'Delirium' Ending Explained: What's The Meaning Of Agustina's Bugs?

The ending of Delirium was about Agustina’s reconciliation with Aguilar and Aguilar’s confrontation with Midas. The biggest mystery of Aguilar’s life was why he found his wife, Agustina, in a random hotel with another man, and why that incident caused her to spiral out so hard that she had to be admitted into a psychiatric hospital. When that didn’t work out, he brought her back home, and with some help from Sofia, Agustina’s aunt, he managed to make her somewhat comfortable. But then Agustina’s mother, Eugenia, showed up and undid all the progress that Aguilar and Sofia had made. In a fit of rage, Agustina not only threw out Eugenia, but she also forced Aguilar to leave. With nowhere to go, Aguilar went to the home of his ex-wife, Martha. When Agustina came to her senses, she went to Martha’s house for a heart-to-heart with Aguilar to see if he still wanted to live with her. While she did that, we, the viewers, kind of got an idea of the chronology of the events (which was presented non-linearly for no good reason); the fate of Eugenia, Joaco (Agustina’s brother), and Bichi (also Agustina’s brother); what Midas was up to; and what the whole point of those bugs was. The operative word is “idea” because we don’t get anything concrete out of this whole ordeal. With that in mind, allow me to discuss Delirium.

Spoiler Alert

What Is The Chronology Of The Events?

The only reason why I think it’s necessary to lay down the chronology of the events is because I was confused about the order of the plot lines when Delirium drew to a close. I assumed that the non-linear storytelling technique was used to hide some big secret. That wasn’t the case at all. Other than that, the only reasoning behind the non-linear narrative that I can imagine is to confuse the viewer, thereby putting them into the shoes of Agustina. Did that work? I don’t think so because the confusion disallowed me from feeling the emotional undercurrent of the show. Anyway, here’s how things went down. A pianist named Nicholas married Blanca, and they had two children, Eugenia and Sofia. Nicholas was in a relationship with his student, Abel, and he either suffered from some form of mental illness or some kind of hearing disorder. One day Nicholas died by suicide, and Blanca convinced her daughters that Nicholas wasn’t dead; he had left for France. Abel was never heard of after that day ever again, and we didn’t really see much of Blanca as well in the show. Eugenia married Carlos and had three children: Joaco, Agustina, and Bichi (as a Bengali, I found this to be really funny). 

Eugenia remained high on drugs and wine, so Sofia took on the duty of looking after the children and making important family decisions. Of course, they had an affair, which Eugenia allowed because Sofia’s presence was keeping the family together. When the kids were in their teens, Carlos’ homophobia peaked, and he hit Bichi, causing him to leave the house. Sofia went with him to ensure that he didn’t lose his way. After that, Midas, an aspiring drug smuggler, entered the picture and started doing business with Carlos and Joaco. Midas and Agustina fell in love, and the latter got pregnant. Eugenia forced Agustina to get an abortion, which she accepted, but that marked the end of Agustina’s relationship with Midas and her family. Carlos continued to send Agustina money so that she could roam the world and do tarot-card reading. That’s how she fell in love with Aguilar. Soon after that, Carlos died. When Agustina attended Carlos’ funeral, she met Midas again, and they had sex. She then went back to Aguilar and got married. She got pregnant and then had a miscarriage, which caused a rift in her marriage. 

While recuperating from that traumatic incident, Aguilar went for an outing with his sons, Antonio and Carlos, and Agustina went to attend Eugenia’s birthday, which doubled as a stage for Joaco to announce his marriage with Mariana. By this time, Joaco had gone broke, which was why he was marrying the wealthy Mariana, and Midas was on the run from gangsters he had wronged in the stupidest way imaginable. During that ceremony, Agustina had yet another falling out with her family, after which Midas brought her to a hotel that he used to frequent. Since he had to go and hide at his mother’s place immediately, he got his right-hand man, Rorro, to notify Aguilar so that he could come and get her. Agustina was brought back home by Aguilar, then admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and then she returned home again. Sofia arrived, on Agustina’s request, to help Aguilar with her while he looked for the mystery man in the hotel where he found Agustina. There was a random explosion near Agustina and Aguilar’s house, which attracted Eugenia’s attention. Agustina shooed Eugenia away. Aguilar learned about Midas from Rorro and confronted Agustina about it, who proceeded to throw him out of the house. While taking shelter at Martha’s house, Agustina came to meet Aguilar and told him about the events leading up to the moment where he found her in the hotel. She also told him where Midas was. Aguilar met Midas. Then he came back to Agustina, and they lived happily ever after. The end. I hope that I got that right because that was exhausting! 

