SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about the season 2 finale of Mayans M.C.
A tale of matricide, MC’s and bad men: The second season finale of Mayans M.C. delivered a gut punch for fans of the female cast as we witnessed the indoctrination of EZ Reyes (JD Pardo) into the brotherhood.
Episode writer Kurt Sutter gave us a cliffhanging “oops” as the Mayans open fire on an abuelita’s birthday party in a twisty revenge ploy, but the Mayans accidentally mowed down a Sons of Anarchy member who was attending the fiesta. Chibs will not be pleased.
But fans are curious to the foreshadowing nature of the titles of the episodes, and this one, titled Hunahpu, poetically bookended the premiere of the season two run titled Xbalanqu.
What does Hunahpu mean?
Hun Hunahpu is the father of the mythological Maya hero twins Head-Apuor (or just plain old Hunahpu) and Xbalanque. The latter twin was the title of the first episode of the season, so the ties define how the nature of the brotherhood between EZ (Pardo) and Angel (Clayton Cardenas) has now never been more solid.
So too is the emergence of their father, Felipe Reyes (Edward James Olmos) as an order-barking patriarch and less a mild-mannered butcher who had his sons take over the dispatching of Dita Galindo karma death duties.
It made sense to name the finale for the other twin brother. This was EZ’s submitting to the life of crime and murder and Angel’s intense regrets for his smart younger brother that could have been successful in the straight-arrow world, yet he is happy they have never been more close or connected.
As we mentioned earlier, Mayans M.C. is also a tough place to be a mother, with Marisol, Dita and Coco’s crazy mother all killed by violent means. Adelita has had her newborn son ripped from her embrace by Potter, the mustache-swirling Fed who has taken the term “idiosyncratic” to stratospheric heights.
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The Maya myths of these Hero Twins took them from demi-gods to trickster status. The twins’ father and uncle were also twins, and “great ball players” according to HistoryOnTheNet. Legend has it that Death Lords “tricked them and then killed them in sacrifice.”
But through magic the decapitated head of Hun Hunahpu managed to father the aforementioned twins with Xquic, a goddess of Xibalba. And in turn she birthed the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
The implications for Season 3 of Mayans M.C.
The truce between the other Mayans chapters, Sons of Anarchy and Palo and the VM are now all in play and uncertain, as is the fate of Angel and Adelita’s (Carla Baratta) newborn son who Potter gleefully commiserated with Angel as payback for the extortion play the two brothers pulled on him threatening to expose his lovechild with a Latina former witness, which would have upended his career.
And all of this will be done without Kurt Sutter at the storyboard for Season 3 which means that the visceral punches and language and situations are also going to be tweaked with a different set of eyeballs and brains, meaning … we are not sure.
What is apparent is that when Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) and the SOA gang showed up a few clicks back, it energized the story 100 percent and was a stark reminder of how much better SOA was and how memorable the characters were than the current 1 percenter iteration.
Not to take away from the strongest performers for this season which were Cardenas, Olmos, Michael Irby (Bishop) and Potter (McKinnon).
Here’s hoping season three will end the matricide loop and develop a compelling female character we can sink our teeth into on par with SOA’s Gemma or Tara.