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The Bridge Postmortem: Demian Bichir on Marco's Big Decision

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of The Bridge. Read at your own risk!] Throughout Season 2 of FX's The Bridge, Marco Ruiz (Demian Bichir) has been motivated by one thing: to avenge his son's death — and he finally got the chance to on Wednesday's episode. Did he take it?

liz-raftery.jpg
Liz Raftery

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of The Bridge. Read at your own risk!]

Throughout Season 2 of FX's The Bridge, Marco Ruiz (Demian Bichir) has been motivated by one thing: to avenge his son's death — and he finally got the chance to on Wednesday's episode. Did he take it?

Thanks to some string-pulling by Fausto Galvan (Ramon Franco), who also lost a son, and the help of a corrupt prison guard, Marco finds himself face-to-face with his son's killer, David Tate (Eric Lange). The scenario Marco's been fantasizing about becomes a reality: he's standing over the serial murderer, who's lying immobile in a hospital bed, a bandage over one eye (which was forcefully removed by another inmate earlier in the episode. Ick factor: 10).

But when push comes to shove, Marco can't bring himself to murder Tate — "not yet, anyway," he adds as an aside. Instead, he opts to disgustingly shove his thumb into Tate's eye socket, in what's easily the most gruesome incident of televised hand-on-eye violence since the Game of Thronesfight between The Mountain and The Viper.

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Is Marco simply not capable of killing a helpless man, or is he simply biding his time? What else does he have in store for Tate?

"[The scene] tells you everything about his nature," Bichir told reporters on a conference call recently. "Marco's a good person.  He's a good human being.  And although he has this commitment to honor the life of his son, the death of his son, he knows that if he crosses that line he will become exactly the same person as the other guy. He will be another type of angry David Tate."

It also remains to be seen how Fausto will react to Marco's inaction after he essentially delivered Tate to him on a silver platter. Bichir's a standout minimalist actor in the role, and the scene at the beginning of the episode with him and Fausto conveys how conflicted he is about his relationship to the cartel leader. So, for how much longer will he allow his personal vendetta to compromise the case he's working on?

"That's pretty much the interesting part of this journey that Marco's going through," Bichir says. "I think he realizes that he shouldn't expend more energy on small enemies, even though it was a big deal that this guy killed his son. But there's a bigger task, there's a greater good waiting for him to take some action on, and that's what makes him reconsider all this. He's been trying to get Fausto one way or another, and he can't waste any more time. So, he believes that probably it's not in his hands to make wrongs right in his own personal life, but there's a greater task that he's needed for."

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That might be easier said than done, though, as Marco's certainly caught between a rock and a hard place now. With both he and Mexican businessman Sebastian Cerisola (Bruno Bichir, Demian's real-life brother) aware of the other's ties to Fausto, it's probably only a matter of time before Marco's partner Sonya (Diane Kruger) discovers the connection as well.

"Marco is constantly struggling between those two worlds," Bichir says. "He's all the time in between heaven and hell in order to try to do the right thing, try to make things work. ... He is literally transiting from one place to another, crossing this border pretty much every day and seeing the best and the worst of both worlds. I guess he never really knew how much of a human he could be until he's face to face with David Tate." 

What do you think Marco's next move will be? And were you surprised by his encounter with Tate? Sound off below!

The Bridge airs Wednesdays at 10/11c on FX.