What. The. Hell.
It’s been a particularly bumpy road for 30 Coins’ frenzied second season that diligently brought the crazy and expanded the canvas with aplomb, but chose to skimp on main character arcs and any sense of coherence whatsoever. With a typically strong start that included everything from pain demons, mutant pregnancies and a crap load of telekinesis, the last three episodes before the finale could barely hold the weight of the overarching plot together that became so ambitious not even the realms of hell and earth could seemingly contain it.
However, the end is finally nigh and the final episode of Alex de la Iglesia’s uncontrollable horror epic is upon us and I have to be honest – after the excellent first season fumbled the ball for its finale and the rampant confusion on the road to here, I was genuinely worried that 30 Coins was losing its value.
Oh me of little faith…
After a metric ton of inelegant plot machinations that stubbonly refused to slow down to let you catch up; all of our players are now where they need to be just in time for Christian Barbrow’s world ending plan to come into effect.
As plans go, its complexity is only outdone by how fucking insane it is, but here goes: by using the spells in the Black Book of the Mad Arab in conjunction with a monolith in Peru, Barbrow plans to open a portal to God in the hope that his devastating gaze will not only annihilate the earth, but will open a portal into another dimension that they will escape through to start their lives anew. How will they travel there, you ask? Why, a UFO, of course, that was discovered back in the 70s that is also in Peru. With a supercomputer back in Spain working overtime to decode the Black Book in order to find the launch sequence, Barbrow mind melting, logic defying plan lastly requires the 30 Coins to survive the trip, as they will protect any holder from being obliterated by the almighty giving them the stink eye.
Of course, there’s far more people gathered for Barbrow’s moment of triumph than 30, so after a spot of executions, Barbrow’s chosen group – including Merche, her adopted son and a mind-wiped and subservient Paco – hop aboard the spaceship to make their final journey.
However, the good guys have an equally convoluted plan to thwart these world destroying bastards and while the people of Pedraza, aided by a police stricken team descend upon the supercomputer to take things out at that end, the zombie Vergara heads to the monolith armed with a staff powered by the blood of Christ in order to close the portal and avoid God’s death stare.
While all this is going on, Elena and the zombie Santoro have managed to infiltrate Barbrow’s inner circle, but when everything finally kicks off, the two have to try and smuggle their way aboard as the world literally comes crashing down around them.
Quite simply, The Eye Of God may just be the most bizarre, random and fucking insane season finale I have ever seen. No amount of previous, 30 Coins, jaw-dropping, lunacy can possibly prepare you for the sheer breadth of absurdity that awaits you here, but if you are a sucker for logic defying plots that are madder than a box of frogs, pull up a pew because you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The genius of 30 Coins has mainly come from the fact that it simply doesn’t give a fuck about anything, just so long as it can continue on whatever frantic concept it’s currently grasping at at the time. Bring your lead character and his nemesis back as ravaged zombies? Have your female lead get pregnant with a spider monster only into order to introduce a secondary macguffin? Have God himself (or, at least, his eyeball) make a cameo in order to destroy the world? If its utterly unpredictable, then Iglesia will no doubt try to make it happen regardless of whether it makes sense or not and it’s fair to say that when it comes to plot points no one couse see coming, the show has definately outdone itself.
The shocks and rampant disbelief come straight from the off with regular side character Laguna getting shredded into pulp by a giant cooling fan before the credit have even rolled. From there, things get inordinately weirder as Paul Giamatti finally gets to sink his teeth into Barbrow’s mania as his plan finally comes to fruition. All the scattered, confusing macguffin stuff suddenly begins to make sense after seven full episodes of confusion and the show lurches violently from the realms of dark, religious horror and fully into the realms of whacked-out cosmic sci-fi with inter-dimensional travel and ancient space craft thrown in without any warning whatsoever. Iglesia doesn’t even try and finesse it either with God’s ignoring any form of metaphor whatsoever and take the form of an actual, gargantuan, bulging eye peeking out through some clouds. Similarly, the UFO is hardly a sleek, majestic, space chariot of legend and instead Barbrow and his followers have to cram themselves into a kitsch, 50s style, flying saucer that looks like it was pimped out by the Aztecs.
During all of this, the majority of the cast have little to do but hold on tight as they’re buffeted about by the out of control tale, but managing to withstand the storm is a grim Vergara who, after a season full oof amusing indignities, rides into the Peruvian descent on a motorbike and singlehandedly attempts to stop the impending armageddon. After pulling out the pieces of the staff from the cavities of his rotted body, he stands in the face of the storm, twirling the holy weapon around, with half his face missing and clad in a robe looking for all the world like a zombie Moses.
It’s frankly the kind of batshit image the show thrives on and if you can’t withstand the wildly illogical path it’s taken to get here, then 30 Coins is obviously not your show. However, while that balance has been a little off as of late, The Eye Of God drives it back home in truly exciting style; better yet, matters are proven to be even more unpredictable when Barbrow, after a desperate struggle, is actually successful, leaving the promise of a third season an even more mind blowing prospect.
With the world ended, and a handful of people (including Elena, Paco, Merche and Santoro) surving, Angelo transports Vergara after them where he finds himself in an alternate version of Pedraza. Here, in this universe, things proves to be similar but different with Vergara himself appointed as the town’s mayor and Elena is his wife.
As the episode ends, we find the residents of this other-Pedraza discovering the UFO abs thus the whole cycle of madness begins again.
As of writing, a third season has yet to be confirmed, but if we are granted – nay, blessed – with another clutch of episodes, the mind literally boggles to where Iglesia could take us next. But as it stands, worship at the altar of 30 Coins’ insanity or get the fuck out of the way.
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