Stars: 2.5/5

The Queen of Tejano music, AKA Selena Quintanilla, and her legacy lives on in the new Netflix series detailing her life story. This television series, titled “Selena: The Series”, depicts the singer’s rise to stardom, but it did not hit the mark for me and many other fans of the artist. It is safe to say that the series was, for the most part, lackluster in comparison to the 1997 film about the singer, “Selena,” starring Jennifer Lopez. 

Part one of the series, which included nine episodes, was available to stream Dec. 4 on Netflix. I was anticipating this series from the moment it was announced to be in the works by Netflix in 2018. The Tejano singer managed to touch the hearts of people worldwide during her short-lived career that ended too soon after being brutally murdered in 1995 at the young age of 23. 

For those who grew up with Selena’s music, including myself, the series did not do her story justice as I hoped it would. The series starts with Selena’s story from when she was just a young Mexican-American girl living with her family in Texas in the early ’80s. The child actress who plays young Selena, Madison Taylor Baez, stood out the most amongst the other actors in the series. Even though Baez was only seen in the first two episodes showcasing how Selena started her singing career, her performance was undoubtedly the best and most accurate portrayal of the famous singer. As the series goes on, there is less to be impressed by when it comes to how her story was portrayed.

We get to watch Selena grow into the successful musician she was, while also getting a glimpse into her family-oriented upbringing and the drama that came with it. It is heartwarming to see how much her parents and siblings had an impact on her building her career while traveling on a run-down bus to perform around the United States. Regardless, the scenes in each episode would jump from one year to two years later in an instant, and this made me think that there might have been a loss in focus on what the creators wanted to show viewers about her journey to becoming a platinum-selling artist. 

There were certain important milestones in Selena’s life that were shown in the series, such as her getting her first record deal and even her first love Chris Perez, played by Jesse Posey, who was loathed by her father Abraham Quintanilla, played by Ricardo Antonio Chavira. These instances, however, did not make up for the fact that the show felt rushed and sloppy in a sense. The music did help keep the show and it was interesting to see how each of Selena’s songs came to be international hits during the early ’90s. 

I will admit that the series can be quite entertaining when you are not paying too much attention to the inconsistencies. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like dancing every time Selena would perform “Baila Esta Cumbia” during one of her concerts. Even if it is not the best show Netflix has released recently, you would be able to enjoy some of Selena’s best songs along the way.