General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Snow Girl

The Snow Girl (La chica de nieve) is a Spanish crime thriller television series produced by Atípica Films for Netflix, adapted from the bestselling novels of Javier Castillo. Its first season follows Miren Rojo, a trainee journalist at the newspaper Sur in Málaga, who investigates the 2010 disappearance of five-year-old Amaya Martín during the city's Three Kings Parade.¹^•² The first season premiered on January 27, 2023, and a second season, The Soul Game (El juego del alma), followed on January 31, 2025.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	La chica de nieve; produced by Atípica Films and Netflix¹
Season 1 premiere	January 27, 2023; six episodes of 45–50 minutes¹
Source novel	Javier Castillo's La chica de nieve (2020), with more than one million copies sold in Spain²
Setting	Málaga, Spain; the disappearance takes place at the 2010 Three Kings Parade²
Lead cast	Milena Smit as Miren Rojo, José Coronado as Eduardo, Aixa Villagrán as Inspector Belén Millán³
Season 2	The Soul Game, adapting Castillo's 2021 sequel novel, premiered January 31, 2025³
Run	Two seasons, 12 episodes; the final episode aired January 31, 2025⁴

Spoilers

Premise and season 1

The story opens in Málaga in 2010, when the Martín family's daughter Amaya vanishes in the crowd during the Three Kings Parade, the most celebrated event of the city's year. Miren Rojo, an intern at the local newspaper, begins an investigation parallel to that of Inspector Millán, a line of inquiry that awakens parts of her own past she would have preferred to forget. She works with the veteran journalist Eduardo, and the search for Amaya stretches across nine years of story time.²^•⁵ The season's six episodes interleave the 2010 disappearance with later developments, including a mysterious video that reopens the case in 2016.⁶

Season 2: The Soul Game

The second season adapts Castillo's 2021 sequel novel El juego del alma (The Soul Game). After the events of season 1, Miren has become famous through a book based on solving Amaya's case. At a book signing she receives an envelope asking "Do you want to play?" containing a Polaroid of a gagged young woman, which draws her into a macabre game called the Soul Game.³^•¹¹ She investigates the murder of a teenager, Allison Hernández, and the years-old disappearance of Laura Valdivia, both linked to the elite school Los Arcos Málaga, working with a new colleague at Sur, the investigative journalist Jaime (Miki Esparbé), who arrives fleeing his past.³^•¹²

The season reveals that the Soul Game was created at Los Arcos in 1983 by the school's principal, Andrés Garrido (Luis Callejo), leader of a religious group called the Crows of God, whose members used the Bible to choose tests for players; an early participant, Alicia Martos, died during a test and her death was covered up.¹² The season ends with Miren stabbed and hospitalized after a confrontation with the game's new owner, the revelation that Laura Valdivia is alive, and a police raid that uncovers tapes of the kidnapping organization known as the Slide, including a 2009 recording of Miren's own assault.¹²

From novel to screen

The series adapts Castillo's 2020 novel La chica de nieve, published by Suma (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial). The book is set in a different place and time from the show: in the novel, three-year-old Kiera Templeton disappears at the 1998 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, and the investigator is Miren Triggs, a journalism student at Columbia University.⁷^•⁸ The screenwriters Jesús Mesas Silva and Javier Andrés Roig moved the action to Málaga and the Three Kings Parade; Castillo, who served as a consultant on the adaptation, said the change arose naturally because Málaga offered distinctive filming locations and a more urban, modern image.⁷ The adaptation also compressed the novel's structure: the 512-page book contains more than sixty time jumps, which the series reduced to three time frames.⁵

The novel was a commercial phenomenon in Spain, selling more than one million copies and becoming the most read book during the COVID-19 confinement period.²^•⁹ In March 2023, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial announced English-language editions of The Snow Girl and The Soul Game, translated by Isabelle Kaufeler, noting that Castillo's books had sold over two million copies worldwide.¹⁰

Production

Both seasons were written for the screen by Jesús Mesas Silva and Javier Andrés Roig and directed by David Ulloa and Laura Alvea, with Castillo acting as consultant.¹^•¹¹ Season 1 was filmed from February 2022 in Málaga and Madrid, with locations including Gran Vía, Tirso de Molina, and Arganda del Rey, alongside Málaga and Seville.¹³^•¹⁴ Season 2 was also shot largely in Málaga, where the story is set.¹⁵ The series is rated TV-MA and its original language is European Spanish.⁶

Reception

Season 1 was a global hit. In its release week it reached first place on Netflix's non-English TV list and appeared in the Top 10 in 77 countries, including number one in Spain, France, Sweden, and Belgium.¹⁶ In its first week it accumulated 31,830,000 hours viewed, placing it third among non-English series on the platform at that time, behind only the third season of La reina del sur and the first season of Shahmaran.¹⁷ Within 48 hours of its premiere it had become the second most watched Netflix production globally, and it reached the Top 10 in 60 countries.¹⁸ On Rotten Tomatoes, season 1 holds a 100% Tomatometer score from seven critics' reviews, with a 72% audience score.¹⁹

Season 2 did not repeat this performance. Industry tracking of Netflix's Top 10 data estimated an 80 to 90 percent drop in viewership compared with the first season, noting that season 2 tells a largely separate story apart from the shared protagonist.²⁰ The series ran for two seasons and 12 episodes in total, ending with the January 31, 2025 release.⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026