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etflix’s The Gardener is a Spanish-language limited series that unspools like a slow-burning thriller wrapped in poetic melancholy. Set against the lush, rain-soaked landscapes of Galicia, it tells the story of Elmer, a young gardener who is also a contract killer—dutiful, efficient and emotionally anesthetised. But when he is tasked with killing Violeta, a quiet woman with her own traumas, something shifts. The show’s six episodes explore themes of moral conflict, maternal control and the burden of living a double life, offering a quietly explosive character study rather than a loud action spectacle.
At first glance, Elmer (Álvaro Rico) seems to embody calm. He is a man whose life revolves around plants, soil and silence. Beneath that surface lies a man trained to kill at the request of his domineering mother, known only as La China. Cecilia Suárez plays her with a bone-chilling blend of maternal concern and authoritarian menace. It is in this psychological tug-of-war that The Gardener finds its depth: Elmer is caught between nurture and nature, love and duty, past and possibility.
Each episode is titled like a lesson in botany: Seed Germination; Pruning Calendar, Decomposition Island. These titles metaphorically trace Elmer’s emotional journey. As Violeta (Catalina Sopelana) slowly comes into his life, she becomes the catalyst for his inner germination. Where Elmer once pruned his emotions with surgical precision, Violeta makes him pause, reflect and, ultimately, question everything he has ever done.
Director Mikel Rueda uses silence and natural sound masterfully. There are long stretches where nothing is said, just the crunch of gravel underfoot or the rustling of wind through leaves. It is in these spaces that the tension builds, often more effectively than any gunfight. The landscape is as much a character as any of the humans: grey skies, dripping foliage and mossy stone walls reflect Elmer’s suffocating world. Galicia is not just a setting—it is a mood, a metaphor for Elmer’s inner storm.
Where Elmer once pruned his emotions with surgical precision, Violeta makes him pause, reflect and, ultimately, question everything he has ever done.
Psychologically, The Gardener explores detachment and dissociation. Elmer’s early killings are mechanical and ritualistic. But as he grows close to Violeta, guilt seeps in like water through cracked concrete. He begins to disobey orders, skip deadlines and question La China’s motives. This is not just about falling in love; it is about recovering a lost self. Trauma, after all, is not always about what was done to you, it is also about what you were forced to become.
The mother-son dynamic is particularly haunting. La China’s control over Elmer borders on cult-like; she has raised him in isolation, trained him as her weapon and uses maternal affection as a leash. It is a disturbing take on codependency and enmeshment, echoing classic Freudian tropes modernised through a crime-noir lens. When Elmer starts defying her, the series asks a deep question: can love exist without freedom?
Violeta, too, is not just a love interest. She is a woman with grief, secrets and the quiet strength of someone who has learnt to survive by making herself small. The chemistry between her and Elmer is slow and restrained, making it feel all the more real. They are both fractured souls drawn to each other not through passion, but through recognition. They see in each other the same ache, the same loneliness.
The Gardener does not reinvent the crime genre, but it elevates it by focusing on what lies beneath the violence. It is about memory, guilt, identity and the quiet hope that something new can grow from soil long poisoned.
By the time the final episode, titled Pruning Calendar, arrives, the metaphor has reached full bloom. Elmer must make a final cut, not of a plant, but of his own ties to the world that has shaped him. Without spoiling the climax, the ending is both tragic and liberating, leaving viewers with the uneasy question of whether healing is ever fully possible for someone raised in blood.
The Gardener does not reinvent the crime genre, but it elevates it by focusing on what lies beneath the violence. It is about memory, guilt, identity and the quiet hope that something new can grow from soil long poisoned. It is not for everyone—those expecting fast-paced action may find its rhythm too meditative—but for fans of psychological thrillers, it offers a richly layered, emotionally resonant narrative.
In a media landscape filled with noise, The Gardener is a whisper that lingers. It invites one to sit in the silence, to listen to the wind and to ask what kind of person one would become if one’s roots were never their own.
The writer has adegree in psychology with a minor in mass communication. She can be reached at ukmaryam2gmail.com