Belascoaran, PI is a comedy-drama series that follows Hector Belascoaran Shayne, an independent detective who solves cases in Mexico City in the 1970s. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Hector Belascoaran Shayne appears on a popular game show with a chance to win 64 thousand pesos. He has in-depth knowledge of famous serial stranglers of history and it’s all a part of his plan to lure a killer out in the open.
Someone is killing women in and around the city and Hector appears to be the only one who cares about finding the culprit. He works as a time engineer for an American company and lives a decent suburban life with his wife.
However, Hector is miserable and he decides to quit his job, get a divorce and pursue a career as a detective. He moves into a tiny apartment and gets an office which he shares with his landlord, a plumber named Gomez.
He draws attention to himself thanks to his television appearance and the fact that he’s actually doing good detective work. He runs afoul of the corrupt police officer Paniagua. He’s also followed by a woman with a ponytail during his investigation.
He tracks her down and finds out that her name is Irene and that her mother was a victim of the strangler. Thanks to her help, he gets closer to catching the killer despite the efforts of Paniagua. He also wins the gameshow which makes him even more famous, and rich.
He finds an address and goes there with Irene. He locates the killer who traps him in a room and goes out to kill Irene but she manages to hold him off until Hector escapes. Irene gets into a car and rams the killer, getting revenge for her mother.
Paniagua arrives with the police and insists that Hector let the police handle it and take the credit, or else they’ll pin the murders on him. He has no choice but to accept those terms and leaves with Irene.
A few months later, the body of Renato Barrera is found. He was a union representative and a friend of Hector’s sister, Elisa. While the media claims that Barrera was killed by a jealous boyfriend, Hector believes there’s more to the story.
Meanwhile, he is approached by Marissa Ferrer for a job. She’s a famous actress and she wants him to make sure her daughter, Virginia, doesn’t commit suicide after recently having an accident where she fell off a balcony in their house.
Hector works both cases simultaneously. He endears himself to Virginia after saving her from some teenagers who tried to harass her. She refers to him as her guardian angel.
While investigating Barrera, he is led to an engineer named Camposanto but he tries to question him, he is thrown out by his boss, Cuesta. All of this takes place at Delex, the rebar factory which seems to be in the middle of a scandal.
Gomez introduces Hector to another tenant he’ll be sharing the office with, Gallo, a water engineer and sewage expert. As he digs into Camposanto, he finds out that the engineer has cancer but before he can find out more, Camposanto is killed.
Paniagua, who is commander now thanks to the strangler case, is once again proving to be a thorn in Hector’s side. Virginia is kidnapped by those thugs from earlier and Hector does everything he can to find out what she was involved in.
He finds a set of compromising photos of Marissa with influential people from all walks of life and begins to understand why Virginia was kidnapped. He knows the general area she’s taken and sets a trap to smoke the kidnappers out.
He gets a hunch about what’s happening at the factory and takes Gallo along with them to investigate. Gallo tells him that the rebar at the factory is highly radioactive and that it’s being used to build a hospital.
His trap works and he saves Virginia, who tells him that Marissa’s boyfriend, Burgos, took the pictures and used them to extort those particular individuals.
With one case solved, he pays a visit to Cuesta. He gets Cuesta talking, who admits to using the radioactive rebar for his profit and asking the corrupt Paniagua to get rid of Hector. Hector then reveals that he’s on the phone with his friend at a radio station and that Cuesta just confessed live on air.
Hector has two more successful cases under his belt and he uses the money he won to set up a foundation for the employees of Delex who were affected by the radioactive materials.
Belascoaran, PI ending explained in detail:
Who does Hector find dead near his office?
Hector is asleep in his office when Gomez approaches him with caution and tells him that there’s a dead Roman in the toilet. Hector confirms that a man dressed in a Roman costume with his throat slit is in the toilet.
They get out of there quickly before deciding that they should get rid of the body. However, when they go back the body is gone and a message for Hector is left behind telling him to let it go along with a plane ticket to Los Angeles for that night.
What does Hector find out about the Roman?
Hector visits the morgue and finds the Roman’s body. The coroner shows him another man who was killed in the same way and Hector tries to find a connection between the two.
He learns that they both met at a cabaret bar so he visits the bar. He comes across a dancer named Kassandra and a stocky, shady character named Captain Mutt.
He follows Mutt but loses sight of him and ends up in Kassandra’s dressing room. He tells her that he’s looking into her friends’ deaths and she tells him that the captain was her husband’s bodyguard, her husband being Zorak, a famous performer.
What did Zorak do?
Hector tries to find out more about Zorak and learns that he was a regular milkman’s son who learnt how to fight, how to perform gymnastics and how to escape tight situations like Houdini. Zorak died when he fell off a helicopter but his wife is sure that it was murder.
When Hector mentions the Zorak in front of his sister, she tells him that Hector was the one responsible for training the Hawks. ‘The Hawks’ was the name game given to a paramilitary group that killed a bunch of student protestors in 1971 in what was dubbed “The Hawk Strike”.
Hector deduces that since Zorak trained the Hawks, he was a loose end who needed to be taken out and now after so many years, they’re taking out the people close to him.
What is the truth behind the murders?
Throughout his investigation, Hector runs into members of the Metro Police trying to take him out. He eventually finds out that they’re headed by Paniagua, who only spent a little time in jail before he got out.
Hector gets enough evidence against the Hawks within the Metro Police and he sneaks into Paniagua’s office to find out why he was involved in the first place. Paniagua tells him that the others planned on asking Hector to investigate Zorak’s death.
Hector says that he was never contacted by them and realizes that his involvement was all a big misunderstanding. He still managed to break the case wide open, making many enemies along the way.
As he’s reading the news about the Hawks scandal at a newspaper stand, a car drives by and opens fire on Hector. He falls to the ground but his fate is left ambiguous.
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