Brace Yourself For Mylene's Huge Get Down Bombshells

This post contains big Get Down spoilers. We need to talk about them after you finish the penultimate episode, “Gamble Everything.”

The Get Down may be all about Ezekiel “Books” Figuero’s journey to becoming a hip hop superstar, but we’re pretty obsessed with his girlfriend, the budding disco queen Mylene Cruz (Herizen Guardiola). Part 2 of Baz Luhrmann’s platform-shoe-filled Netflix musical has arrived and it picks up one year after the events of part 1. Penultimate episode "Gamble Everything" proves Mylene is the real center of this story, as major theories and shocks take over the installment.

You go into the episode believing the actual draw will be seeing Mylene’s first genuinely sexy, blow-the-windows-off-the-club performance. She spends the first few episodes of part 2 realizing she should "break free" from her violent, controlling pastor father Ramon and finally gets her chance at Ruby Con club, a den so full of iniquity it puts Studio 54 to shame.

After a few meltdowns, Mylene claims her power and sexuality, performing to her "raunchy" new track "Toy Box." Despite seeing her dad in the crowd, the singer still rocks a glittery sheer bodysuit, writhes on a hot pink bed, and sings about meeting the devil inside of a lover. It’s Mylene at her most fearless and that would be enough to make "Gamble" worth a watch.

But, it’s what follows that makes the episode unforgettable.

Earlier in the installment, Pastor Cruz (Giancarlo Esposito) beats his wife Lydia (Zabryna Guevara) over her choice to let Mylene perform for herself, therefore encouraging the teen to go to Ruby Con in the first place. Lydia doesn’t accept this kind of abuse and runs to her brother-in-law Francisco’s apartment, since she’s been in love with him for years.

Pastor Cruz ends up at Francisco’s apartment drunk and angry following Mylene’s performance, where the so-called man of God was pummeled and tossed out of. Outside, Ramon watches Francisco and Lydia kiss and then storms inside, demanding Lydia comes back home since he beat her "for [a] good reason."

After years of emotional and physical abuse, she finally says no and declares their relationship over. Ramon says this is fine, but she can’t have "his" Mylene — and that’s where things get interesting.

"She’s not yours," Lydia says, confirming longtime fan speculation on the singer’s paternity. "I can’t lie no more. She’s Francisco’s. There. And if you weren’t so obsessed with yourself and your religion and your brutal, punishing God you’d have figured that out by the beginning."

She’s not wrong, since I guessed that fact the moment I saw Lydia and Francisco in the same room together. My speculation was all but confirmed in part 1’s third episode, "Darkness Is Your Candle" when Francisco tells Lydia he's "slept alone" since 1960. That year also happens to be the year Mylene was likely conceived.

Another bombshell follows Mylene’s paternity shocker, when we see still-drunk Ramon has fled the terrible scene at his brother’s home and went to his new mega-church. He gives a grand Baz Luhrmann-y sermon to an empty auditorium. He slut shames Lydia (her "fruits" were not hers to give), says disco-singing Mylene has been taken by Satan, and criticizes Francisco's desire for earthly goods.

Then, as we stare the golden palace Ramon bought himself, we hear a gunshot. Pastor Cruz has committed suicide. In one of the most violent scenes in Get Down history, a post-party Mylene finds her dead "father" bleeding out on the church stage.