Series / Águila Roja

A ninja in the Spanish Golden Age? Oh well, why not?

Águila Roja (Red Eagle) is a Spanish live action TV show about a masked hero who fights injustice in Spain, in the 17th Century. Best known for its use of Ninja motifs, the show is (according to an article in the Spanish branch of Wikipedia) the most watched show in Spain's history, and also the most costly, with a budget of almost one million euros per episode.

The series tells the story of Gonzalo de Montalvo, a man who (after being forced into exile to the Far East) learns Ninja-like skills, and then returns to Spain - only to find his wife murdered by a conspiracy known as "La Logia" ("The Lodge"). Adopting the identity of Águila Roja, he fights the Sheriff Hernán Mejías, and investigates the Lodge's plans with the help of his mentor and father figure Agustín, and his servant and best friend, Sátur, a lovable scoundrel who adds a touch of humor to the otherwise dead-straight show - all while raising his young son, Alonso, who is unaware that his father is a hero. Other main characters include Hernán's Love Interest, Marchioness Lucrecia, and her young son Nuño; Gonzalo's sister-in-law, Margarita; Gonzalo's friends Cipri, Catalina, Inés and Floro; Alonso's friends Gabi and Murillo; the doctor, Juan; Cardinal Mendoza and his niece Irene; and the King of Spain.

It is eventually revealed that La Logia wants to kill the King, that Hernán is actually Gonzalo's brother, and that the King himself is their father. Later on we learn that Irene is Gonzalo and Hernán's sister and that Agustín saved Gonzalo, Hernán and their mother -who turns out to be alive- from Cardinal Mendoza as he wanted Agustín to kill them all.

The series ran for nine seasons between 2009 and 2016 and got a movie adaptation that first aired in April 2011. However, since the show was produced by the public TV channel Radio Televisión Española, it fell victim of the severe budget cuts by Mariano Rajoy's government in early 2012, and was on hiatus until May 2013, when its 5th season began.

Tropes in Águila Roja:

• Aborted Arc: Actually several, but most blatantly the Gordillo family arc at the last season. It genuinely appears to have been originally written for a longer season, as both their characters and their interactions with Lucrecia were fleshed out week after week only for the arc to end (with the series's finale) without even an onscreen conclusion.
• Actor Allusion:
  • The guy who plays Pedro, actor and stuntman Álex Navarro, previously played a character named Pedro in the short-lived series La Chica de Ayer.
  • Pepe Carabias is famous for his career as a comedian playing a Roma patriarch named "El Papa" ("The Father"). In Águila Roja, he plays the literal father of a character.
• Age Lift: Downplayed. King Philip IV is portrayed as an elderly gentleman whose actor, Xabier Elorriaga, was in his sixties at the time of the series. However, in real life Philip died exactly at 60, despite the series is not set at the end of his reign, and never looked as old as Elorriaga does.
• An Arm and a Leg: Downplayed. Águila's katana cuts limbs like a hot knife through butter, and it does cripple some mook from time to time, but it much rarer than what you would expect.
• All Men Are Perverts: Many times, given that it's a Spanish production.
• All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Agustín fits, presumably because he trained in Asia like Gonzalo. Also, one episode features some infanticide monks who fight with Daggers Akimbo.
• All Take and No Give: Hernán and Lucrecia's relationship certainly fits the trope, with Hernán being the Giver and Lucrecia the Taker.
• Amicable Exes: Gonzalo and Margarita, Hernán and Lucrecia, Gonzalo and Lucrecia and Sátur and Estuarda (well, this last one not so much).
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The show clearly doesn't try to use a proper 17th century Spanish language, and proof of it is that it contains an unapologetical lot of popular expressions from the 2010s, when it was produced.
  • Characters mention gilettes and mops, tools that were invented two or three centuries later. Also, after being buried alive, Alonso produces a very modern lighter.
  • The name "Laura" only started being used in the 19th century.
  • One of the sound effects for the muskets appears to be the same sound effect for the Sniper Rifle on Halo.
  • An episode shows a physician working for Hernán using what appears to be a 21st century intravenous needle to administrate Truth Serums to Gonzalo.
  • The tiled room in which the Fake Águila traps both Gonzalo and Sátur is not terribly anachronistic per se (it is a bit, though), but the fact that it is brightly lit without a discernible source of light makes it look like it is equipped with electric light.
• Anti-Villain: Hernán and Lucrecia (both of them Type I/Type II/Type III)
• Anyone Can Die: The number of people killed off in the series is surprisingly high and includes several children, not to count the sheer amount of mooks who are routinely dispatched by Águila.
