So last year my friend and I started watching Alta Mar/High Seas after watching the trailer as it looked really good. We were both thoroughly pleased as it was AMAZING and we couldn’t stop until we finished it.
The story is of two sisters, Eva and Carolina Villanueve. They lost their father, their home country of Spain was greatly changed because of WWII, and both ladies are looking for something new. Carolina had been running the family business, but decided to sell the company and is planning to marry Fernando Fábregas (owner of the ocean liner the Barbara de Braganza). Her sister Eva doesn’t like the changes Carolina is making but is still supporting her. She is also traveling on the Barbara de Braganza to Brazil to meet with a publisher interested in her book.

On our way!
They are on their way to the ship’s dock and hit a woman, a woman running away from an abusive man with powerful connections. Eva takes pity on her, ignores Carolina, and sneaks her aboard as a stowaway. However, this woman is not who she says she is and the sisters are in for quite the journey.
Someone is murdered on the ship, and it turns out their uncle Pedro and family friend Dr. Rojas have some secret they are keeping from the girls, their stowaway vanishes, someone they thought was dead is alive, and more. All this while they are on a ship in the middle of the ocean-you can see how it makes for one fantastic season.
While the first season was amazing, the second was horrible. First Mate Nicolás and Eva have fallen in love and tons of fangirls were ecstatic, but in season 2 they broke them up as Nicolás’ wife turned out to be alive.
Carolina found out that her husband was going to run off before the wedding, but his girlfriend disappeared-murdered. So yeah, their marriage isn’t going that great. And it turned out that Francesca their surrogate mother and housekeeper murdered Rosa Marin.
Veronica broke up with Sebastian, he lost all his money [although they say that’s not why they broke up], and she got with Dimas (he deserves better).
Let’s see…what else happened? Oh yes, Clara committed suicide as she couldn’t handle her rape, killing her rapist (it was in self-defense), and the rapist’s wife/co-killer going after her boyfriend.
So…yeah I hated Season 3, not as much as Season 2 as it did have one amazing storyline. But it was cut short and just not good as a whole.
***Spoilers***
So we start off with the series with Coronavirus type disease floating in the ocean-weird choice.

What??
So Eva has had her book published and goes into a bookstore to look at it, so happy and pleased! There she is approached by a man going by “Fabio” who is a spy and needs to get on the ship and look at the passports as they are searching for a scientist or his helper who created a killer virus. She agrees, although I don’t know why she would after all that she and her sister have been through, you think they would be the most least trusting people on the planet. Wouldn’t you? I mean the first girl was a crazy lady after gold, the second was a fake psychic trying to drive her sister crazy, plus both their father and surrogate mother were crazy and killed people.
She and Carolina should be like how Sydney was at the beginning of Scream 3 not wanting to befriend or trust anyone.

I don’t trust her.
They prepare to be off.

Let’s go!
Meanwhile in the ship we have Nicolás who is there with his wife Chantel. I tried to hate her but she was tortured in the concentration camps, so….yeah I can’t. Nicolás actually is hardly in this as the other ship’s captain disappears. Nicolás is still first mate, although I don’t know why they let the previous captain keep his job when he was going crazy in the previous seasons, but anyway-so he is set to take care of that ship and is in the first episode, a little in the middle, and then just in the end. What the heck? Why wasn’t he in this.
I watch for Nicolás and Eva, not Eva and Fabio.

Ugh…
So Pierre (Clara’s former fiance) is moved up to first mate.
So this other ship belongs to Carolina. She put her half of the fortune from selling her father’s company into her own ships. She is still married to Fernando but is freezing him out. I love it as Fernando actually treats her good and tries anything he can to get her to warm up and she is just an Ice Queen. You deserve it Fernando.
So Fabio and his supervising agent come, and they can’t tell anything from the passports. The other agent recognizes someone on the boat and dies-they don’t know who the person is, and now Fabio is stuck on the ship with Eva. He’s supposed to be her love interest I guess, but I don’t like him. Ugh, Fabio get out.
So Carolina has the most interesting storyline. So there is another group interested in the virus-the ship’s new doctor, Dr. Ayala, (we had to replace the murdering one from Season 1 +2), is traveling with a friend of their Uncle Pedro, Carmen. Carmen is taking the trip with her very sick and injured daughter Diana. She’s covered in bandages so we can’t see her. You know what that means-she’s not sick but just disguising herself.

