The streaming giant Netflix previously released shows called ‘The Octopus Teacher’ and ‘The Blackfish’, which received a comparatively good response among the audience.
The animal series on the platform is growing at such a phenomenal rate, but with this new series called ‘The Last Dolphin King’, will it gain a much larger fan base than Discovery or National Geographic channel is a thing we look forward to in the future of documentaries.
‘The Last Dolphin King’ Jose Barbero:
Jose Luis Barbero began to work at Marineland Mallorca at the age of 59 with a professional background in dolphin training. The Spanish trainer had spent over 30 years training animals and finally gained a high-profile position as Chief dolphin trainer in Atlanta. He joined the Georgia aquarium at the beginning of March 2015 to gain a better portfolio for a much desired, more enormous transfer to the United States.
‘The Last Dolphin King’ Plot:
Soon after he was appointed the Senior vice president, a video showing Babero striking and kicking a dolphin was widely circulated. This incident occurred just days before he was to depart the Balearic Island. The fact that dolphins were trained in such an aggressive way shocked and hurt the SOSdelfines president. The 99-second video cast a shadow over Barbero’s long career and became a rage in all news organizations worldwide.
Barbero has been part of Marineland since the late 1980s and was a target of an animal rights activist campaign. He and his family started getting death threats, and as his wife claims, the entire experience had profoundly impacted him.
‘The Last Dolphin King’ ending explained:
Jose Barbero, accused of abusing the dolphins he was training, denied being seen in the video and said it was just the work of former workers who had grudges against him. He felt that this brutal and vicious accusation, as well as the assault of the dolphins, deserved strict actions to be taken against. He was involved in a debate on an animal rights issue which ended his career as Apsro fired him.
Soon after, Barbero vanished, which prompted a search operation. A few days later, his body was discovered in a car outside the Palma de Majorca airport in Mallorca. Barbero had reportedly killed himself. Even after his death, public hatred continued, and his wife could not step into the outside world for years. Barbero’s son quit his work at the dolphinarium, and Marineland installed panels to reduce the park’s visibility to avoid such future accusations.
‘The Last Dolphin King’ facts:
The Netflix series focuses on Jose Barbero as a result of a false accusation, and the title pretty much clears it all. The series depicts Barbero as the king of the Dolphins by the film directors Luis Ansorena Heroes and Ernest Riera. The show expresses much larger politics than just a simple release of a video clip and a man as strong-hearted as Jose Barbero committing suicide because of it. According to the trailer, there is a lot of jealousy surrounding the high-profile position in the aquarium world. The promo mentioned a quote along the lines of ‘you never know who will stab you in the back which renders the audience confused as to whether Barbero killed himself or was murdered.
‘The Last Dolphin King’ release date:
The series premiered this year on Friday, 25th November, on Netflix at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. The country of origin remains the same as Jose Barbero’s Spanish roots. The English version starred Frank Gerrish.
