The Wait (La espera, 2024) Movie Ending Explained: What Does Eladio Discover at Don Francisco’s House?

F.Javier Gutierrez’s The Wait (La espera, 2024) is a neo-Western that isn’t content to be just that. The director has several things on his mind. It’s always intriguing to see an artist push at the tropes but there’s equal risk in the venture. Is the director confident to thread together ambitious, restless ideas within the folds of the Western and reframe them on exciting, bold terms? Therein lies the key.

The film hobbles pace by misreading the temperature of a crafty slow-burn. The psychological depth is missing, depriving the film of the complexity that underpins its atmospheric shifts toward horror and unease. Neither is the fascist-ruled setting of Spain in the 90s congruous to establishing a sense of the world the character inhabits. The film is also emotionally one-note.

It drops us into the deeper end of emotional damage without building a due affiliation. There’s deceit, revelations, and grief packed into the fabric of the narrative yet all these just slump into a loose, baggy mess. A bereaved father coming to terms with the greed that undoes him is the film’s central emotional tenet. It’s palpably a potent one but what we encounter in the film is an unconvincing, flat rendition of loss.

The Wait (La espera, 2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

The protagonist of “The Wait” is a weakly conceived, lackluster creation. We are asked to stick to his side throughout as we are subject to his grotesque nightmares and pangs of guilt. But the base of the character is so sketchy and vapid that none of the disquieting elements that increasingly take center stage in the film command persuasiveness and texture. As a result, the emotional and mental circumstance of the character rarely comes out with vividness and force.

The story is an exploration of greed, avarice, and its bottomless consequences. What happens when one falls into its trap and thinks he can put his relationship(s) on trial if it appeases his greed? The film is a slow, deliberate, measured unraveling of the horrors that await once one ignores the warnings. It’s about shutting oneself so far beyond the repercussions of one’s deeds or at least that’s how one projects it. But there’s always a price to be paid, personal demons to be confronted. Whether they all can be exorcised remains the abiding question.

The film’s central character is Eladio (Victor Clavijo). He lives with his wife, Marcia (Ruth Diaz), and his son, Floren (Moises Ruiz) in the Andalusian countryside. It has all the trappings of a quiet, unobtrusive existence except there are bloody stakes involved in the hunting profession he is invested in. Eladio moved to the mountainous side after getting the position of a hunt watcher and ranch keeper at the sprawling estate of Don Francisco (Manuel Moron).

Eladio passes along the hunting lesson to his son, who exults in it given his young age. Floren gets a kick from it. Marcia is wary of it, though. She had never wanted to move from their old town even if the money was less and uncertain. Eladio choosing the monied route pays the path for disaster, especially since he can’t resist eyeing how to get more. He gets caught up in chasing that. Therein the road clears up for his collapse.

What does Floren’s death lead to?

The Wait (La espera, 2024) ending — A still from *The Wait* *(La Espera*, 2024).

Floren doesn’t hate hunting but he also envisages a life outside it, like a passion to be a vet as his mother was. It is his father who constricts his imagination. One of the village leaders, Don Carlos, arrives at Eladio offering the prospect of hunting with thirteen stands instead of the usual ten. It’d increase the chances for a solid shot by widening all probable angles, he argues. But there’s also the risk of a stray bullet. Eladio is conflicted since his son would be involved. He doesn’t want to endanger Floren’s life but Marcia pushes him as the offer brings substantive money which he needs.

The worst fear comes true. Floren is hit by a stray bullet and dies. After that, circumstances snowball quickly into more death and guilt. Could Marcia have also been intimately involved with Don Carlos so that the offer came their way? Guilt eats into the marrow of the couple. Marcia hangs herself from a tree in the forest. Eladio doesn’t initially suffer from contrition over the role he plays in his son’s death, ladling it all on Don Carlos. Vengeance grabs him and he kills Don Carlos. Eladio tries to escape the recognition of his own skin in the game for the longest time. Sooner or later, it does catch up with him.

While burying Carlos, Eladio chances across a box. It contains a goat’s head, a leg cast, and a comb. Quickly, horrific things happen. His dog turns violent. He is struck by terrible nightmares plunging him in guilt. One day, he stumbles across a weird bundle cooped within the drainage when he tries to retrieve a ring that slips. It bears his clothes as well as those of his son and wife. Meanwhile, Don Francisco also fires him, compounding his misery. It is because he broke the deal by secretly partnering with Don Carlos.

The Wait (La espera, 2024) Movie Ending Explained:

What does Eladio discover at Don Francisco’s house?

Eladio lands at Don Francisco’s house, seeking clarity and another chance at keeping his job. If he doesn’t have it, his life stands in greater peril. He’d have nothing. At the house, the final cruel streak of discoveries piles on Eladio. He finds pictures of several families, including one of a boy with his leg in a cast. A horrified, crushing realization hits him. Don Francisco knew all along about the sheer danger of the thirteen stands.

But Francisco chose to act innocent and unsuspecting, preparing himself for an opportunity to dispose of Eladio and his family. Even then, Eladio had quite some agency and control in determining the course of his life. He chose greed, wanting more, which became the trigger for his downfall. Like him, many other families had been wiped out in the pursuit of more lucre. The film ends with Eladio’s complete negation. Only his ‘friends’ Saulo and Don Francisco remain, continuing the cycle of damage and course correction.