'Fugue State 1986' Ending Explained: How Did Leon Defy Jeremias?

Fugue State 1986’s ending was about Leon returning to writing after learning the truth about Jeremias. Leon’s pursuit for some books on Robert Louis Stevenson, which he needed to complete his thesis, brought him across Jeremias, who was a Vietnam War veteran, a budding polyglot, and the crossword creator for the El Intervalo newspaper. They became close friends, and they opened a Crimes Club where they turned the most horrific thoughts that crossed their minds into literature. During this process, Jeremias realized that Leon suffered from PTSD because he had witnessed his father get kidnapped and tortured, while Leon realized that Jeremias actually wanted to commit “mass murder” to wake the nation from its slumber. In addition to that, Jeremias wanted Leon to get closure by getting revenge against one of the guys, Ocampo, who had turned Leon’s dad into a vegetable. 

While Leon struggled with the notion of kidnapping Ocampo’s daughter, Teresa, to teach Ocampo a lesson, Jeremias went on a killing spree where he murdered his own mother, his neighbors, his student, his student’s mother, and then the staff and customers of the San Marzino restaurant. Following that incident, Jeremias died, but since Leon was unable to remember what he was doing the day of the mass murder because of his dissociative amnesia, he began investigating why Jeremias did what he did and if Jeremias had influenced him enough to play an active part in Teresa’s disappearance. Leon wasn’t alone in this mission; he was joined by Indira, a disgraced forensics expert who was trying to get her job back by cracking the curious case of Jeremias and bringing Teresa home. So, what did they unearth? What was the point of their ordeal? Let’s find out. But before doing so, here’s a disclaimer: everything in this article is based on the fictional events presented in Fugue State 1986 and not a commentary on the real-life incidents that inspired writers Ana Maria Parra and Mario Mendoza.

Spoiler Alert

Jeremias Was Probably A US Intelligence Plant

The title cards that we saw in Fugue State 1986’s ending clarified that Jeremias was almost exactly like his real-life counterpart, Delgado. Much like Delgado, Jeremias was a Vietnam War veteran, his father had died of suicide, he had a fraught relationship with his mother, he had a lot of difficulty making friends, and he committed mass murder. Everything beyond that was pure rumor-mongering or fiction. For example, we can’t say for sure that the real-life killer had a handler from the Colombian Intelligence Services called Guillermo who sent him on “missions” or provided him with confidential information about the guys who had kidnapped and tortured his friend’s father. There’s no way of knowing if he had a friend in the first place. And there’s undoubtedly no way to confirm that Delgado was exploited by a US intelligence agency to carry out that massacre so as to further the negative sentiment against communist groups. However, Fugue State 1986 did make it seem like there were three very specific aspects to the crime that was committed by Jeremias. Firstly, there was his misogynistic and anti-social behavior; secondly, his misplaced sense of nationalism; and thirdly, he was a scapegoat for the USA. 

Jeremias was a very myopic individual, and on top of that, he misinterpreted the world to a troubling extent. His father’s death by suicide could have been due to a multitude of reasons, but Jeremias decided that it was his mother’s infidelity that forced his dad to take such a drastic step. And when someone treats his own mother in a misogynistic fashion, he’s bound to see every other woman in a similar light. He liked women; he yearned for their attention, but at the same time, he despised them, and that obviously affected the manner in which he conducted himself in front of women. And when he saw these women maintaining their distance from him (which was an understandable reaction) and “fooling around” with other men, he’d get furious. As a war veteran, he probably thought he was owed something for his sacrifices. Even if he objectified women, I guess he expected them to fawn over him. That said, when a prostitute allowed him to objectify her, he didn’t like that. This messed up mindset also affected his understanding of literature. Much like the millions of people (including Jeremias) who misunderstood Taxi Driver as an endorsement of incel culture, Jeremias read the works of R.L. Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle and distorted them in order to fuel his perverse worldview. That goes to show that an artist’s intent is no guarantee of how their art is going to be perceived. Some people might enjoy your stories as stories, while individuals like Jeremias will use them as inspiration to commit heinous crimes. 