• Arch-Enemy: Hernán is this for Gonzalo/Águila Roja until he finds out that Hernán is his brother in the Season 1 finale. They are still pretty much enemies in the next seasons, but after The Reveal, Gonzalo starts to care for him and will go to any length to save his life.
• Armoured Closet Gay:
  • Soledad.
  • The High Inquisitor, who is portrayed as the kind of Christian bigot only an inquisitor can be, is implied to be homosexual when Hernán and Lucrecia discover a hostler "suspiciously" visiting him in his bed and doing something off-screen which makes Lucrecia of all people blush.
  • Lucrecia nearly marries a gay man in Season 5. There also appear several other homosexual minor characters over the seasons, all of them understandably in the closet.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Played many times, to the extent that Juan is the only unambiguous exception.
• Artistic License – Biology: Sátur's horribly broken leg would take much more than two weeks for him to walk again. In fact, at the time a wound like that would have left him limping for the rest of his life, if he was lucky enough not to die due to a probable septicemia. There are lots of other examples of this throughout the show.
• Artistic License – Geography: The city in which the series takes place seems to be placed near Madrid (or possibly to be Madrid), but it's usual for the characters to travel to remote regions of Spain in less of a day. In real life, not even changing horses from post to post would allow them to travel so freaking fast.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The episode about the African slave has multiple characters exhibit casually traits of scientific racism (believing the slave is a monkey, an inferior being, and even a source of diseases), something that would only become really popular the following century and never caught on to a great extent in the Spanish Empire, where the true differential factors were usually religion, nobility, money, and education, not race.
  • The Tercios song showcased in the series includes the term "empire" to refer to the Spanish Empire. In reality, "Spanish Empire" is a very posterior term that is mostly an exonym. The Hispanic Monarchy didn't consider itself an empire (only Charles V carried the title of emperor, and it was not due to his rule of Spain, but from his ascendance from the Holy Roman Empire) and would haven't used such word in an official context.
  • As usual in media, the series presents a murderous, tyrannical Spanish Inquisition where torture is used liberally and execution on the stake is the default penalty. Bonus points because it also persecutes witches, an activity the Spanish Inquisition usually preached against. In a rare touch of historical faithfulness, however, it portrays accurately that repentance could save a prisoner from death sentence.
• Artistic License – Martial Arts:
  • The show makes a big point about how Japanese martial arts are supposedly superior to Spanish period military training, as Gonzalo takes down hundreds of opponents with ease through the explicit advantage of his ninja training. This superiority is carried over from pop culture, but it doesn't have a true basis on reality. Ironically, Spaniards and Portuguese from the era are precisely the best measuring stick we have today to prove how Japanese warriors would have performed against Western soldiers, as Iberians fought Japanese swordsmen in conflicts like the 1582 Cagayan Battles, the second Battle of Manila, the Battle of Fukuda Bay and the incident of the Nossa Senhora da Graça, which saw the western sides coming on top in almost every direct engagement.
  • Related to above, Gonzalo's katana and kenjutsu style are consistently portrayed as inherently superior to the Spanish rapiers and fencing, as the only enemies who ever pose a challenge to him tend to be the ones not using the standard swordfighting techniques of the time. Actually, modern comparisons have proven that, if anything, it is his own style the one that would be terribly vulnerable to theirs. With its longer blade and one-handed grip, the rapier has a massive reach advantage over the katana, and its superior metalwork and flexibility ^note Yep, superior. Contrary to popular belief, the fabled Japanese folding method to forge katanas was actually a rudimentary solution to compensate for the poor quality of their steel, a field in which Spanish metallurgy and its famed Toledo steel stood out by their own merits. would give it the advantage in every blade-to-blade contact. After adding to the equation the circular footwork of Spanish destreza, which would tend to outmaneuver the shorter and more lineal kenjutsu stance, the most probable scenario would see every competent Spanish guard peppering Águila with thrusts from outrange before the latter could could get near enough to land his two-hand slashes.
  • In the cinematic department, David Janer's stuntmen often use too few actual kenjutsu stances and too much Weapon Twirling.
  • In Season 8, Águila takes up the custom to deflect bullets with throwing shurikens. In real life, throwing a shuriken in the way of a bullet would require an impossible degree of accuracy, and it would probably fail its purpose even if it connected cleanly; fired bullets carry much more kinetic force than a small hand-thrown blade, so while the impact may perhaps stunt the bullet's trajectory enough for it to miss its intended target, the bullet would always knock the shuriken aside and not vice versa.
