The modern Bluebeard as a lawyer in a suit
The series "I Know Who You Are" is a brilliant metaphor of whom—and what—we're willing to believe and protect
It’s telling that a show that first aired in Spain in 2017, is having its international moment now. Sé Quién Eres—I know who you are—was reviewed back then in The Guardian by Sam Woallaston and presented as a “fabulous-looking Spanish drama [that] gets new life out of the man-with-amnesia plot, as a hotshot lawyer finds himself under attack from all sides,” and praised in Spain for Pau Freixa’s ability to create a suspenseful story that put the country on the map—alongside a number of other series—La Casa de Papel comes to mind—attracting international attention.
But the thing I found compelling about the series is less its penchant for building tension than the way it faithfully portrays the way we all project our own expectations, wishes, and desires, onto the people we love or know—often with a willingness to be blind to who they are or want to be.
The set-up of the series sees Juan Elias—one of Barcelona’s most powerful and most feared lawyers—meander in the wake of an accident at dawn. He’s injured and unaware of his name, as well as of what happened to him, and he’s still in shock and very much amnesic when the doctor lets in his wife, who not only doesn’t seem very loving or worried, but tells him he’s the prime suspect in the disappearance of Anna Saura—a twenty-something student in Elias’ class who also happens to be Elias’ niece.
What follows is Elias’ journey to uncover who he is: not an easy task in a world where everybody tells him “I know who you are,” with the kind of stark certainty that appeals to the speaker’s angst (whoever he or she is), but does nothing to assuage Elias’, especially as every version of him—the ones he wants to believe, the ones he does not—gets routinely put into question by the next one he’s handed on a silver platter. Obviously, no one version’s matches someone else’s.
Is Elias the kind man who used to be in love with lawyer and former student Eva Durán, with whom he had an affair eight years ago? Or is the shark his best friend and law firm partner assures him he is? Is he the sort of person who likes watching movies with his daughter Julieta and sharing the occasional spliff with his son? Or may he be the ruthless man who’s not so much married to Alicia, as in a kind of partnership with her: of the sort where the end always justifies the means, no matter how brutal?
In 2017, the focus may well have been on how masterfully all of the above contributed to upping the stakes and keeping the tension alive, but in 2025, with the feminist backlash increasingly taking advantage of the blurry lines between truth and fiction (or should I say, deepfakes), it seems apt to analyze what the characters are willing, or unwilling to believe.
Elias—especially at the beginning of the series—is very much the unreliable character. In a twist of fate, one of the very first things he discovers about himself is that, as a lawyer, he’d convinced his clients to fake amnesia to get acquitted of whatever it is they were getting persecuted for. And as a result, his own amnesia appears at the very least questionable to every other character.
Bot for him, instead, his memory loss acts like a portal.
Elias is like the young bride of Bluebeard, and exactly like the young bride, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes in Women who run with the Wolves, he can no longer rely on that which, as a lawyer, has served him well—namely his blunt, cutting logic and ability to manipulate others through reasoning.
Instead, in the darkness of his black-out, the only tools at his disposal are what Jung defined as feminine traits: intuition, sensitivity, the ability to hear and see what others can’t or won’t, the ability to heal. And the journey he goes through resembles at first Bluebeard’s young bride’s, who, in spite of the rumors going around about his groom, and in spite of her sister’s warnings, is unwilling or unable to see and acknowledge the horrors hidden inside the secret room.
Yet, the series flips the script on us.
Elias eventually remembers who he was, but instead of embracing the inner child that was awoken inside him under the spell of his amnesia, surrenders to the shadow masculine, ruthlessly putting himself first, all costs to everyone else be damned. If memory-less Elias was a young cherub distraught by discovery of the person he has turned into, recovered Elias is a modern Bluebeard: an ego-driven Jeff Bezos, whose scrappy beginnings (and workplace abuse) have seemingly all served the purpose of getting him a space shuttle and one of the world’s largest and most resource-consuming yachts.
Interestingly enough, at no point in the series does Elias appear to discount or justify his own malice. Even the reference to who he wants to be doesn’t seem infused with a desire for impact, or self-betterment. Elias has no qualms about clinging to power, and isn’t worried about what his claws may do to others.
Meanwhile, everyone around him reacts to Elias’ shocking confessions with disbelief, perhaps with the exception of his wife. “I know who you are,” goes the refrain, as if that’s enough to eliminate the ghosts—real and metaphorical—hiding in the basement.
Elias turns from man in need of protection and care—everyone tip-toeing around him when in the wake of his amnesia—to indomitable dictator so swiftly, it seems everyone around him can only try their best to play catch up: his wife, his son, his partner, who all become complicit—some more unintentionally and unconsciously than others—in Elias’ escalating number of crimes. Meanwhile, the men who do try to bring him to justice—a few policemen, a judge—hopelessly fail, and are left to stand by and watch.
Elias’ journey is the perfect metaphor for what is happening worldwide—with world leaders—men, predominantly men, always men—constantly being afforded the protection of their allies, aides, and family members (From aides pretending Biden wasn’t suffering from dementia as reported in the Ezra Klein show, or current Trump aides paying lip-service to Trump’s unfounded belief that Iran is threatening him, and throwing bombs on Teheran to satisfy his whims).
Meanwhile, the ship’s literally going under, and the number of boats—especially for women and children—are both scarce and defective (not so the aforementioned millionaire’s yachts).
And this brings me to the series’ ending, which left me cold and unsettled—because it is again reminiscent of things going on right now.
What bookends the first and last episode is a family barbecue. But it’s the scene just preceding it that summarizes the young bride’s demise and Bluebeard’s triumph: Elias’, still the successful lawyer, hosts a press conference at which he is surrounded by women: namely, the ones who chose to yield to his version of events, to preserve their position of power, sure. But also their safety, and even their lives.
The secret room stays full of blood—both literal and metaphorical—but the family stays intact, and a certain version of the world is preserved.
And maybe that’s where the metaphor is most poignant: because that’s what the Eliases tell each other again and again: it’s all to protect the children.
Make no mistake: it’s not.
The only one that gets away unscathed is, and always was going to be, the father.