Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Netflix's One Hundred Years of Solitude as well as the book.
It's nothing short of a miracle that Netflix has made such a perfect adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it did have to split the story into two parts. The Gabriel García Márquez classic was considered impossible to adapt, thanks to its long and complex story, so dividing it up is reasonable and even prudent. It does make us curious to see how the series will go on, however, seeing as the Buendía family ends Part One divided thanks to Colonel Aureliano Buendía's (Claudio Cataño) leading his army to take Macondo from the Conservative Party, and how José Arcadio Buendía's (Diego Vásquez) subsequently brings the town together. So, how will things play out for the Buendías based on what happens in Márquez's novel?
José Arcadio's Death Is the Beginning of the End for the Buendía Dynasty
José Arcadio Buendía is one of the most important people in Macondo's history, along with his wife, Úrsula Iguarán de Buendía (Marleyda Soto). There is still a major conflict engulfing the town, but people are able to forget about it for a while and come together to mourn the death of Macondo's founder. This is the beginning of José Arcadio Buendía's family's decline in Macondo, but it will still grow some more before it vanishes.
Colonel Aureliano Buendía has changed a lot from his youth, growing from a quiet and cultured young man into a full-fledged revolutionary leader who keeps on fighting even after the war itself has ended. After he "liberates" Macondo, Aureliano eventually grows tired of war, so he signs a peace treaty with the Conservative Party and retires, moving back into the Buendía family home. After a while, a woman shows up at their doorstep with a young boy, claiming he's Aureliano's son. This actually happens a whopping seventeen times, and Úrsula baptizes all those boys as "Aureliano," but with their own mothers' surname. Unfortunately, they are all killed eventually, and, not long after, Aureliano grows once again fixated on understanding Melquíades (Moreno Borja) manuscript and working in the lab. He dies while making another of his goldfish.
The last of the second-generation Buendías, Amaranta (Loren Sofía), dies a lonely death, too. After her affair with Aureliano José (Alejandro del Castillo), Colonel Aureliano Buendía's son and her own nephew, she eventually refuses other marriage proposals. As she gets old, she continues to care for the Buendías with Úrsula, until she eventually dies a virgin, despite her fascination for men and simultaneous refusal to be with them. Aureliano José dies much earlier, shot in the back in the war.
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Posts The Twins Usher in a New Era as the Faces of the Buendía Family Close
By the end of Part One, we have already met twins Aureliano Segundo (Thiago Suaza) and José Arcadio Segundo (Emmanuel Suaza), sons of Arcadio (Janer Villareal) and Santa Sofía de la Piedad (Johanna Angulo). They already look like they are trouble, and their legacy is precisely that. Úrsula thinks that they have been switched at birth, because of how José Arcadio actually behaves like the Aurelianos of the family, while Aureliano is like the José Arcadios. After a time jump, they become the new faces of the Buendías in Macondo, along with their younger sister, known as Remedios the Beauty.
José Arcadio is at the center of an important incident at the banana company that runs its business near Macondo. He leads a major workers' strike that ends in a massacre, with him being the sole survivor, but no one in Macondo remembers it or how it happened. Meanwhile, his brother Aureliano is the boisterous and impulsive one. He marries Fernanda del Carpio, who cares for the Buendías after Úrsula finally dies. She is from another town and likes to bolster her supposedly noble origins, and this, along with her rigid ways, makes her a difficult person to deal with. Both twins have affairs with a woman named Petra Cotes, but it's Aureliano who moves in with her, leaving Fernanda and their three children, named José Arcadio, Renata Remedios (nicknamed "Meme"), and Amaranta Úrsula, at the Buendía home:
Meme is the virtuous one, becoming an excellent musician, but conceals a wild side that comes from her father. She meets and falls in love with Mauricio Babilonia, a mechanic for the banana company who is said to be a descendant from the gypsies that used to visit Macondo. He has a sort of ethereal presence, always followed by yellow butterflies. Fernanda obviously dislikes this and arranges to have Mauricio shot as a chicken thief; he survives, but is paralyzed for life and spends the rest of his days in solitude. He and Meme do have a child, however: Aureliano Babilonia, whom we briefly meet in the series' very first scene, and see again when José Arcadio Buendía has a vision before dying. Meme gives birth in a convent, where she spends the rest of her days without uttering a single word.
The End of Macondo and the Buendías Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
When Aureliano Babilonia is born, Fernanda decides to kill him. She has always disapproved of Meme's relationship with Mauricio, and, thus, considers the baby a bastard. She can't bring herself to do it, though, and begrudgingly raises the kid at the Buendía home. The boy eventually becomes his aunt Amaranta Úrsula's best friend, although she doesn't know he is her nephew and thinks he is simply an orphan her mother adopted. Of course, as Aureliano Babilonia grows, he and Amaranta Úrsula fall in love, too. She was supposed to marry Gastón, a Belgian entrepreneur, but he leaves her when she sends a letter telling him about her relationship with Aureliano Babilonia.
Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula become the parents of the last member of the Buendía family line, whom they name Aureliano. They also fulfill the initial prophecy about the Buendías, that relatives falling in love would result in a child being born with a pig's tail. That's exactly what happens to baby Aureliano. Amaranta Úrsula dies in childbirth, leaving a grief-stricken Aureliano Babilonia alone to raise the baby in a now-abandoned Macondo. What's left of the city is now in ruins and overrun by ants. Unable to cope with his grief, he allows baby Aureliano to be devoured by the ants and dedicates his own remaining days to translating Melquíades' mysterious manuscript. When he is finally successful, he learns that the manuscript narrates the complete Buendía saga, from its earliest days until the exact moment Aureliano Babilonia reads the last sentence. Then, Macondo is swallowed into oblivion, and the Buendía dynasty finally comes to an end.
Aureliano Babilonia's death and the disappearance of Macondo conclude the story of One Hundred Years of Solitude, bringing it full-circle in the exploration of its central themes, like cyclical time, the inevitability of fate, and the fragility of human connections. The rise and fall of the Buendía family also mirrors the creation and destruction of Macondo, a town doomed by its inability to break free from patterns of isolation, obsession, and forgotten histories. It's incredible how Netflix was able to perfectly keep Márquez's threads of magical realism and allegory, illustrating how personal and collective memory shape identity (especially Latin American identity) while also approaching humanity's tendency to repeat its mistakes. As the Buendía legacy is lost, the novel also offers a poignant reminder of the transience of life and the enduring power of storytelling to preserve what might otherwise be lost.
Part One of One Hundred Years of Solitude is streaming on Netflix.
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10 10 One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024) DramaFantasyHistory
One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024): Based on Gabriel García Márquez's acclaimed novel, the series chronicles the multi-generational story of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo. As magical realism intertwines with historical events, the family's triumphs and tragedies reflect broader themes of love, power, and destiny.
Release Date December 11, 2024 Cast Eduardo De Los Reyes , Claudio Cataño , Jerónimo Barón , Marco González , Leonardo Soto , Susana Morales , Ella Becerra , Moreno Borja , Carlos Suárez , Santiago Vasquez Main Genre Fantasy Streaming Service(s) Netflix Release Window 2024
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