Tales of the Walking Dead – La Doña

By: Kelly Kearney

Highlighting one of the many reasons why you do not break into someone’s home, a hungry and desperate couple hides out in a house confined behind a stone wall and large iron gate until the emotional turmoil of their recent choices pushes them towards the cliff of sanity. In the final episode of this sometimes hit-but mostly miss spin-off series, walkers take a backseat to a haunted house and paranormal parrots–yes, I said “parrot.”  La Doña has everything–ghosts, bleeding walls, chatty birds, and more than a few jump scares to keep you up at night, but what it does not have much of is zombies. If you were hoping for more of those flesh-eating slow ambling menaces that everyone seems to have a different name for, you’ll be disappointed because the dead are more of a nightmare in this episode than a biting threat. That said, as a mini-horror film “La Doña” gets the fear-job done so, so let’s dive in and check out what this whole modern-day “Hansel and Gretel do the apocalypse,” is all about.

THE INTRUDERS

We meet a couple– Idalia (Daniella Pineda) and Eric (Danny Ramirez), walking through the woods searching for a reprieve from the cold. Idalia mentions a house nearby she heard about and rumor has it, it was owned by a woman–a sort of a legend to the locals, who refer to her as La Doña. There is a chance the house is empty because the old woman probably didn’t survive the Fall but if the stories are true, it is protected by a stone wall and iron gate making it the perfect place to settle in for the night. It’s not long before the two break in and find La Doña Alma (Julie Carmen) the owner, alive and well. She invites the uninvited guests in for a bite to eat and a good night’s sleep, but unfortunately, that’s all she’s willing to offer them. The next day she says they have to go. This ticks Eric off and he starts to yell about the woman sending them back out into the dangerous world. His outburst frightens La Doña and she chokes on her dinner, falling down hard and smashing her head on the dining room table and killing her instantly. It looks like the weary travelers just inherited her house and all the food, chicken coops, and safety it can offer. “We never had a place of our own,” Eric says since the couple has been on the run as long as they’ve been together. There is just one problem with their new home, La Doña is haunting Idalia with whispers about how it and the land belong to her. “This is my house” she hears the disembodied voice of the woman, and as the hauntings turn into visual frights of moving shadows, dead hands around her throat, and little metal Jesuses parkouring off the home’s crucifixes like a swarm of bees in attack mode, Idalia can’t take it anymore and wants to leave. Eric disagrees and insists they stay; after all, the house even comes with their very own pet– a little squawking parrot he’s already bonded with. Then there is the old woman’s comfy bed and how he’s been getting the most restful sleep since the world fell apart. They are safe from the dead and have enough food, supplies, and firewood to last years. He just isn’t willing to give that up over a few nightmares–which he assumes this all is. Idalia begrudgingly agrees but the two start to argue again when she begs him not to sleep in La Doña’s bed. It seems disrespectful and since they are now squatting in the dead woman’s home, it might be better not to tempt fate and sleep in one of the other smaller rooms. This is just one of the many arguments the couple has over what is appropriate in the home of the woman you sort of killed. These quarrels seem to be the highlight of their relationship, and at least according to Eric, they are tiresome and repetitive. This is now a world where the living scavenges off the dead in hopes of surviving another day. He doesn’t feel guilty about that and is confused as to why his girlfriend does.

SOMETHING GOES BUMP IN THE NIGHT

Eric might think Idalia is dreaming or imagining the ghost of La Doña but when he starts hearing voices that lead him outside to a familiar woman named Maria (Iris Almario) begging for him to open the gate, Idalia has to swoop in and kill the “sleepwalker” before it kills him first. This confusing moment triggers a flashback to the couple’s backstory where we see the two lovebirds fighting and killing a group of survivors. Idalia may or may not be responsible for killing a Maria in this group who just happened to be the one to tell her about La Doña’s house. That woman’s death prompted the group to attack and it ended in everyone’s death but Idalia’s and Eric’s. Now, every whisper and shadowy figure lurking in the home’s darkened corners might be a reminder of the horrors they unleashed on that group. Perhaps, La Doña is their curse and the longer they ignore her orders to leave the property the more likely they’ll end up joining her in the afterlife. She’s certainly infecting their minds, to the point Eric can’t take the sounds of his parrot pal chirping anymore and winds up breaking the poor animal’s neck while in some hallucinatory trance. They can’t stay in that house but now it might be too late to leave.

Predictably, it is too late because as the episode frantically reaches its climactic end where La Doña unleashes a tornado or paranormal chaos on the couple. The house’s windows break, the foundation shakes and unearths La Doña’s corpse; rising from the grave, or is it? Could this be another hallucination? It’s hard to tell when their realities and nightmares come crashing together, but the old woman orders these two intruders out of her house and she means business! With a flick of her wrist, Idalia and Eric are flung like ragdolls across the floor, landing in a basement mausoleum full of walkers A.K.A. the people they killed on the road. As the dead attack them, Idalia grabs a knife and starts attacking Eric–who in turn stabs her back while screaming, “It’s you!” We can assume the spirit of La Doña has possessed Idalia–who in turn sees Eric as a threat who must be stopped. When the house finally settles we see the couple dead on the floor with no signs of any walkers or home in disarray. It’s unclear what went down in that house, or if anything at all, but one thing is certain–NEVER take a rumored witch’s kindness for granted, especially when you have a past that’s already haunting you.