• Artistic License – Space: Two nights before a solar eclipse there's a full moon. Even Satur says "it's almost full moon", implying it has something to do with the approaching eclipse, which does not: there should be a new moon in the sky.
• Asshole Victim: Considering that the series seems to be set in a World of Jerk, there is a good possibility of this trope to happen whenever someone dies.
• A Taste of the Lash: Cardinal Mendoza of all people is shown self-flagelating after ordering the Successor to be killed. It's truly an interesting moment because he had never been shown to give a crap about God or religion itself aside from his aspirations to be Pope.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Hernán and Lucrecia get these kind of moments from time to time. Also, Irene and Nuño.
• Ax-Crazy: Hernán has his moments pre-Character Development. Some other Monster of the Week characters qualify, however.
• Badass Bystander:
  • In the season 6 finale, a group of architects wielding improvised weapons put a stunningly tough fight against Águila when he storms their camp to find out their plans. The fact is even more astounding when you remember how easily he routinely kills royal guards and all kinds of dangerous trained fighters.
  • The bounty hunter brought by Lucrecia to catch Malasangre is a pretty badass guy, Guns Akimbo included. The fact that he looks like Alatriste is just better.
• Badass Normal: Gonzalo has no superpowers to speak of, although his frequent Bullet Time and breaking of the Laws of Physics certainly give the impression.
• Badass Teacher: Gonzalo.
• Bad Habits: Mateo from the movie. He spends most of the film pretending to be a priest, but he is actually a baker who slept with the wife of his village's mayor and was forced to fly away wearing an old cassock he found in a church.
• Back from the Dead: Laura, Gonzalo and Hernán's mother, though she is killed shortly after.
• Batman Gambit: Sebastián Ventura plays a brilliant one with Gonzalo in order to escape unharmed and knowing his true face. He talks with a tied Águila about how he has no qualms about killing people who has helped him, and when Gonzalo claims not to be an Ungrateful Bastard like him, Ventura simply unties him and allows him to go, just moments before Sátur has him on gunpoint. The business is that if Águila had attacked him at regaining his freedom, he would have been exactly like him.
• Bed Trick: Malasangre plays sneaks into Lucrecia's bedroom, blindfolds her pretending to be Hernán playing some funny foreplay and then sleeps with her. Her face when she removes the blindfold after the act and realizes who her lover actually is is priceless. (Never mind the rather improbable fact that she never noticed during sex that he was definitely not Hernán.)
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Hernán and Lucrecia. Although they will never admit it.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sátur gets some impressive moments when things break the camel's back for him. In one of them, he attacks Nuño for endangering Alonso and they trash a hall in their brawl despite him being obviously holding back. In another one, he knocks out the impostor Bernardo with a stone after the latter steals his horse.
• Big Bad:
  • Cardinal Mendoza is the official one, although the role has been diffuse throughout the seasons.
  • Arguably, the King himself could be considered this too.
  • Malasangre looked to be one as he was introduced in the eighth season, but he ended up being more of a Wild Card.
• Big Brother Instinct: As shown in the flashbacks, Hernán was very protective of Gonzalo as kids, and he becomes protective of him again as soon as he finds out that Gonzalo is his brother.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Gonzalo and Hernán's family.
• Blow Gun: Eva's Moor bodyguard uses a blow gun powerful enough to punch through Gonzalo's Plot Armor. Malasangre also uses an Amazonian indigenous one to take down two chasers.
• Book Worm: As a teacher, Gonzalo is incredibly knowledgeable and book smart. Agustín also fits the trope.
• Break the Cutie: Margarita, Alonso, Cipri, Irene, among others.
• Break the Haughty: Lucrecia. So much. Also Hernán, initially to a lesser degree, but by the end of the eighth season just on par with Lucrecia.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Hernán and Irene, although it bizarrely looks like the producers forgot about it for several seasons.
• Bumbling Sidekick: Sátur is this to Gonzalo/Águila Roja.
• Buried Alive: Alonso gets buried alive twice in the series.
• Calling Card: At the earlier seasons, Águila would leave a red feather at the scene of his attacks. Even although he mostly dropped the trait, it still comes back from time to time in the series.
• Cain and Abel: Hernán and Gonzalo.
• The Cameo: Motorbike racer Jorge Lorenzo appears in one episode as a famous donkey racer.
• Cane Fu: The ringmaster of the freak show caravan uses some incredibly good stickfighting against Águila, countering his katana with a regular cane and even disarming him once with it.
• Cannon Fodder: Hernán's guard must have some good reserves, as at least five of them are killed by Águila per episode.
• The Caretaker: Agustín, towards Gonzalo and Hernán.
