While Prime Video’s original series often draw from novels to tell their stories, they rarely do as much justice to the book as 2026’s The House of the Spirits, with some exceptions like Barry Jenkins’ take on Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. Drawing from Chilean author Isabel Allende’s 1982 debut novel of the same name, the show does a beautiful job transposing the book’s blend of multigenerational family saga, magical realism, and poetic tale of the ravages of time and the longstanding effects of violence to a new medium. The series is not afraid to be melodramatic, colorful, and rich, studying the Trueba family from their humble beginnings in an unnamed Latin American country that slowly descends into a horrific political situation. Narrating the saga is Alba (Rochi Hernandez), who thrusts us into the world of the family with as much speed as The Royal Tenenbaums.
Every episode of The House of the Spirits feels like a short film in itself, with the show as a whole mimicking the book’s decades-spanning structure. Much like the first season of House of the Dragon, years can pass between episodes, but familial relationships stay the same, lingering on old wounds and traumas hidden behind. Allende’s novel was unafraid to deal with heavy subject matter, like animal violence, a country’s descent into fascism, and sexual violence, and the show’s faithfulness to those aspects of the book is its greatest feature. Part of the passage of time is conveyed by a color palette. Like in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 take on Little Women, the nostalgic early years are often offset by a steely grey-blue take on the present day, as Alba pores over her family history, digging into a journal left behind by her clairvoyant grandmother Clara (Dolores Fonzi as an older woman; Nicole Wallace in younger years). Clara’s journal is a Rosetta Stone for the family history, a document of 50 years from the mid-1920s onward.
‘House of the Spirits’ Has A Compelling Villain in Esteban Trueba
While The House of the Spirits moves quickly through its eras, running with a montage-like pace through Esteban Trueba’s (Alfonso Herrera) courtship of Clara’s older sister Rosa (Chiara Parravicini), it’s hard to imagine it in a more condensed timeframe. But the book was first adapted as a Hollywood drama in 1993, with a number of subplots shelved and a cast full of English-speaking actors like Jeremy Irons, whose cold villainy was appropriate enough for Esteban, but not quite on the level of Herrera’s three-dimensional performance. After Rosa’s tragic early passing, the show version of Esteban grows into a darkly tyrannical patriarch whose class resentment and casual cruelty becomes a stand-in for the terrors the country will soon face. Herrera’s performance as Esteban shows his descent and development into the wicked master of Las Tres Marías, the Trueba family estate, and the eventual husband of Clara.
Collider Exclusive · Universe Personality Quiz Which Iconic Universe Do You Belong in the Most? Star Wars · Lord of the Rings · Harry Potter · Game of Thrones · Star Trek
Five legendary universes. Five completely different visions of what the world could be — or already was. One of them is the world your instincts, your values, and your particular way of existing were built for. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🚀Star Wars
💍Lord of the Rings
🧙Harry Potter
👑Game of Thrones
🖖Star Trek
01
What gives your life its deepest sense of meaning? Every universe is built around a different answer to this question.
02
Which kind of world do you most want to inhabit? The environment shapes who you become. Choose carefully.
03
How do you prefer your conflicts resolved? The shape of a world’s conflicts tells you everything about its soul.
04
Who do you want beside you when things get difficult? Your ideal companions reveal the world you were made for.
05
What is your relationship with power? How you seek, wield, or resist power is the map of who you are.
06
How does your universe treat good and evil? A world’s moral architecture tells you more about it than any map.
07
What role would you naturally fall into? Every universe has archetypes. Which one fits you without trying?
08
What do you ultimately believe about the future? The answer to this is the clearest window into which universe already lives inside you.
Your Universe Has Been Chosen You Belong In…
Your answers point to the iconic universe your values, your instincts, and your particular way of seeing the world were built for. This is where you would find your people — and your purpose.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
You believe in the cause — in the idea that freedom is worth fighting for even when the odds are impossible and the empire is vast.
You are drawn to the moral clarity of a universe where hope itself is a form of resistance.
You’d find your people in the Rebellion — a ragtag coalition of true believers held together by conviction more than resources.
Star Wars is fundamentally a story about ordinary people choosing to matter in an extraordinary conflict — and that is exactly your kind of story.
The Force may or may not be with you. But the will to use it for something larger than yourself certainly is.
