Netflix’s Eva Lasting (La Primera Vez) follows a group of high-on-hormones teenagers in an all-boys high school witnessing their lives turn upside down when a girl arrives at their school.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
It’s 1976 and at the all-boys José María Root District School in Botogá, Colombia, all hell breaks loose when the first-ever girl gets enrolled, inviting perpetual gazes from hormonal, awkward, and unruly boys.
Eva makes herself known pretty quickly and introduces herself to Camilo, and the rest of his group. While all the other boys are instantly smitten by the free-spirited and incredibly witty girl, none of them are as in love with her as Camilo.
Meanwhile, Salcedo, the bully of the group, is not so fond of the new girl whose presence challenges his authority in more ways than one. However, he tags along with the group escapades nonetheless.
Eva takes over during the classes, and during the extracurricular activities, helping the boys defy some of their awkwardness and inexperience when it comes to sexual confidence and confidence in general.
Camilo soon becomes Eva’s best friend at the school, and while others also try their best to woo her, it’s he who gels with her the best, most of all because of his interest in literature as well.
Their friendship is marked by a constant recommendation of new books from Eva to Camilo, books that always fit the concurrent context of the circumstances surrounding them and the conflicts he contends with.
However, due to his lack of game and confidence, he can’t confess his love to her while opportunities come and go and his timing remains awful. In the meantime, he’s also onto the secrets that she’s keeping from him and everyone else.
He keeps digging into her secrets and the problems with her dad and after many failures, he learns what’s wrong. He also gets into a brief sexual fling with Salcedo’s sister to make Eva jealous, but he can only ever manage to hurt Luisa and prolong his romance with Eva.
Conflicts and issues persist within the group and they have to bid one of their own farewells after a huge uproar threatens two of the boys’ social standing and even freedom due to their sexual orientation.
Camilo and Eva finally begin their romance but the latter’s problems after her father’s arrest spiral out of control. Eva Lasting ends with the two drifting apart against their wishes and without ever saying a proper goodbye, while Camilo receives another troubling news.
Eva Lasting ending explained in detail:
What is Eva’s secret?
Eva belongs to a wealthy family. Her father, Jorge Eduardo Samper, is a big Colombian businessman, who eventually gets arrested for big-scale money laundering in Spain.
Eva knew of her father’s culpability and had separated from him for that very reason. This is the very reason she’d keep her identity from Camilo and the rest of the boys.
Even later on, after revealing that she comes from a wealthy family, she’d not disclose the identity of her father as she was also trying to hide his shady activities even if she obviously opposed it.
Throughout most of the latter half of Eva Lasting, Camilo works hard to find Eva’s secret, and with bits and pieces over a course of sightings and opportunities, he’s very close to the truth but it’s only when Jorge’s arrest makes it to the newspaper, that he gets the bulb over his dead switched on.
What happens to Eva and Camilo’s relationship?
Eva and Camilo finally see the romantic sparks fly between them after the latter accompanies Eva in the robbery of grade reports from school. He later takes the blame for the firearm that the security guard caught a glimpse of.
However, getting into trouble for Eva lands Camilo in more trouble as his father grounds him. When his punishment ends, Eva’s father gets arrested and she also starts running from the DEA officers who want to deport her to her aunt in the USA.
To prevent that from happening, Camilo flees from home and escapes with Eva to one of her lavish houses that her father had bought for vacations. They turn the steam up and also the risks as they steal food from a supermarket, attracting the authorities to them.
Camilo then asks his buddies for help in hiding Eva at their homes one by one. However, as Salcedo’s mom finds out about her, she calls the police who take her away. Camilo later learns that she’s been deported to the USA, leaving him another book and a photo of herself, as Eva Lasting concludes its first season.
What does Luisa tell Camilo?
Camilo can’t cope with the distance that has parted him away from the love he so desperately and relentlessly tried to be with all this time. He plans to go to America immediately and his father tries to talk him out of it.
While he’s rambling on about how he’ll get to America and track Eva down, he receives a call. This call is from none other than Luisa, who delivers him a great shock.
She thinks she’s pregnant and the likeliest case pertains to the possibility of Camilo being the father. They had sex earlier in Eva Lasting before the two went through a messy breakup because of Camilo’s cowardly actions.
What happens to Pabón?
Pabón is gay, and Salcedo is portrayed as a closeted gay person mostly, although he claims to be into “chicks” until the end of Eva Lasting. He’s also shown to be hurt when Camilo tells him that Eva only sees them all as her brothers. So it might very well be that he’s bisexual.
In Eva Lasting episode 10, after the party goes awry at Eva’s house, the group gets high on marijuana. While Eva asks for some alone time after the call with her father, Camilo leaves her alone and as he walks into the kitchen, he sees Pabón fellating Salcedo.
He shares what he saw with Eva, but Quiñones, another bully at the school, ends up overhearing them. The boys instantly start deriding and bullying Salcedo and Pabón for being homosexual, while Salcedo freaks out, denying these allegations, eventually taking all his anger out on Pabón.
During the 70s in Colombia, homosexuality was a criminal offense so the case reaches the principal’s office. After a parent-teacher meeting, where Camilo’s mother defends Pabón’s character (after Camilo defends him at the dinner table the night before that), Pabón’s allowed to resume school but also gets psychological treatment.
However, his mother decides that they will move away from the area altogether. Camilo, who before scapegoated Pabón at Salcedo’s request, decides to set the record straight and tell the whole truth, with even Salcedo giving him a green light.
However, Pabón stops him from telling the truth because he loves Salcedo and only wishes the worst to impact himself, instead of both himself and Salcedo. Episode 11 of Eva Lasting sees Pabón taking one for the team, and Salcedo, and bids everyone a tearful farewell.
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