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The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2 is a Spanish comedy film streaming on Netflix, and it is a sequel to the 2023 film by the same name, in which father and son duo Salva and Lucas had stepped in to replace an injured Santa Claus to save the grand festival just in time. This time though, they have to step up their game when Santa Claus is abducted by an evil toy company, and there is a genuine threat of the festival losing its cheerful essence for children all over the world. Overall, The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2 is exactly what you would expect from a Christmas film mostly targeted towards children, and will be absolutely ridiculous if you question it even for a slight second.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
The film begins with the world getting excited for the approaching Christmas festivities, as Salva Molina and his young son, Lucas, are also preparing for the same at the house of Salva’s best friend, Rafita. In fact, the two have been staying at Rafita’s house for the last few months, as Salva has been trying to earn a stable income. Only just a few years earlier, Salva was a criminal with numerous robberies and thefts against his name, but his record had been wiped clean when he had helped save Santa Claus and Christmas with his son. Now, he has been working hard at a local garage to earn his living, but is struggling to do so, as his bosses often make him work for free or for very little compensation.
At least Salva has his beloved son Lucas to keep him company, or so he thinks, totally unaware of a new situation in the boy’s life. Nearing teenage and close to hitting puberty, Lucas is absolutely mesmerized by the new girl in his class, Mia, and he quickly starts dressing and acting like her to match her aesthetics and get close to her in any way possible. Salva realizes that his son’s voice is cracking, and his keen interest in Mia is making him want to be distant from his father. Lucas no longer likes his father’s cheerful greetings at the end of the school day and is also not excited for the upcoming Christmas festivities, all because he wants to impress Mia and does not want her to consider him lame.
Saddened and unsure what to do about the whole situation, Salva keeps working at the garage and has to repeatedly turn down Rafita’s approaches. Rafita and Salva used to rob stores and houses together in the past, and so the former wants the protagonist to accompany him on one more heist, one he calls a simple act of theft that will merely take a few minutes for experienced professionals like themselves. Salva very strictly wants to stay away from crime, as he wants to make the most of the second chance that life he’s been given. But when Rafita tries to execute the theft by himself, Salva gets involved in a different matter, which requires him to save Christmas for the world once again.
Why does Candela Iriarte hate Santa Claus?
The plot in The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2 really takes off with the introduction of Candela Iriarte, the CEO of a multi-billion dollar toy company called Planet Toys. As per her own admission, Planet Toys is the biggest company in the entire world according to its financial valuation, but it has still been struggling with a particular matter. Despite bringing in tremendous sales throughout the year, the company has always struggled to make any money during the holiday season, especially around Christmas, when their sales drop massively and they end up making heavy losses. Candela has looked into the matter and has realized that this is directly linked with the charitable acts of Santa Claus, who brings gifts to children all over the world, meaning that they get toys and other fancy things for free, and so they don’t ask their parents to buy toys for them. As a result, companies like Planet Toys are adversely affected as they lose sales and miss out on the enormous profits they could have earned during Christmas. In order to turn the situation in favor of her company, Candela has now come up with a specific plan with regard to Santa Claus, based on some confidential information that her cousin, a professional nurse, has supposedly given her.
A couple of years back, Santa Claus had been admitted to a hospital in Madrid after sustaining grave injuries, all of which had been shown in “The Night My Dad Saved Christmas.” During this time, Candela’s cousin had nursed the man back to health and secured Santa’s visiting card, which crucially mentioned the exact coordinates of his house in the North Pole. While Planet Toys had been trying to locate Santa Claus for years, seemingly to strike a deal with him, it is only now that they are finally able to track him down. Thus, Candela now comes up with the evil plan of kidnapping Santa Claus and holding him captive on Christmas so that he cannot distribute gifts for free to the children of the world. But since Santa going missing would be noticed by everyone and there would be efforts to try and find him, she has also hired a professional actor to play the part of Santa and make it seem like all is well at the North Pole.