Middle-earth
Lord of the Rings
You understand, in the deepest part of yourself, that the journey matters as much as the destination — and that the world’s beauty is worth protecting even at great cost.
Middle-earth is a world of ancient wonder, deep friendship, and a darkness that only retreats when enough small acts of courage accumulate.
You would thrive here because you value the fellowship more than the glory — the road more than the arrival.
Tolkien’s universe rewards patience, loyalty, and the willingness to carry something heavy across a very long distance.
Those are not burdens to you. They are simply how you move through the world.
The Wizarding World
Harry Potter
You believe that love, loyalty, and doing what’s right are not naive sentiments — they are the most powerful forces in any world, magical or otherwise.
The Wizarding World is a place of wonder hidden in plain sight, where learning is transformative and the bonds you form at school follow you into every battle.
You would flourish here because you take both the magic and the friendships seriously — and you understand that one without the other is incomplete.
Harry Potter’s universe ultimately rewards those who choose to stand for something even when standing is terrifying.
That choice — made quietly, without guarantee — is something you understand completely.
Westeros · The Known World
Game of Thrones
You see the world clearly — its power structures, its hypocrisies, its brutal arithmetic — and you are not paralysed by that clarity. You use it.
Westeros is a world that rewards intelligence, adaptability, and the willingness to understand that every alliance is also a negotiation.
You would survive here — possibly thrive here — because you don’t confuse the world as it is with the world as you’d like it to be.
Game of Thrones is a story about what happens when the idealists and the realists collide. You are sharp enough to know which one lasts longer.
Winter always comes. You are already prepared.
The United Federation of Planets
Star Trek
You believe the future is worth building — that curiosity, cooperation, and the expansion of understanding are not just ideals but the most practical path forward for any civilisation.
Star Trek is a universe where the questions matter as much as the answers, and where encountering something utterly alien is cause for wonder rather than fear.
You would belong here because you are fundamentally optimistic about what intelligence and decency can achieve — while being honest about how hard that achievement is.
The Federation is the universe’s most ambitious thought experiment: what if we actually got better?
You don’t just hope that’s possible. You think it’s the only thing worth working toward.
Esteban is a tricky character, in large part because he lasts so long. The series is brutal and rewarding because it deals so much with the subjugation, abuse, and resilience of women. Esteban is an immediate foil. In his younger years, his cruel treatment of women and campaign of sexual misconduct have aftereffects you can only see by the series’ end, with the full picture in mind. Rising from the back-breaking toils of mine work to being a property owner, he has nothing but contempt for the political shift heralded by the arrival of the Communist party to the country. Because of the show’s structure, with Alba looking backwards at events, viewers get a sense of dramatic irony not quite present in Allende’s novel, with a sense of where all these lives go. That framing device casts a unique glow on the show’s rich melodrama. Births and deaths collide as Clara, whose clairvoyant gifts become more prominent as the show progresses, gives birth to Esteban’s daughter Blanca (Fernanda Urrejola, who co-wrote the series, in middle age; Sara Becker in younger years).
‘House of the Spirits’ Is A Magical Realist Latin Melodrama
By emphasizing the actual Latin American qualities of the original decades-spanning book, the show gets the chance to breathe, with its operatic elements playing directly against its larger saga of political change. It’s neither a dry retelling of history nor total soap opera, but a mix that is true to the spirit of Isabel Allende’s novel. Its acknowledgment of the passage of time means one episode might have a character being born and the next might cast them as a young adult. Alba grows from childhood to participating in revolutionary politics and discovering horrific truths about her family. The novel emphasized heartache, trauma, and magical realism, and the show works in the same big, melodramatic beats, slowly replacing the charming nostalgia of its early episodes with the devastation of a country falling into ruin. If the first half of the show is Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the second is more Steven Soderbergh.
Ghosts are real in the story of House of the Spirits. They are almost incidental, complex characters in their own right that can guide or complicate the journeys of the living. Uncle Marcos (Juan Pablo Raba) serves as a ghostly confidant to young Clara, and in the 1970s, Alba is often visited by her grandmother Clara in times of great despair. But more pertinently, the ghosts reflect Esteban’s actions and the privilege the family was able to experience by ignoring who had to pay most, particularly in the form of Esteban Garcia, Jr. (Pedro De Tavira). The show is a richly compelling meditation throughout, and a novel adaptation that allows the characters the tragic complexity they deserve.
