After five months of waiting, Netflix released “Selena: The Series” part two May 4. Part two starts off with Selena Quintanilla’s (Christian Serratos) rise to fame and ultimately finishes with the tragic end of her life. 

After finding part one to be quite disappointing, part two surely made up for Selena’s lack of presence in the storyline. The first part focused on Selena’s family’s problems while part two focused on Selena’s struggles and the tragedy of her life. The episodes revealed how Selena was facing difficulties while managing her American life and Mexican background. Tejano music during that time was dominated by male singers, so another obstacle Selena had to face was sexism. Trying to gain recognition as a singer during her time was tough.

Compared to part one, the second part had fewer time jumps, which made the plot more clear and easy to understand. Unfortunately, though, the show continued to gravitate toward her family and the contributions they made toward Selena’s career. Every time the storyline would focus on Selena and I thought we would get a deeper look into her thoughts, there would be a scene about her brother struggling to write a song or some problems the rest of her family were facing. Although this entire show is about Selena, I never got to understand what was going on in her mind during her career. 

There were also key elements of Selena’s story that were missing. Her murderer Yolanda Saldivar (Natasha Perez) was depicted as a mysterious murderer with no background shown. The show failed to explain how messed up Yolanda’s mind got as she grew an unhealthy attachment with Selena. Selena trusted her to run her boutiques and treated her like family, but Yolanda went behind her back and started embezzling money. Selena confronted her and tried to get all of the boutique’s financial records. However, ultimately, Yolanda murdered her and tried to run away.

The last episode of the series was heartbreaking, but it was a nice tribute to Selena. Her life ended tragically and the show did a great job of remembering Selena’s beautiful soul and her contributions to the music industry. Selena was known as “The Queen of Tejano Music” and she gave hope to young artists to pursue their dreams just like she did. 

Overall, Selena had more scenes in part two, but the episodes still had a narrow story told through the lens of the Quintanilla family. The show depicts Selena as her siblings remember her, but maybe not as who she truly was. Although the entire series was a beautiful tribute to Selena and her legacy, there were still aspects that were lacking.