At the end of the day though, all his supposed complexity was watered down to further the agenda of the forces that were trying to manufacture a conflict in Colombia. The show heavily insinuated that probably the USA, via Guillermo, was purposefully keeping Jeremias on edge with the promise of a civil war that’d “set the country right.” I say it was probably the USA because Diego, the waiter at San Marzino, said that right after the massacre, there were people in there, along with the army and the police, who were talking in English. Diego couldn’t even confirm if Jeremias had killed himself or if those English-speaking people put him down. The priest who took care of Jeremias’ funeral proceedings stated that the killer’s body was removed by people who didn’t even speak to him, and Leon speculated that maybe it was the US Army that “misplaced” the body because there was a lot of evidence on him that could point to some kind of international meddling. And if you couple all that with the final shot of Jeremias where a bunch of faceless people planted a bunch of items around him and also put two bullets into his dead body to make it look like an encounter, it seems like he was an agent of chaos whose strings were being pulled by the USA to agitate the socio-cultural climate of Colombia (something that’s happening to this day). With all that said, if Jeremias was reading John D. Marks’ The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, maybe he or Guillermo purposefully made it seem like he was a CIA plant so as to avoid any suspicions about his ties with Colombian Intelligence. 

Leon Proved Art Will Triumph Over Terrorism

Leon was a completely fictional character who probably served as a stand-in for Parra and Mendoza as they imagined what would have happened if they actually interacted with Delgado. But beyond that, what was the purpose of Leon as a character? Across fiction as well as in real life, we have seen numerous examples of troubled kids being brainwashed into becoming terrorists. These children have a lot of unchecked trauma, which can be shaped into something that’s fierce and violent. If they are educated, then that’s better because their eloquence and apparent facade of intelligence can be used to further any kind of problematic ideologies. And if all else fails, they can be turned into weapons who’ll strike any target that their masters want. The most traumatic incident in Leon’s life was the attack on his father that left him paralyzed. Leon had numerous friends, his love life was thriving, and his teachers loved him. But he couldn’t talk about that fateful day with any of them. Even his mother was unwilling to get into that topic, while his brother was just too young to offer any insightful opinions about that matter. So, when Jeremias entered his life, Leon thought that he could trust him with that sensitive information. When Jeremias learned that Leon’s father’s attackers, Azuero and Ocampo, were people who were wanted by the intelligence agency that Guillermo worked for, he started to manipulate him into hurting Ocampo; Azuero had left the country, so there was no point going after him. 

Whether or not Jeremias did this on his own accord or on Guillermo’s orders is a big question mark. What’s obvious, though, is that Jeremias’ methods of radicalizing Leon were incredibly problematic. And maybe if Jeremias tried to influence somebody who wasn’t as well-read and intelligent as Leon, that individual probably would have killed Teresa to give Ocampo a taste of his own medicine. However, maybe due to Leon’s intellect or his dissociative amnesia, Jeremias failed to completely transform him into a mindless killing machine and set him on a path of introspection and retrospection. Now, even though Leon didn’t hurt Teresa’s hair, the gardener at Teresa’s school kidnapped her in order to do unspeakable things to her, thereby showing us that while we are focusing on the story of one misogynistic madman, there are several others working in the background. 

Anyway, Teresa’s rescue operation, led by Indira and Leon, finally brought him face to face with Ocampo, who destroyed the image that Leon had of his father. The politics of the show got a little confusing here, but from what I understood, Ocampo was in the police (because he was Mario’s colleague, who was also in the police), and one of his colleagues was kidnapped and tortured by Leon’s dad. In retaliation, Ocampo and Azuero kidnapped and tortured Leon’s dad and made Leon watch it. Why did Guillermo expose the identities of Ocampo and Azuero then? I am not really sure. The fact of the matter was that Leon could have continued that cycle of abuse, especially since he was being pushed to do so by Jeremias, but he chose not to. Leon had been punishing his dad for never doing something about his attackers, but after realizing that his dad must’ve remained silent because he thought he had gotten the punishment he deserved, he chose to reconcile with him. Because what’s the point of chastising a guy who chastises himself every day he wakes up and feels the hurt that he has caused others due to his physical injuries? 

