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"People are the worst drug. They hook you and then they make you believe that they care and they leave or they fail you or they hurt you on purpose... There's a reason that God put a cage around your heart. People don't need other people. We need armor."
―Rosa[src]

Rosa Helena Ortecho is a character on The CW science fiction series Roswell, New Mexico. She is Liz Ortecho's older sister who died ten years before the start of the series.

Character[]

Maria describes Rosa:[2]

"She was electric. Impulsive. She was a hold-your-hair-back-when-you're-sick, slash-your-exes-tires type of friend. She was a total flake. Completely unreliable. But, somehow, when you needed her most, she always seemed to show up, right on time."

According to Liz, Rosa had a talent for art, poetry, and dancing. Rosa notably used to draw roses, which she drew on the gazebo when she first met Isobel, and on a mix tape that she left at the Wild Pony. Jim Valenti kept one of her rose drawings.

Rosa plays guitar. Arturo mentions that her mother taught her at the Crashdown. Rosa plays guitar at the Crashdown while Kyle dances with Liz in one of Max's flashbacks.[3]

History[]

With her sister Liz, Rosa was born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico by her father Arturo Ortecho and Helena Ortecho. Helena taught her to play the guitar, but she later left, and Rosa and Liz were raised by their father. Rosa helped her father at the Crashdown Cafe working as a waitress.

Ten years before the start of the series, Rosa got into drugs and struggled with addiction. For a while she dated Frederico, who was also her drug dealer. By April 2008, Rosa appeared to be clean and was no longer seeing Frederico.

At some point, she learned the truth that her mother cheated on her father with Sheriff Jim Valenti and that he, not Arturo Ortecho, was Rosa's biological father. According to Noah, Rosa forced her mother to leave or she would reveal the secret. In 2008, Jim Valenti tried to help Rosa get clean.

By April 2008, she has become close with Isobel Evans, but Isobel was actually being controlled by Noah Bracken. Sometime in May, Rosa approached Isobel (who was herself) thinking they were friends, but Isobel blew her off. On prom night, Noah took control of Isobel's body again and went to see Rosa and apologize.

Rosa's friends Kate Long and Jasmine Frederick were upset with her for no longer supplying them with drugs, and they vandalized Rosa's car in retaliation.

In June 2008, Rosa apparently drove while intoxicated and got into a car accident, killing herself, Kate, and Jasmine. The three were actually killed by Noah. After seeing that Kate and Jasmine vandalized Rosa's car, Noah (while in Isobel's body) killed them by breaking their necks. When Rosa wasn't accepting of this, he killed her as well, saying she couldn't be trusted. Michael and Max, thinking this was done by Isobel, helped cover up the murder by placing the three girls in Rosa's car and making it look like an accident.

Rosa was intending to leave town, and she would have left the day after she died.

After her death, a handprint mark appeared over her face where Noah used powers to kill her. Her real autopsy was covered up with a fake by Project Shepherd to conceal that she was killed by an alien. After getting out of his pod, Noah somehow got Rosa's body and placed her in his pod, and keeping her preserved for ten years.

In 2018, Isobel and Michael find Noah's pod and Rosa's body inside it. They inform Max, who takes Rosa out of the pod and uses his powers to successfully resurrect her, but he expends so much energy that he dies. Rosa leaves the cave and outside finds Liz, who's searching for Max.

Powers & Abilities[]

Powers[]

After Max resurrected Rosa, some energy from the pod was left in her, introducing a new protein into her DNA, that is found in all Oasians, giving her small yet powerful variety of abilities.

  • Electromagnetic Energy Manipulation: Rosa has demonstrated the ability to manipulate, control, transfer and even generate an unstable amount of electromagnetic energy, and just as Max, Rosa at most times uses her powers inadvertently through her emotions, yet they are much stronger, this is first shown when she was feeling scared and upset she had affected lights around her and made them explode, she also had enough energy to concentrate it to generate a blue-colored electrical beam to restart Max's heart. She was also seen using this ability to start the lights accidentally on Helena's car.
  • Paranormal Hearing: As of Bittersweet Symphony, Rosa has developed the ability to hear things louder. In Goodnight Elizabeth, Michael noticed that her hearing allows her to hear and pick up subatomic vibrational frequencies, allowing her to detect and hear specific Oasian frequencies, being able to locate Jones’ sword and even be familiar enough to know what specific Oasians' frequencies sound like.
  • Sound Manipulation: With the help of Heath, Rosa has demonstrated to have considerable control over sound now, allowing her to bend sound waves so that others can't hear them and then reverse them. She even learned to control resonant frequencies to allow her to break psychic tethers and break mind controls and psychic connections. Since all abilities are electromagnetic in nature, she was able to use her own frequencies to interfere with Clyde’s allowing her to break free of his telekinetic frequency hold.
  • Psychic Imprint: Because of the handprint left on her, Rosa had a psychic imprint giving her access to Max.
    • Memory Viewing: Because of the handprint on Rosa, she was able to view some of Max's memories.
    • Psychic Communication: Rosa was able to psychically communicate with Max, even when he was dead, as shown when she communicated with him so he could tell her that Isobel was dying and needed the antidote.

Abilities[]

  • Artistic Skill: Rosa has demonstrated a level of masterful artistic skills.

Gallery[]

Main article: Rosa Ortecho/Gallery

Appearances[]

Roswell, New Mexico 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Season 1 episodes
Season 2 episodes
Season 3 episodes
Season 4 episodes

Trivia[]

  • There is a flower design at the bottom of her headstone from one of her drawings.
  • There are inconsistencies on the exact date Rosa was born.
    • January 17, 1989 - In the pilot episode, a pamphlet for Rosa's memorial gives this date. This pamphlet is shown again in episode 3.
    • February 9, 1989 - In the second episode and the season one finale, her headstone instead shows this date. In the season finale, the pamphlet is changed to show this date as well.
    • Between February 19 and March 20, 1989 - In episode 5, Maria says that Rosa is a Pisces.
  • There are inconsistencies on the exact date Rosa died.
    • June 1, 2008 - In the pilot episode, a pamphlet for Rosa's memorial gives this date. This pamphlet is shown again in episode 3.
    • June 7, 2008 - In the second episode and the season one finale, her headstone instead shows this date. Frederico states this to be her date of death in episode 3. In the season one finale, the pamphlet is changed to show this date as well.
    • June 8, 2008 - In episode 5, this is the night Rosa died according to a recording of calls made to the police that night.
  • In the premiere episode of season 2, Rosa states that she's legally 31. But this is only two weeks after Max's sacrifice, which was presumably in 2018, so she would legally be 29. This is likely due to the timeline being adjusted to remain present in 2020, when the episode premiered.

Navigation[]

References[]

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