'Locked Up' aka 'Vis-a-Vis: El Oasis' Ending Explained: Why did Zulema give the diamonds away to Cepo?
Spoilers for 'Locked Up' Season 5 or 'Vis-a-Vis: El Oasis'
At one point in the fifth and final season, slash spin-off of 'Locked up' or 'Vis-a-Vis', titled 'El Oasis', Macarena (Maggie Civantos) and Zulema (Najwa Nimri) call their relationship a 'marriage of convenience'. Nobody gets out, all relationships end poorly, so convenience was the only priority. Towards the end, however, Zulema admits all her life she has been running because there's been no home to feel safe and peaceful at. Except for the few days she spent living with Macarena in the trailer, right before their lives go up in flames. And this is reason enough to believe Zulema parted with the diamonds in Cepo's (Lucas Ferraro) custody all because of love.
The end of the elaborate dragged out final season sees Zulema give in to the drug cartel after ensuing war with them, by trying to orchestrate a heist at the druglord Ramala's (David Ostrosky) daughter's wedding. They had taken the daughter hostage, and their prisoner swap - Kati for Macarena - goes wrong when Kati confronts Ramala about killing her lover/stepbrother and then shoots herself in the throat. An enraged Ramala wages war on the former convicts and their accomplices and instructs not a single soul should be alive. The shootout goes awry when Macarena, Zulema, and the rest wipe all of Ramala's gang out and escape, on foot and otherwise.
Macarena and Zulema are yet to make it to the getaway helicopter when Ramala's remaining men gather around and the latter stays behind to stop them while the other one escapes. Zulema dies in the shoot out, facing her opponents like the undaunted spirit she is, for a second there we totally forget about the diamonds that she stole from Katy's tiara and was carrying on herself.
It is only in the epilogue that we see Cepo - the hotel's differently-abled new owner, aka doctor Sandoval's younger brother, chew into his snack and bite on a diamond. It reminds us of the last time Zulema and Cepo were in that secret surveillance room where Ama and Sandoval would spy on their lodgers from. Right before the shootout between Zulema and co. and Ramala's men, she inducts Cepo into the gang and asks him to hand her his snack pack for a bit. It is at that moment that Zulema must have slipped the diamonds to Cepo, and not her trusted partner in crime and crisis - Macarena.
Macarena was trying to get out of it all. She wanted out of the robbery life and was also pregnant - all the more reason for her to want things differently. While the epilogue doesn't see her going back to her family, it does see her giving birth to a healthy child. It's likely that Zulema saw Cepo's evident feelings for Macarena and trusted him enough to take care of her. The diamonds lying with him means Macarena could come back for them any time. Perhaps it was a joint plan all along. Or Cepo, seeing some sense in it all, could also show up at Macarena's to help aid her come out of the sinkhole she has dug herself. It was all for love, for Zulema. A very requited, although sometimes hesitant and in denial feeling of love.
'Locked Up' or 'Vis-a-vis: El Oasis' is available for streaming from July 31, only on Netflix.
