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Tbh I found the finale in general to be kind of a mess, even outside of our girls. Like, the resolution of Lucia plotline was just so bizarre. So, she tragically dies but Beltran/Chino and Johny get to live? In a show about comeuppance? They spend 5mins on a funeral then everyone just moves on WHAT. I know a lot of people were pissed at the how patchy Juliantina were but the finale dropped the ball on a bunch of storylines, not just theirs. So I’m just happy they’re alive and got a good end lol

I agree. The rushing of Juliantina wasn’t because they’re the sidelined f/f couple, they just suffered from the same pacing issues everything did. The lack of kiss, okay, yes, but everything else was just them jumping from one scene to another. They should really have treated it as a finale week and started a lot of those big dramatic arcs (including the public confession) earlier instead of putting everything off till the end.

I think we’re meant to assume Lucia transmigrated too, thus getting her second chance? And I think that’s more what the show’s about, not so much comeuppance as it is about second chances. Which I wouldn’t say Johny got, that crazy bastard’s gonna rot in prison. Lucia would presumably meet Jacobo again and then that would be that. The Carvajals with their dad and stepmom in totally different bodies. And Val’s father-in-law too, lol.

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I’m so exhausted with a part of the juliantina fandom, there are comments on instagram blaming Barbara for the lack of kisses at the end of the telenovela, they say that Barbara began to feel things for Maca and that she got scared, and that’s why she’s always saying that she’s straight and has a boyfriend. This fandom is becoming toxic.

I’m sorry, anon, but I laughed so hard at this. Just…lmao. I am genuinely breaking into laughter every couple of minutes at this.

It’s a sign of a big fandom–hell, it’s a sign of any fandom. Just stay out of it, it’ll run its course. That’s not even close to a majority of the fandom, you can avoid it easily enough and save yourself the frustration of realizing how people can…be.

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Hope you don’t mind, but having watched only the Juliantina parts I have some questions…did Val find out about Eva and Alacran (you know, considering that Alacran kidnapped Juliana)? Or Lucia about Juliantina? Did Jacopo ‘officially’ meet Juliana as Leon? Thank you!

I’m not sure if Val ever actually discovered the first thing as part of all of Eva’s mistakes but if she did, they didn’t really acknowledge it in any way. And no on the other two. Super rushed finale. 

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I’m sad, it’s only Tuesday and the Juliantina tag is already dead.

Aww, anon, it is also just Tuesday. People are’t moving on in just a couple of days. Speaking as someone who was..somewhat active in the fandom, it’s not at all about dropping the ship and moving on as much as it is about taking a breather. That was like non-stop content for months. Right now, fans are voting in the polls, following the actresses in their interviews and movie premieres, and since the HD eps aren’t out past 81, people are still waiting on them to do all the fancy parallels and bookend gifsets. 

Personally, I’m catching up on work now and while I’ve tried to stay caught up on my other shows, there isn’t the same nightly urgency to keep with Juliantina that consumed the majority of my attention that stopped me taking the time to absorb and gif them. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’ve always advocated trying to balance your interests and not let any one thing consume you. And all right, lol, do as I say and not as I do, because clearly I was terrible at that, but now you might see other shows pop up more. 

That doesn’t mean I’m not all up on Juliantina still, I know we’re slightly leading in the kiss poll, I know we’re doing all right in the TVyNovelas poll, I know Barbara was super cute in the interview last night, I know fans have been overwhelming Maca with gifts and singing and inside jokes and proposals for her birthday and that they’re going to appear together for the Mexico City premiere. People not posting about something doesn’t mean they’ve moved on. And if you’re worried that everyone will leave you behind, that is…the last thing to be worried about, lol. At the least, I’ll still be here with you. 🙂

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Bitter anon here again. I’m kind of a cynic because I grew up with televisa, watching them put pretty terrible things on tv. Also I get kind of snobbish because I work creating media but not the kind that would ever be on their network. At the end you’re right, the set up was so beautiful and even if I scrutinize the hell out of the script, the bottom line is that they really created a beautiful story and that’s why we all watched. Ty for the analysis and the answer, you’re always so kind.

