Who Killed Sara? is a crime thriller that revolves around family drama and a whodunit-style murder mystery, but it’s also a tragedy influenced by figures and symbolism found in Classical Greek and Roman mythology. The Netflix show's popular whodunit-style murder mystery from award-winning telenovela writer, author, and series creator, José Ignacio Valenzuela, is one of the streaming platform's most popular shows.
The Netflix drama begins as a murder mystery, but it becomes so much more than that, as Valenzuela utilizes his literary background to enhance the story. Throughout the series, Who Killed Sara? makes connections between its characters and well-known figures portrayed in Classical mythology. Here’s how the myth and symbolism behind figures from Greek and Roman mythology inspired the characters and plot in Who Killed Sara?.
The show’s references to three mythical figures from Classical mythology stand out in particular. Who Killed Sara? borrows inspiration from the myths of Diana, Janus, and Medusa. Each of these figures and their individual stories symbolize different themes that show up throughout the series, highlighting the show’s literary influences. They also give the audience a deeper understanding of the hidden meanings behind the show’s narrative and its tragic characters like Sara.
Diana
Diana the Huntress is named after the mythical Roman goddess, Diana. Like Sara Guzman in Who Killed Sara? Diana was said to have had several half-siblings. Known as a triple-deity, the goddess also had three separate identities: Diana the huntress, Diana as the moon — a symbol of femininity and fertility — and Diana of the underworld. In essence, these three roles made Diana a goddess of the hunt, childbirth, and death. And these roles are connected to those of Sara, Marifer, and Clara in Who Killed Sara?.
In Who Killed Sara? season 1, Marifer uses Diana the Huntress as her online pseudonym, and her character symbolizes the hunt. In season 2, it’s revealed that Marifer was at the beach house the weekend of Sara’s accident. Hidden behind a tall section of plants, she watches Sara and the others, like a hunter in disguise, waiting for her moment to strike. When that moment comes, Marifer is the one who cuts the parasail rope, causing Sara’s accident. In fact, Marifer is always hiding, watching, and waiting — stalking her prey throughout the series. She does this to the Lazcano’s, which is how she witnesses Elisa’s kidnapping, and she toys with Alex by slowly feeding him information while hiding herself and her true motives behind the pseudonym.
If Marifer represents Diana the Huntress, Sara and Clara symbolize fertility and death. In Who Killed Sara? season 1, Clara becomes a surrogate for Chema and Lorenzo’s baby, and the show’s opening premise is about finding Sara’s killer. In this case, Clara symbolizes Diana as the goddess of fertility and Sara as the goddess of the underworld and death. However, by the end of season 2, Clara has been accidentally killed by Marifer as well. Since audiences have never seen a body, there’s still a chance that Sara could be alive, and she was also pregnant at the time of her alleged death. So both sisters paradoxically represent life, death, and rebirth. In this way, the narrative of the three sisters in Who Killed Sara? draws parallels to the complex nature of the multi-faceted deity of the Diana mythology.
Janus
Interestingly, Diana’s identity as the goddess of childbirth is also linked with another goddess from Roman myth. Diana’s role as protector of childbirth overlapped with the goddess, Juno. A goddess with close ties to the god Janus, who is often depicted as having two faces. When we describe a person as being “two-faced,” we evoke the myth of the god, Janus. According to Roman mythology, “The Two Faces of Janus” also symbolize the two-sided nature of all things, and stories of Janus in Classical mythology depict him as a god of beginnings, transitions, and change.
These symbols show up in Who Killed Sara? through the duplicity of its characters and the complex nature of their individual identities, which are often two-sided: Marifer hides behind her pseudonym: Clara pretends to care for Chema when in reality she’s helping Marifer with her revenge against the Lazcano's, and Nicandro lies about his motives for helping Alex find Sara’s killer, as he pretends to befriend both Alex and Marifer. In order to hide their motives, the characters in the Netflix drama often lie or hold a part of themselves back from the others.
Who Killed Sara? season 2 episode 1, “The Two Faces of Sara,” further highlights the show’s connection to the myth of Janus as it reveals a different side to Sara’s personality. The Sara portrayed in season 2 is a different person from the one introduced in season 1 — the Sara that her brother, Alex thought he knew. The reference serves as a metaphor for Sara’s multiple personalities, but it also hints at the transitional nature of the story, and how the narrative and its characters are going to evolve over the course of its second season. At the same time, season 2 continues to look backward at Sara’s life before her accident. Jumping back and forth in time between the present day and 18 years earlier, the show is like Janus with his two faces — one looking back at the past and the other towards the future. Who Killed Sara? examines how the former informs the latter.
Medusa
According to Greek Mythology, Medusa was a three-winged Gorgon with snakes for hair whose stare could turn anyone to stone. In the myth, she represents a tragic figure who is forced to live in solitude after being cursed by Athena, who turns her into the stone-eyed monster as revenge for her Poseidon's alleged seduction of her. Psychologists have used the Medusa myth as a metaphor for several psychological diagnoses, including the “Medusa Complex," a term sometimes used to describe symptoms of emotional paralysis. And Who Killed Sara? uses the image of the goddess in reference to the psychological study revealed at the end of season 2. As the first patient of Dr. Alanis’s so-called Medusa experiment, Sara embodies the mythological figure and her tragic story.
The story of Medusa has also been interpreted in contemporary art as a classic example of victim-blaming in the case of sexual assault, and this is a theme explored in Who Killed Sara? season 2. Sara's father assaulted her mother and the show implies that Sara has inherited her biological father’s evil nature. While her character is portrayed as a violent figure, and one who Nicandro and others believe should be locked up and treated, she’s also a victim of circumstance, which makes her a tragic figure, not unlike Medusa herself. In the season 2 finale of Who Killed Sara?, the episode ends with a close-up of Sara, zoomed in on her face, as she makes eye contact with Nicandro from across the room. The show once again evokes the Medusa myth by zooming in on Sara's icy, stone-cold stare.