• Chain Pain: In one episode Águila uses a chain as an improvised weapon, showing some solid kusari-fundo-jutsu skills in the process.
• Character Development: Happens to most of the main characters over the course of the series, mostly from late Season 2-Season 3 onwards.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • In the Pilot, Sátur is introduced as a very physically gifted guy, escaping with ease from several tavernmen and showing a Le Parkour level that evenly matches Gonzalo's. This skill is swiftly forgotten for the rest of the series and he is turned into a Bumbling Sidekick who constantly trips over his own feet. The earlier seasons also have him pulling weapons and trying to fight quite often, which he stops doing after being established as a solid Non-Action Guy (at least until the last season).
  • Juan is initially introduced as a cocky, even slightly lewd man before his development gives him the humble personality he is more known for. He also wears a No Shirt, Long Jacket combination in his first apparition.
• Chaste Hero: Gonzalo is thoroughly uninterested in sex, so much that his brief romance with Eva leaves Sátur bewildered (and overjoyed). Evidently, Margarita is Gonzalo's only exception.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Gonzalo, naturally.
• Clark Kenting: In contrast with Águila's elaborate costume, Sátur "disguises" himself with a simple hood that clearly reveals his face. He wisely avoids exposing himself when they go out, but he is still sometimes seen by people who should recognize him later.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Many times. Characters actually *die* from it.
• Coincidence Magnet: Many characters are this, especially Sátur. Tons of coincidences happen throughout the series, both positive and negative, to the extent that it seems to have become a Running Gag.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Agustín, mostly for looking like Ben Kenobi and being a badass.
  • Santiago Merino, in no small part for being played by Enrique San Francisco.
• Combat Parkour: Used by Gonzalo/Águila several times. Even Sátur, as mentioned above, shows some in the Pilot.
• The Conspiracy: The Lodge.
• Contrived Coincidence: Many contrived and ridiculous coincidences happen over the course of the show. There's at least one per episode.
• Corrupt Church: Again, it's a post-Transition Spanish series, so nobody should expect the Church to be portrayed positively.
  • The Lodge includes high ranking priests.
  • The Cardinal Mendoza and his collaborators are the main examples of the trope.
  • The High Inquisitor is probably the worst example. It's mentioned that he merrily ordered to arrest a boy and castrate him for kissing his girlfriend on the street.
  • Father Adrián is the only exception.
• Crapsack World: In the series's setting, if a character has no name, then he is a raging Jerkass and/or probably a criminal.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Hernán can definitely be this way sometimes with regards to Lucrecia.
• Cossacks: The movie features a Cossack assassin who proves to be a tough opponent for Águila. Oddly enough, although he is on-screen referred as a Cossack, he looks more like a Mongol.
• The Cynic: Cipri, and he really has reasons.
• Damsel in Distress: Margarita, Lucrecia, Alonso and Nuño often fill this role, which results in Gonzalo and Hernán having to rescue them every time they get in trouble.
• Dark Action Girl: Sung-Yi.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Many characters that appear on this show suffer from this, and among the main ones, Gonzalo, Hernán, Sátur and Lucrecia all have very tragic pasts.
• Dark Is Evil: Hernán/The Sheriff always dresses in black. Justified, as it appears to be his guard's uniform.
• Darker and Edgier: The show was already quite dramatic in the first season, but things just go downhill in later seasons, sometimes almost plunging into Black Comedy.
• Death by Origin Story: Gonzalo's wife dies in the Pilot. This is Gonzalo's main motivation to become Águila Roja and is what starts the plot of the show.
• Death Is Dramatic
• Death Of Achild: The show always had been open about showing child characters being killed here and there, but an episode from the seventh season plays it in a HORRIFYING way.
• Depraved Dwarf: The midget jester from Season 6 averts this, being just a relatively annoying character. Then played straight when he turns to be a spy for the King in charge to abduct Lucrecia's baby and presumably have him killed.
• Despair Event Horizon: All the main characters get to this point eventually AND repeatedly over the seasons.
• Deus Angst Machina: All the main characters are this to a high degree, but especially Cipri and Lucrecia. Gonzalo and Hernán are not far behind.
• Devoted to You: Sátur and Hernán are always the two most prominent examples of devotion and loyalty; Sátur towards Gonzalo and Hernán towards Lucrecia.
• Dodge the Bullet: Constantly, and sometimes even with Matrix-esque effects.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Hernán and Lucrecia are prone to this.
• The Dragon: Pedro towards Hernán.