Hmm…
I’m right of course as it turns out she has had surgery to look just like Carolina. Alejandra Onieva is a fantastic actress in her movements and her manner as she goes from street tough Diana to classy Carolina. The whole reason behind her appearance is to befriend Eva and get information out of her.
Diana does what she is told, but she also likes Carolina’s life. She likes the money, the clothes, the husband, etc. Fernando is enthused to have his wife want to be with him, although he feels uncertain about. Whenever he poses a question Diana distracts him. One day he finds a mole on her shoulder that he was 100% sure she didn’t have, but then…like always-she convinces him to focus on other things.

From The Great Gatsby
So Diana continues with her job, taking anything Eva shares and working against her and Fabio. However, she wants to change the terms-she wants Carolina’s life. The doctor doesn’t care, but Carmen is starting to have second thoughts.
Eva notices things are weird too as Carolina has seemed to forget everything that happened in the previous cruise. However, the drugs on the real Carolina have rubbed off a bit that she tries to communicate with Veronique, who’s been assigned as “Diana’s” special nurse. Veronique worries about “Diana” as she seems scared of her mother and the doctor. One day she is really troubled that she returns with help and when she comes back with help, they can’t find “Diana”, they go searching and finds Carolina/Diana trying to kill her…Carolina/Diana? Who is the real Carolina, Eva has to figure it out, you know after she gets over the shock of seeing two of her sister.

Where is going on?
And I liked Fernando in this, which surprised me as I hated him the last two seasons. He was really trying to make things right with his wife. When he sees the real Carolina and how they had been drugging her.m, he is so upset and worried for her. That was cute.
So yeah, the Carolina and Diana storyline was the best as it sucked me in right away and never let go.
I just had to know what was going to happen next!
So they are after the virus, meanwhile Pierre has made the captain think he is crazy, and has taken over the ship with a plan made with the new first mate. You see-Pierre wanted to ruin Natalia Fábregas and teamed up with the first mate to destroy the company, but it turns out they are terrorists with the virus and planning to unleash it on the ship. They give it to Carolina, but it turns out it was really given to Diana instead.

Hmm…
Nicolas comes and turns everything on the ship right, as Pierre and his people had taken over and mutined. It’s like really fast, snap that’s over.

Well…
Dr. Ayala turns out to be the evil torturous doctor from the concentration camps that hurt Chantel, but they need him as they need a doctor to make an antidote. And surprise, surprise he does in like no time at all from the blood of maid Alex, who is the creator of the virus and had already taken the antidote. And not only is he able to an antidote with the few supplies they had around on the ship, but he creates enough to save everyone onboard. But that doesn’t save them as Mexico bombs the ship as they can’t stand having the people come in and possibly spread the virus. Like why wouldn’t they contact them first.
Eva and Nicholas rush together, but he is stabbed by Alex who survives all the blood being drawn from her, which is literally impossible.
There is no way. I have been with friends who had a little blood drawn and they couldn’t handle driving, let alone running and stabbing someone.
And don’t get me started on Nicolás’ death. First of all I am angry and appalled as I loved Nicolás and wanted him and Eva to somehow be reunited. And secondly I am extremely angry that is all they give us. To be honest if that’s all they were going to do, why didn’t they just not have him come back? He could have told Eva he loves her but as his wife is alive he is taking a job on another ship or he could have written a letter or telegram? And who’s great idea was it to write Fabio? He was boring and we knew nothing about him, and there was zero chemistry. I was extremely disappointed and heartbroken.
The ship goes down destroyed, just like my hopes and dreams of another seeason to love.
For more on High Seas, go to A Psychic Arrives and a Ghost Haunts the Ship: High Seas Season Two (2019)
For more spy stories, go to Murder, False Imprisonment, Nuclear Bombs, and Nazi Spies: Bon Voyage (2003)