After that, Leon mended his ties with his friends and family because his act of spiraling out had hurt them the most. But when it came to getting some kind of closure regarding his tryst with Jeremias, that came from his dying teacher, Professor Gustavo, who passed on Jeremias’ thesis on the link between Jack the Ripper and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as all the cassette tapes that essentially had Jeremias’ autobiography in them. No, none of that helped Leon understand why Jeremias did what he did, but it convinced him that he needed to focus on being a writer because there were way too many people trying to be terrorists. Jeremias had said that the world that they lived in needed more terrorists than writers. However, what has terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise, and wars actually solved? Innocent lives are lost while the architects of those conflicts thrive. If people become educated, then they’ll question why their country is constantly in a state of conflict, thereby forcing the leaders to spend more money on public welfare instead of guerrilla and anti-guerrilla forces. That said, why was Leon using his return to the world of writing to supposedly write about Jeremias (that too after funding an empty grave of him at the cemetery)? That’s because Leon had gone from being an idealist to a realist. He knew that there were many people like Jeremias out there. Hence, maybe he’s under the impression that he can turn Jeremias’ saga into a cautionary tale and dissuade them from making the same mistakes that he did. But what are the chances that that’ll backfire and create more Jeremiases? Only time will tell, but if Leon didn’t try, then his entanglement with Jeremias would have been in vain.

Indira Ensured She’d Get Her Job Back

Much like Leon, I think Indira was a completely fictional character who served as the secondary audience surrogate in Fugue State 1986. And if it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have gotten a half-decent idea of who Jeremias was as a person, Leon would have been framed as the San Marzino killer (because of his association with Jeremias), and Teresa would have been raped and killed by that gardener. Indira must have dove headfirst into this whole affair because she wanted her old job back, but eventually she became emotionally invested in this whole affair because the life of an innocent child hung in the balance. Indira had every reason to be nihilistic, say that it was a man’s world and this was how things would be, and just give up because the odds were insanely stacked against her. Officially, she didn’t have any kind of authority to go around asking questions. The only person who could give her any kind of direction was a dissociative amnesiac. If things went sideways, Guillermo and those in the intelligence agency could have her killed for looking into things that would shed light on the true nature of US-Colombia relations. Yet she stuck to her guns and kept pressing everyone who knew Jeremias when he was alive (especially Leon) and those who were involved in a cover-up after Jeremias’ death. And she didn’t give up until Teresa returned home and Leon’s name was cleared. 

The mess centered around Jeremias was too convoluted for her to solve, but since Leon passed on his autobiographical tapes to her, and one of them had Guillermo’s name in it, she decided to use it as leverage to compel Guillermo to reinstate her as a forensics expert in the police. We didn’t see Guillermo fulfilling Indira’s wish, but what other option did he have? Indira had made multiple copies of that tape. Guillermo had no clue who she had shared those tapes with and whether or not she had instructed them to publish it if she was found dead. So, yeah, it’s safe to assume that Guillermo pulled some strings, brought Indira’s taxi-driving and amateur-sleuthing days to an end, and helped her do the job that she loved. Does that make Indira an opportunist, though? Well, no. After profiling Jeremias, she was aware of the fact that a new kind of villainy was on the rise in her country. She could stay on the sidelines and pick up the pieces once the crime had been committed, or she could join the police and help the authorities identify problematic individuals before they even thought of committing a crime. Also, as a woman, Indira had a personal stake in this matter. 

There were so many girls out there who were being stalked and hated by people like Jeremias. These girls just wanted to live, laugh, love, and then do a job that they were interested in. If that future was snatched away from them because of a bunch of men who hated women just for the sake of hating them, then Indira probably wouldn’t be able to live with herself. Of course, the police force had problems, and they might’ve been involved in the cover-up around Jeremias’ death. But until and unless Indira had the official permission to solve crimes, she wouldn’t be able to make any progress. Therefore, even though Indira’s final decision seemed a little selfish, I don’t think it was. She had a huge responsibility on her shoulders, and if executing her self-imposed duty meant that she had to wring Guillermo’s hand until he bent his knee to her, so be it. There’s no way to say if Indira’s gamble will pay off and if she’ll be able to direct the ire of these misguided men at those in power or not; that’s something only time can tell. Or maybe it already has, and we are choosing to ignore it for one reason or another. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on Fugue State 1986’s ending. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.

...