiences take from ‘Vida,’ especially Latinx creators and the younger generation, is please write non-binary, transgender, butch, different gendered people as leads. Open up your mind. Include us, include nonbinary people. We have to come together. Include people with disabilities, people that don’t look like you, as long as we have representation,” said Anzoategui. 

The final moments of “Vida” are beautifully sublime. Two sisters don’t necessarily reach the end of a journey, but instead a new understanding of their relationship under the neon glow of the bar’s sign. During this season they come close to losing material things like their establishment or love in the form of partners, but they endure. “Vida” speaks in shades of Spanglish, in a corner at times forgotten in this most famous of American cities with a Spanish name. However its feelings are universal in any language, which is why it’s a show fit for all.

“Vida” the final season premieres April 26 and airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET on Starz.