Candela soon executes her plan to perfection, as she has her assistant, Sebastian, travel to the North Pole and kidnap Santa Claus before an actor named Mauro Quesada is hired to play the role of the mythical figure. Mauro, or the fake Santa, goes over to the house in the North Pole and starts to boss around the elves, and he comes up with an even more exciting offer for Candela. Noticing the extraordinary pace and efficiency of the elves, he advises Candela to force the elves into making the toys for her company so that she no longer has to rely on the cheap labor force in Bangladesh to manufacture the toys. Over the next few days, the elves are terribly overworked, without any compensation, of course, which is naturally very profitable for the company. Then, just a couple of days before Christmas, the fake Santa appears on screens all over the world and announces that he is too tired to distribute gifts anymore. Therefore, he urges all the children and their parents to go buy toys from Planet Toys, driving up sales for the company.
Alongside the intention to earn profits for her company, there is also a very personal reason behind Candela executing this plan, for she has a deep-rooted hatred towards Santa Claus, which stems from her childhood. As a child, Candela had tried to write letters to Santa every year, making wishes and asking for gifts, but she could never post them because of her strict father, who always discouraged her against doing so. Her father, who had started the toy company and was then the CEO, taught her to treat Santa Claus only as a rival and a competitor in business, and to hate the figure because of his practice of distributing toys for free during one of the most profitable times of the financial year. On one occasion, Candela had managed to post the letter and had hoped that Santa would bring her the teddy bear that she asked for, but the letter seemingly got to her father first. As a result, the man bought a calculator for Candela instead of a teddy bear so that she could understand the importance of financial profit at that very young age. In fact, all that Candela does even at present is only to get some validation and praise from her father, but he refuses to give her any, and criticizes her even after she brings in high profits for the company during Christmas.
How does Rafita rescue the real Santa?
After failing to bring Salva in on his heist plan, Rafita decides to go ahead with a different friend named Lolo, who is honestly not very bright. Rafita’s intention is actually to steal a batch of very expensive dolls from Planet Toys and then sell them online for very high prices, as he knows that the dolls will be in high demand. But while carrying out the robbery, the two men are spotted by guards, and Lolo immediately abandons his friend and flees the scene. As a result, Rafita has to crawl into vents and hide in a workshop on the company compound, and this is where he suddenly hears the sound of Santa Claus. The real Santa had actually been locked inside a coffin by Candela and her men, and the coffin was luckily placed in the same workshop where Rafita is currently trying to hide from the guards.
Therefore, once the guards are gone, and Rafita is out of any danger, he starts to try and break open the coffin, which is quite a difficult task because of the heavy lock on it. Around the same time, the foreman at Santa’s house, Rami, grows suspicious that the man clad in an identical red suit is not the real Santa Claus. Therefore, he travels to Spain with the help of Rudolph the reindeer and seeks out Salva, since the man had helped save Christmas and Santa Claus earlier as well. As Salva decides to help out once more and also happens to catch what is essentially an advertisement for Planet Toys, he realizes that the company must be up to some evil. Despite initially having doubts, Lucas joins in on the adventure as well and brings Mia along, only because the girl is thrilled at the prospect of it. Eventually, Rafita and the real Santa meet up with Salva and Rami, and although Candela tries her best to stop the old man from leaving, they eventually manage to get away.
How does Salva save Christmas once again?
The characters regroup at Salva’s garage, where his bosses happily agree to give a car to the real Santa so that he can use it as a sleigh. Real Santa finally returns to his home in the North Pole, where he confronts his fake replacement and brings his evil acts to an end. The evil Santa manages to avoid any punishment and runs out of the house into the snowy fields outside. Although Santa mentions that the polar bears outside will surely kill and eat the actor in just a few minutes’ time, we do not actually get any updates about him. All that remains now is to distribute the gifts across the world, and since there are only a few hours of Christmas left, Salva jumps in to help Santa just like before. He dons the red suit once more and helps deliver gifts, ultimately saving Christmas successfully.
What had Lucas asked for from Santa Claus?
In The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2’s ending, Lucas reveals that he too had asked for a specific gift from Santa, although it was not any toy or any item like usual. Lucas had genuinely started to like his friend Mia, and so he had wished that the girl would like him back. His wish ultimately comes true when Mia calls Lucas into her room when she finally returns home and then plants a kiss on his cheek, which confirms that she likes him back. Unsurprisingly, Santa leaves a gift for Candela as well, and it is actually a cute little teddy bear similar to what she had asked for all those years ago. This also confirms that Candela will now change her ways and distribute toys to kids through her company during Christmas every year. Thus, the film ends happily for everyone, including the elves and Santa Claus, who are back to their old shenanigans.