What Happened to Agustina’s Family?

When Midas and Joaco made Carlos’ farming business a part of the drug smuggling business that they were doing with Misterio, Arana, and Jorge, I think that they were all doing considerably well. But then Carlos died, Arana killed Yenny, Misterio increased his investment rate, and Joaco spent a major chunk of his savings on real estate. So, Joaco went broke. Since Midas’ relationship with Misterio had gone down the gutter and Misterio himself had been gunned down by the police, Midas couldn’t do anything for Joaco. Eugenia and Joaco kept claiming to their friends and extended family that their farm was doing fine, but in reality, it wasn’t. That was why Eugenia and Joaco had planned to get the latter married to Mariana and get her family to cover the losses that they had incurred. However, after Agustina’s outburst at Eugenia’s birthday party, where she spilled all the beans in front of Mariana and her family, even that plan got blown to smithereens. While it seemed like Eugenia and Joaco would still be able to coast through this crisis by selling the property, Agustina brought up Bichi and his share of the inheritance, which’d apparently turn Eugenia and Joaco into paupers. 

The odd thing about this revelation was that it was never fully explored. Agustina just dropped that bombshell and walked away. But does Bichi have any right to claim anything that belongs to his ancestors? Bichi had left the family when he was a teenager because of Carlos’ homophobic and abusive nature. Sofia took him under her wing because he was still just a child and also because she got to save the life of a queer family member, something that she didn’t get to do in Nicholas’ case. After that, neither Sofia nor Bichi came to meet Carlos, and we didn’t get any scenes where we saw Carlos repenting his acts of bigotry. Yes, he had a soft spot for Agustina, which was why he kept sending her money via Joaco. However, I can’t say the same about his feelings towards Bichi. Hence, he must have excluded him from the will as well, right? So, what’s this inheritance claim that Agustina was talking about? 

Okay, even if I entertain that Carlos did leave something for Bichi in his will, what will that amount to? As mentioned earlier, nothing about the farm or their family-owned estate was doing well. If it was, Eugenia and Joaco would have milked the hell out of it. If Bichi took over the property, by some miracle, then that’d become a liability for him. The smart thing for him would be to just watch his discriminatory mother and brother drown in debt. If this “inheritance” exists in the form of actual money, then maybe Bichi could arrive to take it and dangle it in front of his mother and brother and make them beg for it, thereby getting them to feel an ounce of the humiliation and pain that they had subjected him to when he was just a child. Also, didn’t Sofia have a part of the estate to her name? Why was that never addressed? Did she forfeit it because of the bad memories associated with that place? I don’t know. The bottom line, according to Delirium, was that Eugenia and Joaco were broke, Bichi was about to be rich, and Sofia and Agustina were doing alright on their own.

What Happened to Midas?

Midas’ arc was the only interesting thing about Delirium because it was reminiscent of Stanton Carlisle’s journey in Nightmare Alley. He started from nothing, he peaked, and then he returned to nothing. The worst part, though, was that when he didn’t have anything, he still had his freedom. He didn’t have to hide. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder for enemies. He had some form of autonomy. Yes, his mother was strict, and maybe she didn’t want him to spread his wings too much, too quickly. But at least he didn’t have to fear his mother getting killed by his enemies all the time. When Midas ran from the flat that he had handcrafted back to his mother’s house, he lost his freedom. Even while buying groceries from the store in his locality, he had to hide his face. Maybe his enemies from the world of gangsters had given up their search for him, but the way he had betrayed Yenny continued to haunt him. In fact, I think that Yenny’s death was a much bigger reason for Midas to hide his face—because he was a disgrace to his community—than the cartel coming for his neck. 

