Netflix’s Spectros presented audiences with a unique take on spectral story-telling, adding Japanese ghost lore and Brazilian witchcraft to the classic “dead-among-the-living” storyline.
Spectros follows a group of teens who get their hands on a haunted artifact: a doll containing the ashes that serve as the bridge between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Their neighborhood, Liberdade, has been overrun by ghosts brought back by a necromancer who will do anything to get his hands on the doll and gain control over the dead.
The ghosts in Spectros are both plot-relevant characters and part of the textured background. Among the dead are the ghosts of a drug addict who returns as a beggar, the ghost of an indigenous man telling people to leave his land, two soldiers demanding payment for their services, a missionary declaring the word of God, Brazilian historic figure Chaguinhas, and a young Japanese boy who died in an interment camp during World War II. With such a variety of ghosts, viewers might wonder exactly how they’ve all ended up haunting Liberdade and what the show is trying to say through this device.
Netflix’s Spectros: Liberdade Is Haunted Because It Is Built On A Gravesite
From a literal standpoint, the ghosts are returning because they are being summoned by a necromancer. They accrue in Liberdade because the neighborhood is built on the remains of São Paolo’s first cemetery. Audiences learn from a news anchor in the show’s finale that the neighborhood has been declared an archeological site containing the graves of “socially-marginalized citizens”, with seven skeletons dating back to the slavery era. It plays into the established precedent in horror that rebuilding upon sacred burial sites to cause ghosts to appear.
Netflix’s Spectros: The Ghosts Represent A Troubled Past
Many of the ghosts who return are those who society failed the most: slaves, the indigenous population, people struggling with addiction. Ghosts are often used to represent the past, a physical reminder of what once was. In Spectros, ghosts represent Brazil’s troubled past of colonialism, slavery, internment camps, and a disregard for the impoverished. The ghosts are a reminder of the many problematic eras of the country, a rejection of nostalgic past. It is meaningful, then, that the ghosts appear in Liberdade, which translates as freedom. People who in life were not free are finally freed in death, serving as a permanent reminder of what the present has been built on.
Ghosts are also used to represent the troubled pasts of individual characters. Pardal makes his living working alongside Chinese gangs. Although he does so to support himself and his brother financially, it is a point of shame for him. When his two contacts in the Chinese gang die and return as ghosts, they chase him down, very literally forcing him to confront the consequences of his past choices. Pardal’s brother, Léo, becomes involved investigating the ghosts while searching for the mother who abandoned him some time ago. When he finally does manage to track her down in the finale, she is a ghost, confirming his fear that she is permanently gone. She offers to stay forever, but he realizes he has to let her go. He can’t keep chasing ghosts.
However, with the finale confirming that the land of the living and the land of the dead now permanently overlap, Spectros allows its ghost characters to remain and serve as a reminder that neither people nor countries can escape the ghosts of their past either.
Next: What To Expect From Spectros Season 2
