Parents' Guide to Betty La Fea: The Story Continues

The fun Colombian telenovela sequel offers fans of the original Betty la fea series a chance to revisit Betty and Armando as they navigate the challenges and celebrate the triumphs in their professional and personal lives. Betty la Fea: The Story Continues also brings back many other colorful characters, like Ecomoda's designer Hugo Lombardi (Julián Arango), staff supervisor Patricia (Lorna Cepeda), and receptionists Bertha Muñoz de González (Luces Velásquez) and Sandra Patiño (Marcela Posada), who form part of a group of employees that Lombardi refers to as the Cuartel de las Feas (The Ugly Cartel). Flashbacks are used to show viewers what life was like for Betty and her family for more than two decades, but the series is mostly focused on the present, and relies on the new, younger characters like Mila (Juanita Molina) and Ignacio Ortiz (Sebastián Osorio) to underscore how things have changed since Betty was a young assistant.

The sequel also turns the table on misogyny and points out LGBTQ+ stereotypes that were considered socially acceptable in the late 1990s. Throughout it all, Betty remains a strong and intelligent lead character who's unapologetic about who she is, her self worth, and what makes her wonderfully different and unique regardless of other people's beauty standards. Granted, all of this is contextualized in soapy plot lines and slapstick humor, some of which lands better in Spanish than in the dubbed versions. Nonetheless, Betty la Fea: The Story Continues successfully pays homage to its globally popular parent series, and does so while keeping the story focused on a present-day female role model who understands that true beauty comes from within.