• Driven to Suicide: An incredibly high number of characters have either attempted or committed suicide at some point in the series, including nearly all the main characters: Gonzalo, Hernán, Lucrecia, Irene, Gabi, Nuño, Cipri, Juan, Sátur, Margarita, etc. Some of them have attempted more than once. In Lucrecia's case, it's more like 4-5 further attempts at least by the seventh season.
• Dysfunction Junction: Probably not intended by the producers at first, but after so much drama and conflict poured into the script season after season, it became a fact. If you want to cry a lot or feel miserable, don't look any further, this is the show you're looking for.
• Elite Mooks: The French troopers from the film. They wear black armors and wield hand crossbows, and are clearly better trained than most of the mooks in the series.
• Enfant Terrible: Blanca, Lucrecia's psychopathic goddaughter. Even the marchioness lampshades it when she wonders how a ten years old can have such a penchant for killing.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Hernán is much better known as simply The Sheriff. His lieutenant Pedro is a worse example, as his name is very, very rarely said despite being a relatively important character (heck, he does have a name, never gets killed, is always behind Hernán on screen and once slept with Lucrecia).
• Evil Brit: The captain Patrick Walcott.
• Evil Counterpart: Sung-Yi to Gonzalo, though she is more immoral than evil.
• Evil Twin: Sátur gets one. We are never told his name, if he does have one.
• Expy: Eva de Almeida certainly echoes Irene Adler.
• Eye Scream: The bald jailer loses an eye in the first season to a dagger attack by Águila. Later, Lucrecia suffers the same fate to a falcon.
• Fanservice Extra: A lot in each episode.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Hernán's signature fencing jacket. It is later revealed to be actually the Sheriff uniform.
• Fat Bastard: The pawnbroker Manrique. He is quite obese and has a thoroughly creepy view towards children.
• Femme Fatale: Eva, although surprisingly well dissembled.
• Flanderization: For several seasons, Alonso did not have more personality than his tendency to blame his father for everything and childishly rant against him at every opportunity. In the fifth season he had some character development, but later fell again on the trend.
• Giant Mook: Hernán's jailer. He is bald, hunchbacked and (later) one-eyed, but above all he is a really big guy. The city's executioner also counts, as he is huge as well.
• Gratuitous Ninja: The show can be described as Alatriste if he was a ninja.
• Graying Morality: The show starts out as a stereotypical Black-and-White Morality story, but in later seasons it becomes more of a Gray-and-Gray Morality one (although never gets rid of its Black-and-White Morality undertones).
• Green-Eyed Monster: Happens often with regard to many of the show's couples: Gonzalo and Margarita, Hernán and Lucrecia, Irene and Nuño, etc.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Played to a ridiculous degree with the Santillana palace, to the point that you have to wonder if they really have guards in the first place. Beggars, killers, madmen and even a loud-mouthed British platoon can sneak into the palace without being noticed.
• Heartbroken Badass: Gonzalo, in the first season.
• Heroic BSoD: Gonzalo has had many over the course of the show, but the worse one yet happens in the season 8 finale.
• Hero Protagonist: Gonzalo/Águila Roja, while Hernán is Gonzalo's Deuteragonist and Villain Protagonist. However, whether he is actually a hero is entirely debatable.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Gonzalo and Sátur.
  Sátur: “Master, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me. And no matter what happens, that's never going to change.”
• Hidden Depths: Hernán and Sátur start out as the classic Arch-Enemy and Plucky Comic Relief of the series respectively, but throughout the series they both prove to be very complex and well-rounded characters who have an Undying Loyalty towards their loved ones.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Sebastián Ventura. Not only is he good killing people with his teeth, but he also fests in his preys. The guy merely talks about how he once devoured an Amazonian indigenous chief.
• Interchangeable Asian Cultures: Big time. On one hand, Gonzalo always mentions China as his place of training, Sung-Yi is obviously Chinese in her facial features and accent, and there is a story arc about the kidnapped son of the Emperor of China. On the other hand, Gonzalo is a ninja and she is a kunoichi, they speak Japanese during their reencounter, and several flashbacks (including the ones shown in the aforementioned arc) shows them training in Japanese martial arts with Japanese imagery. At the end it is implied that they trained in both lands, but the matter is still confusing, and it seems that the producers are not willing to clear it up.
• Invincible Hero: Gonzalo evolves into this after several seasons, as the show pretty much stops trying to bring antagonists who can pose a threat to him.
• Hero Killer: To date, Sung-Yi is the only antagonist who is solidly portrayed as more badass than him. She actually almost kills him in the first duel.
• Historical Fiction: With the historical part being quite low, but still.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Alonso finds himself as prey when he accepts a shady proposal from a group of aristocrats.