Aw, I wasn’t thinking of you that way, I didn’t even know who you meant until you mentioned Televisa. And it’s totally fair to form an idea of something based on experience. From all accounts, Mexican viewers are stunned at Juliantina. For us Americans, the treatment is already so unusual, but for people who know the network, it’s mindblowing.

I do also get the snobby part, I had that attitude with my own local media (Pakistani) and then I saw some dramas that were actually really freaking good. And I realized how much of that snobbery, in my own case, was influenced by automatically thinking foreign, especially English-language media, was superior. And that all the little traits of a genre were part of it and not something to be tolerated. For AAM, at the beginning I’d been like, does this music really need to be playing, by the end, I was in love with that OST, lol.

But, it’s a good thing we were open to realizing we wrong to paint everything with the same brush, otherwise we’d never have given quality media a chance and really missed out. And who knows, you may have more on the way. 🙂

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I gotta be honest, I’ve never seen a good product made by televisa and I find aam just as bad as all of their shows. The thing is, I love Juliantina (I found them thanks to your gifs) and I’m sure that the reason why it feels kind of well done is Maca and Barbara making the best of what was given to them. After the kiss the only conflict the writer introduced steamed from lack of acceptance and indecision, stretching it as long as he could, making them go back and foward between… 1/2

… 2/2 wanting to be together but not being able to. The finale showed the lack of development around their story, their conflict was easy to solve so they didn’t need a lot of time focusing on them and that’s why it feels sort of anticlimactic. Anyway, even with its shortcomings, I’m happy they took a step forward to show inclusion and I feel everyone tried their best with what they had. Also I’m so happy we got Maca and Barbara, they’ve been truly a gift.

I would disagree that the sole reason Juliantina was so good was the actresses, the writing and setup early on was amazing. And at quite a few parts later too. Admittedly, the actresses elevated those scenes, I can’t imagine how some of those lines would have sounded from different people, but they did cast these two, they did let them play off each other as they did, they did let them improvise and then included those takes.

But I do think you’re totally spot on in that their storyline was somewhat limited by having a lack of conflict. Well. This is what we thought would happen that week after the breakup, right, we were like, well, they’re going to be kept separate now because there’s no plot for them while they’re together, they can’t figure out their dads this early. But then they questioned Camilo, they had that great set of scenes at Silvina’s house, we really thought maybe they’d somehow continue the whole series like that. *sigh* They were doing so well. 

BUT then they had to bring in the other conflict. You could see how forced it had to be to even get the Sergio story going, as if Juls would simply turn and leave at seeing Lucho, or Val wouldn’t just chase her down and be like, dunno what you think but it wasn’t that. Although, again, as if Juls would even think that. I mean, it’s possible that she would, all the things that happened can be believed of their characters, but while in the earlier parts of the show they would have gone for the most direct, believable route, here they definitely did not. You always had to stretch characterization a bit to accommodate actions. It was a lot of plot leading the characters, I suppose. The opposite of which was so appealing in the earlier arcs. The writing was unreal before, how much they avoided unnecessary drama when they could just talk. 

A lot at the end was precipitated more by plot, why Val couldn’t just call Juls, a lot of that whole final ep, pretty sure they arrived at the TV confession first, and then were like, how we can we get these two to that place…okay, we’ll make it a media scandal and…we’ll add weight to it by having them stay apart because Juls’s life is under threat (also, wtf, Beltran was threatening her??) Like what was Val really saying in the kitchen scene, what was her reason for staying away? Juls’s safety or her own family? And since when did she care what her family…but anyway, yes, so, the plot needed certain things to happen, and their conflict is really so tame, like, neither is going to willfully hurt the other, they both clearly wanted to be with the other, so just pull out some fake high stakes stuff to include a grand gesture in the finale.

Ultimately, what defined the finale was more what it didn’t have than what it did. But it didn’t wreck the characters, it didn’t ruin their dynamic, it didn’t make it impossible for them to be together, by death or permanent separation. I can blame their planning but I don’t really blame them for a lot of the decisions they took along the way or the motivations behind them. They wanted to keep these two likable and healthy and destined and I can’t dislike that. Maybe if there’s a spinoff or even just a new project by the same team, they’ll have learned what works and what really didn’t and we can look forward to that.