Selina Pereira-Matias

Selina Pereira-Matias is the main antagonist and iconic villainess during the 90's era from the Filipino television series Mula Sa Puso (From The Heart) created by ABS-CBN Network, and portrayed by Filipino actress Princess Punzalan. She was known as the most violent and almost-demonic antagonist ever in the Philippine Television during her time.

Character Synopsis
She is the cruel, sadistic, sociopathic half-sister of Don Fernando Pereira. Her main goal in the series is to get the wealth of the Pereira Family, to the extent of trying to kill her own niece Via, the only daughter and heiress of Pereira Clan. She also seeks for vengeance after Don Fernando's mother mistreated her mother as well as herself. Throughout the story, she spreads her terror on Via and her family, and her evil deeds affected several people. Her character was given the moniker "Terminator" because she repeatedly cheated death throughout the series.

Most Notorious Crimes
While Selina has committed numerous crimes throughout the story, these are the most notorious ones:

- Perpetrating an acid attack which left a scar on Magda's face (Via's mother)

- Killing her own henchman Abdon with a timed bomb put inside a briefcase of cash. In the original version she killed him for blackmailing her, while in the movie version she did it because he accidentally killed her daughter, Nicole.

- Asking her henchmen to kidnap, torture, rape and finally murder Elena; a woman whom she paid to pretend as Via's biological mother but later betrayed and blackmailed her.

- Sending her henchmen to rape Mariel, a former housemaid of the Pereiras whom she had a fight with over a custard.

- Sending her henchmen again to rape Atty. Elaine Regalado, a disturbed prosecuting lawyer who was helping Mariel after filing a case against her, was once a rape victim as well. And because of what she did, the poor lawyer was put under a mental case for real.

- The famous and most evil of all, the bus explosion scene. She instructed her henchmen to plant a bomb inside a bus, mistakenly thought that Via was inside it, killing all the innocent passengers instead. The scene was made more famous because of her demonic like laugh in front of the burning bus.

Evil Laugh
Selina was the one who started the traditional evil laugh of female antagonists in most of the Filipino TV series. You can hear a clip of her laugh during the bus explosion scene from the Mula Sa Puso The Movie below:



Illness In The TV Series
In the original TV Series, after the events of the bus explosion, she got diagnosed with Lymphoma, which people think of it as karma (before her gruesome death). She went through a chemotherapy, lost her hair and change her look.

Final Death
Finally, after cheating death several times and getting away with monstrous acts, she had a bloodily karmic end when she's defeated by Via, shot in the arm, falling of a building, and finally, brutally ran over by a truck; while glimpses of her horrific deeds are shown, as seen below:



Selina in the 2011 Remake
In the 2011 remake, Selina was instead portrayed by Filipino actress Eula Valdez. Although her evil ways and evil laugh had remained, this remake actually shown a different kind of Selina, making her character less fierce.

Rather than a half-sister, she's now an adopted sister of Don Fernando. Her evil deeds from the original series and the movie version were combined except for the rape-related ones. There were changes in the bus explosion scene, in which her daughter Nicole died inside of the bus instead and her evil laugh was removed. Due to her evil deeds being lesser than her original series counterpart, her death was also less bloody.

Trivia

 * ABS-CBN Network created a text promo with her Evil Laugh as a downloadable mobile ringtone when the 2011 series was still on air.