• I Am a Humanitarian: The "giant" in the forest and of course Malasangre.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Many, but especially Hernán's soldiers. They usually miss their shots, and whenever they don't miss, Águila dodges them.
• Incompatible Orientation: Soledad is hopelessly in love with Lucrecia of all people.
• In the Back: Sátur gets a memorable one when Gonzalo takes down a bunch of mooks and another one attempts inadvertently to backstab him, only for Sátur to jump into the mook's back and knock him out with a stone.
• I Owe You My Life: The reason Gonzalo tries to rescue pirate Richard Blake.
• It's All About Me: Lucrecia tends to think this way.
• It's All My Fault: Sátur and Alonso tend to think this way whenever something bad happens and they think they could have prevented it or done something about it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hernán and Lucrecia have their moments.
• Just in Time: Águila Roja tends to save the day with seconds to spare.
• Katanas Are Just Better: To the point Gonzalo once pierces effortlessly a tree with his katana.
• Killed Off for Real: Many characters have been Killed Off for Real. Among the main characters, excluding Cristina who died in the Pilot, Floro, Agustín, Inés, Laura and Catalina all have been killed off.
• Knight of Cerebus: The series is pretty dark from its very start, but the fake Águila Roja turns it up to eleven.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Eva's cloaked mook, who seemed to know Karate and Gun Fu. Amazingly enough, he would have stuck a bullet in Gonzalo's head if his gun had not conveniently jammed while he had him in point blank.
• Left Hanging:
  • It's never revealed who helped Sátur escape from the Memento Mori cave, and given that the storyline was over after the season ended, the question will be never answered. It's somehow implied that it was Father Adrián, but the circumstances behind it are unknown.
  • Similarly, who was the hooded rider who threw a burning arrow to Gonzalo in the ruins is a question which remains opend.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Gonzalo and Sátur. Hernán and Lucrecia.
• Like You Were Dying: Before departing, Santiago reveals that he was actually dying and that he wanted to see his friend Sátur one last time.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Soledad.
• Love Dodecahedron: The main love triangle of the show is Margarita/Gonzalo/Lucrecia/Hernán, although there are many other love triangles during the course of the show. Some examples include: Lucrecia/Hernan/Irene, Gonzalo/Margarita/Juan, Hernan/Irene/Nuño, etc.
• Love Father, Love Son: Irene has cheated on Hernán with Nuño, who is Hernán's son and her own nephew.
• Love Hurts
• Love Makes You Crazy: When it comes to Hernán and Lucrecia's relationship, this is quite an understatement.
• Love Martyr: Gonzalo and Hernán show alarming signs of being this with their loved ones, including (and especially) each other.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Margarita develops feelings for Águila Roja, albeit briefly.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Hernán reveals this to Nuño in the eighth season.
• Made a Slave: Happens to Margarita in episodes 2x03 and 2x04, when she is abducted by Barbary Pirates... near Madrid (It Makes Sense in Context). The plotline comes complete with:
  • Arab Oil Sheikh: The prospective buyer. Minus the oil part, obviously.
  • Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me
  • Closest Thing We Got: Margarita is enslaved because one of the pirates' girls escapes and they happen upon her while tracking the other. Since they are tasked to bring a fixed number of slavegirls, they just take her instead.
  • Fate Worse than Death
  • Go-Go Enslavement: Margarita is forced to wear a belly dancer's outfit and dance for the sheikh.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Par of the course for the slavers when they get a new captive. Margarita is spared that only because they are late for the delivery when they abduct her.
  • Sex Slave: The expected fate of the abducted women from the beginning, though the Sheikh is so impressed with Margarita that he decides to keep her for himself rather than trading her off.
  • Slave Brand: Immediately upgraded to Mark of Shame.
• Man Hug: Many times between Gonzalo and Sátur.
• Manipulative Bastard: Cardinal Mendoza, Hernán, Lucrecia, Malasangre... Even the King.
• Marital Rape License: Happened to Lucrecia in one episode from Season 2.
• McNinja: Gonzalo is Spanish and Sung-Yi is Chinese, but nobody cares.
• Marriage of Convenience: Hernán and Irene's marriage.
• Ms. Fanservice: Marchioness Lucrecia, and in later seasons Irene too.
  • Forgotten Phlebotinum: The gun-sword seems to have been forgotten, as he has not used it again after his duel with Águila Roja in the first Season Finale.
• The Movie: Involves an adventure in three European countries.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Hernán and Lucrecia, among other characters, resort to murder in many occasions.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Those were the real life values of the time, though only a few characters actually believe in them.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The next episode previews typically show the events in the most dramatic way in order to build tension, which sometimes leads to wrong impressions about them. The most common example is making the audience believe that a random character will die, something which rarely happens (but which can certainly happen, to be fair).