When Aguilar saw him in that state, I guess he pitied him. After reading the news about Midas’ exploits and what a dreaded gangster he was, I think Aguilar had created this intimidating image of Midas in his mind. He probably wanted to shatter the idea of Midas by giving him a beatdown, verbal or physical in nature, after confirming what he’d done with Agustina in that hotel. However, when he saw Midas cowering like a thief, all his anger dissipated. He saw a man in pain. Hence, when Midas asked Aguilar how Agustina was doing, he didn’t say something like, “She is none of your business.” He assured him that Agustina was doing fine and promised him that he’ll take good care of her forever. During the last moments of his life as a smuggler, all that Midas had known was violence. So, when he asked Aguilar if he wanted something, I think he was expecting a physical altercation. I mean, that was Agustina’s husband, and he had just learned the intensity of her romance with Midas, as well as the fact that Midas was in a hotel room with Agustina. It was normal of him to expect Aguilar to come flying at him and greet him with his fists. However, Aguilar surprised him by simply saying “no” and walking away. 

Through this interaction, the show subverted every expectation that men have of men. We are always expected to act in a hostile fashion regardless of the tenderness of the situation. Men teach other men to be aggressive, and we keep doing that until our heart gives out and we die. But with this small rejection of patriarchal norms, Aguilar and Midas set a new precedent for themselves and every man or boy that’s watching this. I think that Midas is a tragic character. He wanted to grow beyond the class he was born into. It’s just that he took a route that was filled with dangerous people, and he didn’t have it in him to become worse than them. The only upside is that he is alive, and that’s what matters the most. Maybe he won’t be able to build an empire again. Maybe he’ll never love anyone again the same way he loved Agustina. That said, he can strive to become the man that’d make his mother proud, and that, in my opinion, is worth more than all the riches and fame in the world.

What’s The Significance Of The Bugs?

I’m not an expert on mental health. Therefore, my surface-level interpretation of the show’s ambiguous exploration of Agustina’s psychological disorder might be off, and it might also sound offensive. Hence, I apologize in advance. Okay, so, in Delirium’s ending, we saw Aguilar returning to Agustina. They promise to stay with each other for the rest of their lives. And there wasn’t even a hint of the bugs that Agustina kept seeing during the closing moments of the show. Does that mean that Agustina’s mental illness had been cured? Well, yes and no. The bugs represent a bunch of things. Eugenia had a habit of storing bugs in a jar because she thought that if they were left to their devices in the woods, they’d die. Nicholas told her that dying was part of a natural process and it was pointless to interrupt it. Since Eugenia never accepted that Nicholas was dead and kept telling herself that he was in France, she never processed his passing. When Eugenia grew up, she passed on all those repressed feelings she had about Nicholas, and maybe life in general, to Agustina via the act of collecting bugs. 

Now, initially, Agustina associated those bugs with womanhood. When she got her first period, she saw them crawling all over her toys and her legs. When her family was homophobic towards Bichi, she saw the bugs again, thereby evolving the underlying meaning of the bugs into disdain towards her family’s bigotry. When she went on somewhat of a spree of making out with random guys every day, she felt those bugs crawling all over her body, thereby making them a symbol of self-loathing. Before she suffered a miscarriage, the bugs became an extension of Agustina’s fear that she was about to pass down all her flaws and shortcomings to that unborn child. And when she saw them again, after returning to her ancestral home to celebrate her mother’s birthday and her brother’s marriage announcement, she came to the realization that those bugs were an indicator of generational trauma. That’s when she knew that she had to address all the lies, deceit, and pretense that her family’s foundation was built upon. She needed to dismantle it all if she wanted to be truly free. And, well, that’s what she did. 

That explosive confrontation with Eugenia and Joaco, after tolerating their idiotic behavior for decades, was the biggest reason why Agustina got to give Aguilar the closure that he required and welcome him back into her life once he was sure that he loved her, warts and all. However, the issue with something as deep-rooted as generational trauma is that it never gets fixed. In an attempt to give the characters and the viewers a happy ending, the showrunners claim that Agustina is fine. But it’s entirely possible that those bugs might rear their ugly heads in her life because she never went to therapy or some kind of psychiatric care. The only saving grace in this whole situation is that if Agustina starts bugging out again, now the couple knows the root of the issue, and they can attack it directly instead of shooting in the dark and hoping for things to just get better. Anyway, those are my thoughts on the ending of Delirium. But I would love to hear your views and opinions on the show, so please do leave a comment below.

...