Last week’s first leg will be remembered for all the wrong reasons following the unsavoury incident involving Vinícius Júnior and Gianluca Prestianni, with the latter suspended from this encounter and racism sadly at the centre of the narrative.
Vinícius’ stunning strike separated the two sides before kick-off, but Los Blancos' slender aggregate lead was looking increasingly threadbare after an inauspicious start by the 15-time winners here.
In fact, the tie scores were level by the 14th minute, when Rafa Silva gave the visitors a deserved lead. Raúl Asencio slid in to meet Vangelis Pavlidis’ cut-back and, although he initially had his blushes spared by Thibaut Courtois, Silva dispatched the loose ball.
However, despite the nightmare opening exchanges for the visitors, they equalised courtesy of Aurélien Tchouaméni’s brilliant first-time finish after the Frenchman ran onto Federico Valverde’s cross.
Arda Güler then thought he had completed the turnaround with an opportunistic close-range finish, only to be denied by a fractional VAR offside review.
This match was being played at a breathless pace, and Real were indebted to Courtois for a superb stop to parry away Richard Ríos’ strike towards the end of an absorbing first half.
The end-to-end nature of this gripping contest continued after the break, as Trent Alexander-Arnold weaved his way into the box and shot wide of the far post, while Silva’s deflected strike clipped the bar.
The hosts were looking far from convincing, and were playing with fire when Pavlidis’ strike deflected inches wide of the post.
However, footballing matters soon paled into insignificance when Asencio was stretchered off following a nasty collision with Eduardo Camavinga.
Real needed a morale-booster, and Vinícius duly obliged, latching onto Valverde’s through ball before opening up his body and caressing a fine right-footed finish past Trubin.
It was a rare moment of genuine quality in a scrappy game, but Benfica's Silva continued to be a nuisance and almost diverted Andreas Schjelderup’s cross in at the far post before Álvaro Carreras intervened.
Ultimately, Álvaro Arbeloa’s side had done enough to book their place in the last 16, having now done so in every season since the 1996/97 campaign.
Meanwhile, José Mourinho was left to lick his wounds after failing to win any of his last 10 UCL knockout games (D4, L6), with the Eagles now having suffered defeat on eight of the last nine occasions they have lost the first leg of a European knockout tie at home.
Flashscore Man of the Match: Federico Valverde (Real Madrid)