  • In season 6, a preview shows a chain of deaths as part of a curse or an epidemic, even including sinister lines about that Death has come over them and the like. Truth is that the episode does feature several enigmatic deaths, but they are completely unrelated and the curse theme is never used or mentioned.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed:
  • The character of Cardinal Mendoza seems based in Pedro González de Mendoza, a 15th century cardinal and statesman whose influence on the Spanish court was such that he was called the "third king" after The Catholic Monarchs (and who, like the series' Mendoza, had illegitimate children despite being a churchman). González was also a son to his time's Marquis of Santillana, expanding the references.
  • Being a Spanish renegade that operated in the Amazonas river, Malasangre is clearly a punked up version of Lope de Aguirre, with a bit of Aleixo García thrown in for having supposedly taken over an indigenous tribe.
• Non-Serial Movie: The movie is a subversion, as it is canonically placed in the series's timeline and its events are later brought again.
• Parental Substitute: Agustín is this to Gonzalo, and to some degree, to Hernán as well. There's also Hernán towards Nuño, until it's revealed that he's actually Nuño's biological father.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality:
  • Gonzalo fits this trope to a T, with his continuous and hypocritical moral speeches and his judgmental attitude towards Hernán and other "bad guys" while Gonzalo rarely, if ever, gets called out on his own wrongdoings. The show's Black-and-White Morality could be directly linked to Gonzalo's own character arc.
  • Alonso too in his relationship with Nuño.
• Puppy Love: Alonso and Matilde, though it does not last long.
• Put on a Bus:
  • In the fifth season, Lucrecia, Mariana and Juan are all Put on a Bus. In Lucrecia's case, The Bus Came Back.
  • In the ninth season, Margarita and Nuño are Put on a Bus.
• Really Gets Around: Lucrecia is the queen of the trope. Only on-screen she sleeps with more or less every non-plebeian character with a name, including Hernán, Gonzalo, the King, the Cardinal Mendoza and Pedro, along with several unnamed noblemen.
• Red Baron: Sebastián Ventura is known as "Malasangre" ("Bad-blood"), for obvious reasons.
• Revenge Before Reason: Gonzalo, Hernán and other characters can sometimes get completely consumed by their thirst for revenge.
• Rule of Cool: The show lives on it.
• Running Gag: The main is Sátur complaining about his lack of an elaborated costume like Gonzalo's, but there are many other examples.
• Samus Is a Girl: The Oriental Warrior is a woman, and her name is Sung-Yi.
• Satellite Love Interest: Margarita and Irene end up becoming this, the former for Gonzalo/Juan/Adrián and the latter for Nuño/Hernán/Martin.
• Save the Villain: This show has an interesting and rare case, as Gonzalo/Águila Roja always saves and protects his enemy, Hernán. Justified in that Hernán is actually his brother, so Gonzalo refuses to kill him or let him die. The Season 8 premiere revolves entirely around this trope, with Gonzalo, Sátur, Lucrecia and Nuño all ultimately trying to save Hernán.
• Secret Relationship:
  • Cipri and Catalina's relationship, mainly due to Catalina being married. They hide it well, since Gonzalo and Sátur are quite surprised when they find out, years later.
  • Hernán and Lucrecia also try to keep their relationship a secret, but everyone essentially knows.
  • Nuño and Irene's relationship qualifies as well. To date, there is still not a single character who has found them out.
• Scary Black Man: The coast pirate band features a big black guy who fights with a giant axe and tends to blindly charge towards his opponent.
• Shoot the Rope: Gonzalo does it several times with his shurikens throughout the series, although, uncharacteristically enough, he sometimes requires two of them to hit the rope.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Cardinal Mendoza is apparently based on the historical Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, an earlier historical character that was also an adviser to a king being the IV (Henry, in this case). The historical Cardinal was also a son to the Marquis of Santillana, this being likely the origin of Lucrecia's title.
  • Aesthetic wise, to Assassin's Creed, obviously.
  • El Zorro and Batman have some influence in the character as a costumed crimefighter, also.
  • One to the famous Arab swordsman scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark happens near the end of "Buscando a Margarita". Águila Roja finds himself alone, face to face against the chief Algerian slave trader on a rowboat. The slaver pulls a dagger and makes many showy movements while smugly smiling at him. Águila Roja then pulls a throwing knife and stabs him in the heart from the distance.
  • Some famous lines from The Dark Knight are used by the characters when looking for the Fake Águila Roja.
