La Palma ending explained: who survives the tsunami

Netflix's best-performing miniseries, La Palmais an exciting new addition to the disaster movie/TV show genre, and its ending is action-packed, to say the least. from La Palma The cast of characters comprises a range of Norwegian actors, some experienced and some new. The story mainly revolves around a family, consisting of Jennifer, the mother, and Fredrik, the father, and their two children, Sara and Tobias.

The family is vacationing on the beautiful island of La Palma – a real-life location in the Canary Islands – when volcanic activity triggers a massive landslide that ends in a devastating tsunami. Like many movies and shows about climate disasters, the narrative comes to a head when the tsunami hits, and absolute chaos and carnage ensues. Here's everything that happens at the end of La Palma.

What happens to the main family at the end of La Palma

The fate of La Palma's main family is surprising

As mentioned, the main family in La Palma comprises Jennifer, Fredrik, Sara and Tobias. Although the vacation is idyllic, the family dynamic is far from perfect. Specifically, Jennifer and Fredrik are clearly experiencing tensions in their relationship, which results in intense arguments.

This is nearly deadly for Sara, even before the tsunami hits, as she runs away from her parents' fight and tries to fly home, only for the plane to hit a cloud of volcanic smoke and crash on the island. Fortunately, Sara decided to get off the plane before it took off, which was only revealed a little later. Soon after that, however, the family was in danger again.

Jennifer's brother, Jens, holds a government position and therefore has inside information about the events unfolding in La Palma. He manages to warn his family in advance to leave the island. The group is almost immediately separated, however, when Fredrik steals a car to take his family safely to a ferry and is then detained by the vehicle's owners. This causes him to miss the ferry, leaving him stranded on the island while his family departs.

Things only got much more dangerous, terrifying, and complicated from there.. When the tsunami is about to hit the island's coast, Sara is trapped in the stopped plane with her love interest, Charlie, while her other family members rush to safety in a nearby bay. However, Tobias and Jennifer are doing this separately from Fredrik, who is simultaneously trying to get to safety with another character, Marie. Surprisingly, every family member in from La Palma the main family ultimately survives the catastrophic events.

Every main character who dies on La Palma

Several important characters die in La Palma

Although Sara, Fredrik, Jennifer and Tobias survived the tsunami, some important characters died in the series. One of the most prominent is Erik, Marie's brother. Marie and Erik are significant, if not main, characters in La Palma. They also have history with tsunamis, as their parents were killed by one, which makes their perspective particularly interesting throughout the series.

Sadly, Erik meets a very tragic end that is only tangentially linked to the tsunami. Given that so many people are trapped on the island as it heads towards total destruction, tensions rise extraordinarily as people try to find ways to get out of La Palma. When Erik, Marie and Fredrik get their hands on a boat, someone approaches with a gun, demanding they hand over the boat. This ends tragically with Erik's death as he tries to wrestle the gun from the attacker's hands.

Another significant death in La Palma is that of Arnt, who acts as a family friend throughout the miniseries, including taking care of Tobias when Fredrik and Jennifer believe that Sara died in the plane crash. After the disaster begins, Arnt works hard to keep his family safe while also staying safe. In the end, however, he dies along with most of the other passengers on the plane that never departs successfully. There are also, of course, a number of deaths throughout the series for minor and sometimes even nameless characters, as is common in disaster stories.

The global impacts of the La Palma tsunami explained

The end of La Palma explores some global effects

The end of the miniseries also reveals that this tsunami in La Palma had ramifications throughout the worldespecially for coastal locations, even as far away as the northeast coast of the United States. While a massive tsunami may not have hit everywhere after the landslide sent huge chunks of land into the ocean, this event impacted sea levels in countless other areas. There were also international economic impacts as a result of the damage, casualties and various side effects of this disaster.

Interestingly, La Palma appears to have captured these consequences with some precision. Evidently, if a landslide of this scale were to happen in a similar way, there would be impacts as far-reaching as the East Coast of the United States. The miniseries doesn't devote much time or attention to addressing the consequences, but seemed to somewhat realistically recreate how extensive the global impact would be.

Is La Palma based on a true story?

La Palma has some roots in reality

Although there are some real-life connections in the miniseries La Palma It is not based on a true story. As mentioned, La Palma is a real location in Spain and is one of the Canary Islands. The island has also suffered some volcanic activity in the past. However, Something of this scale has not been seen on La Palma.

Some researchers fear that something similar to this disaster could happen in La Palma's future. Specifically, for University of California Santa CruzThere is research into the possibility of a massive tsunami resulting from landslides on the island. Not everyone agrees with the belief that this could happen, but it seems like a convincing enough theory that this miniseries has gained significant traction.

The reaction around La Palma explained

Many viewers were unhappy with the ending of La Palma

La Palma is currently facing a degree of backlash, specifically over the show's ending. While many aspects of disaster movies and shows are seen as normal, viewers expressed disappointment with the unrealistic ending of La Palma. The moment that seems to have especially upset viewers came when Sara managed to survive being trapped inside a plane on the runway when an 80-foot wave crashed into it, sending glass and water into the plane.

This is easily the most unrealistic aspect of the show, so it makes sense that so many people have challenged it. It's hard to imagine how anyone could survive a tsunami that collided with a stuck plane, especially since La Palma shows the plane filling with water and being torn apart. Even worse, Sara comes out of this incident almost completely unharmed and Charlie also survives, although almost everyone else on the plane dies.

In the end, this controversy is as blatant as one wants it to be. Disaster movies and shows are known for narrative choices quite similar to this, so it's not that surprising to La Palma have at least one survival like Sara's. However, it is unquestionably unrealistic, so it is understandable that there will be backlash. In the end, yes, La Palma It falls into some of the pitfalls of the disaster movie/show genre, but it's still a thrilling show to watch, with an action-packed finale.