There is a moment in Women in Blue when you realize these women have finally stopped being the novelty. The powder-blue uniforms are no longer the story. Nobody is gawking quite as much at the idea of women becoming police officers in 1970s Mexico City. The novelty has worn off, which is good, because now the show can get down to the really ugly stuff: corruption, political violence, institutional rot, revenge, murder and the uncomfortable question of what happens when the people sworn to uphold the law are the same people who keep breaking it.
Season two picks up in June 1971, in the aftermath of the student massacre, and the four women at the center of the story have all changed. María (Bárbara Mori) has been promoted to lieutenant, which sounds like progress until you remember that she is still working inside a police department run by men who don't exactly see women as equals. Valentina (Natalia Téllez) is carrying the psychological wreckage of what happened to her in season one, and the anger has turned her increasingly reckless. Gabina (Amorita Rasgado) is caught between the job and her family, particularly her father Alfonso Herrera and her brothers Gilberto and Gerardo. Ángeles (Ximena Sariñana) remains the quiet one, the observer, the woman who notices things everyone else misses. Apple TV describes the season as a fight between the rules María has sworn to uphold and her increasingly relentless pursuit of the truth, and that conflict pretty much becomes the operating system for the entire season.
And then somebody starts killing people.
The first victim is Lucio Lima, a gay student activist whose body is discovered in horrifying condition. He has been beaten and mutilated, with two fingers removed as trophies. The police response is exactly what you might expect from a corrupt institution in which homophobia is practically part of the uniform: indifference, suspicion and an eagerness to find a convenient suspect rather than confront what is actually happening. Mauricio becomes one of the early suspects, but the case immediately begins expanding beyond one murder. A priest is strangled inside a church, and suddenly there is a pattern. Someone isn't simply killing people. Someone is making a statement.
That someone becomes known as the Executioner, and the show's central mystery starts turning into something considerably more interesting than a standard serial-killer hunt. The victims have connections to the police and to the student massacre, and the deeper María, Valentina, Gabina and Ángeles dig, the more obvious it becomes that the killer's anger isn't coming out of nowhere. There are crimes buried inside the institution, and there are people who have spent years assuming nobody would ever dig them up.
The third episode, “Quintanilla,” pushes the women directly into the aftermath of the student massacre. The surviving student activists are interrogated, and it quickly becomes clear that at least one of them is hiding something. Damian is particularly important because he knows more than he initially admits, and the police methods used to extract information are a reminder that the line between investigating violence and committing it is almost nonexistent inside this department. The Azules are supposed to be detectives, but they are working among men who have spent years treating torture, intimidation and brutality as perfectly legitimate investigative tools. The women aren't just trying to solve a murder. They're trying to figure out whether they can remain cops without becoming the kind of cops they're investigating.
That gets even uglier in “Arizmendi.” The detectives become convinced they've identified the person responsible for killing dirty cops, but the Azules aren't buying it. Damian insists he's innocent, and his alibi checks out. Meanwhile, the male detectives continue using illegal and violent tactics because apparently the idea of evidence remains a revolutionary concept. Gerardo eventually intervenes, which becomes another reminder that Gabina's family is deeply entangled with the institution she's trying to navigate. María's personal life is also changing, particularly her increasingly complicated relationship with Alejandro (Leonardo Sbaraglia), while Octavio Romandía (Miguel Rodarte) enters her life and offers the possibility of something that doesn't feel quite as suffocating.
Then comes “Lozano,” and the season really starts pouring gasoline on the fire.
Another detective disappears, and fear spreads through the department. The missing man, Lozano, turns out to be exactly the sort of person the Executioner would want to find: dirty, compromised and carrying secrets. The Azules discover that Lozano wasn't merely a crooked cop; he was part of the larger machinery of corruption surrounding them. Then the Executioner kills him, and the whole thing becomes a public spectacle when Lozano's confession is broadcast during a movie premiere attended by María. It is one of the season's nastiest bits of television because the confession doesn't simply expose Lozano. It drags Valentina's personal life into the case by revealing information about the murder of the man she loved, while also pointing toward another possible suspect. Even the director at the premiere looks nervous enough to know something is terribly wrong and bails before the confession is finished.
This is where Women in Blue gets particularly good at understanding that a serial killer story doesn't have to be about the killer. The Executioner is almost a virus moving through the police department, exposing everything that was already rotten. Every murder forces the women to ask the same question: Are they hunting a monster, or are they watching someone punish monsters the police themselves have protected?
The answer, naturally, is considerably messier.
By episode six, “Gilberto,” anti-police sentiment is growing after the Executioner's latest victims. That's a particularly nasty position for the Azules because they're caught on both sides of the divide. They're police officers, but they're also investigating police officers. They wear the same uniforms as the people the public increasingly distrusts. They walk into rooms carrying the institutional baggage of every corrupt cop who came before them. The series understands that changing who wears the uniform doesn't magically change what the uniform represents.
And then “Gerardo” puts the personal relationships under even more pressure. Gerardo is forced into a desperate decision that threatens the friendship between Gabina and Valentina. It's the kind of development that makes the season's larger conspiracy matter because these aren't simply four detectives moving through a procedural plot. They're friends, coworkers, daughters, wives and sisters, and every institutional decision eventually finds its way into their personal lives. Gabina's relationship with Valentina is especially important because the friendship between these women has always been one of the show's emotional engines. When that friendship starts cracking, the murder investigation suddenly feels a lot more dangerous.
That's really the trick Women in Blue has pulled off in its second season. The murder mystery is compelling, but the real story is the women trying to survive inside a system that keeps demanding compromises from them. María has more authority now, but that authority comes with a bigger target on her back. Valentina is becoming harder to control because the trauma she carries has turned into fury. Gabina is discovering that family loyalty and professional loyalty can be mutually destructive. Ángeles continues to operate with a quieter intelligence, picking up the details that everyone else overlooks.
The show is also smart enough not to pretend that these women are automatically better cops simply because they're women. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes they're reckless. Sometimes they make decisions that put other people in danger. The difference is that they are increasingly conscious of the machinery they're operating inside. They're beginning to understand that corruption isn't one bad cop taking a bribe in a dark alley. It's a culture. It's a network. It's people protecting other people because exposing the truth would threaten careers, families, reputations and power.
That makes the Executioner an especially effective antagonist. The character is terrifying, but there is also a perverse logic to the killings, and that creates the show's biggest moral problem. If the police have spent years protecting murderers and torturers, what happens when someone decides to punish those people outside the law? The women can't endorse the killings. They're cops. But the more they learn about the victims, the harder it becomes to dismiss the anger driving the person behind them.
Which leaves Women in Blue in a deliciously nasty place heading into its finale. The season has taken the relatively straightforward premise of four women becoming police officers and turned it into a story about what happens when the institution itself becomes the crime scene. Apple TV's eighth episode, “Goyo,” is scheduled for September 30 and promises the season finale, with the Azules racing to connect the remaining pieces before the Executioner strikes again.
The uniforms are still powder blue. The world around them is getting darker. And María, Valentina, Gabina and Ángeles are finally beginning to understand that becoming cops was the easy part. Figuring out what kind of cops they want to be? That's the real crime story.