  • The Casanova Wannabe Viscount of Tomelloso is probably a reference to El Seductor de Tomelloso ("The Tomelloso Ladies Man"), a real life Spanish youtuber and media character known for his similar antics.
• Single-Stroke Battle: The first duel between Águila and the Oriental Warrior ends like this, and surprisingly, it's Águila who falls.
• The Stoic: Hernán, Lucrecia, Cardinal Mendoza, the King, and to some extent, Gonzalo as well.
  • Not So Stoic: None of them remain as stoic when their lives or those of their loved ones are being threatened.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Hernán. He is cold and cruel to people in general but shows an immense affection towards Lucrecia, Nuño and much later in the show, Gonzalo. Likewise with Lucrecia when it comes to Gonzalo, Hernán and Nuño.
• Swashbuckler: Missing the fun side for a big part, given the fact that the series fuels greatly in drama, but otherwise fits the genre.
• Sympathy for the Hero: Hernán, in turn, sympathizes with Gonzalo as well but much later on, from late Season 6 onwards.
• Tap on the Head: Used constantly: characters knock each other fully unconscious for minutes with all kind of strikes. Especially interesting is Malasangre, who manages to knock out both Hernán and Gonzalo separately with a professional but hilariously fake-looking double hammerfist to the back.
• Technical Pacifist: Gonzalo teaches against violence, but Águila Roja will certainly maim and kill to stop the evildoers.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Occasionally, and yes, it always works. In the film, Gonzalo even makes it work with his crossbow.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After Hernán's demotion from Sheriff, his lieutenant Pedro doesn't hesitate a single second to take the opportunity and verbally spit Hernán in the face the next time he sees him. Granted, the old guy was not the kindest boss ever and his law enforcement style was clearly irregular, but up to that point Pedro had been shown to be very loyal to Hernán and receive a (relatively) good treatment back from him, and the lieutenant himself is shown to be just as disdainful towards the commoners as the former Sheriff. His refusal to support Hernán in the slightest comes as quite shocking.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Hernán, when it comes to Águila Roja. Hernán will still try to kill him no matter how many times Águila Roja saves him. Justified, in that there would be no show if Hernán refused to fight him anymore.
  • Ironically, Gonzalo, when it comes to Hernán, in the eighth season.
• Unknown Character: The Japanese ninja master who trained Gonzalo and Sung-Yi only appears in one flashback and it's never mentioned again. Even when more flashbacks of Gonzalo's training are brought up, he is replaced or recast by another actor.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Gonzalo and Margarita. It is finally resolved in the eighth season, albeit it barely lasts.
• The Unreveal: The fake Águila's identity and face are left unrevealed at the end of the episode, as it would be pointless, given that they know he was simply some unknown madman.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Granted, nobody sane would call Águila Roja a "saccharine show", but the Fake Águila basically makes all the villains until the moment look like charity sisters.
• Villainous Breakdown: Happens to Lucrecia at least once every season. Hernán undergoes this quite a few times throughout the series too, especially in the last two episodes of Season 4, and it just goes downhill from there, as the seventh and (especially) eighth seasons are even worse for him. He falls apart completely in the season 8 finale.
• What a Drag: The bounty hunter hired by Lucrecia to kill Malasangre takes him down off his horse with a pretty badass lasso.
• Wilhelm Scream: At least once every episode.
• Will They or Won't They?:
  • Gonzalo and Margarita, and Hernán and Lucrecia, are in this dynamic for the entire series, right until the ending.
  • There's also Irene and Nuño, who have been in this dynamic as well since the fifth season.
• Wolverine Claws: In season 7, Hernán gains a gauntlet with spiky metal fingers to replace his lost fingertips. Also, back in the first season, Lucrecia's murderous brother used bracelets with long blades attached.
• The Worf Effect: If a character survives a fight against Águila, he will probably kick his ass later, although he invariably will be defeated at the end.
  • The only character who is never defeated by Gonzalo is Sung-Yi, who is shot dead by Hernán during their rematch.
• Worthy Opponent: Gonzalo and Hernán. Cardinal Mendoza and Malasangre.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Águila lariats an enemy down in his rush to save the King from the university revolutionaries in Season 7. Also, in season 8, the unnamed bald fighter in Malasangre's team chokeslams opponents several times on screen.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Gonzalo usually says this to Sátur whenever he speaks badly of himself, which happens often due to Sátur's self-esteem issues.
• You Have Failed Me: Hernán and the cardinal Mendoza are prone to this with their mooks.
• Young Future Famous People: Implied at least - one of Gonzalo's pupils is a kid with a talent for drawing, whose name is Murillo.