Summary
Two plot strands begin to considerably intertwine, as everyone seems connected to everyone else in one way or another.
This recap of The Innocent episode 3 contains spoilers.
Picking up right where we left off in the previous episode, Teo is shocked to discover that Sister Maria’s belongings aren’t with her mangled, sewn-together corpse, which is a blow for him. But it’s a good setup for the third episode’s now-obligatory narration, which this time is about Sister Maria herself — or Emma, as she was known prior to taking up Catholicism. As Emma, she was a dancer and hooker at the most notorious brothel in Marbella, under the auspices of Aníbal Ledesma (Miki Esparbé). He doesn’t seem a nice chap, but nevertheless, Emma became his “princess”, so to speak, until his increasingly erratic and violent nature caused her to flee, leaving her best friend and mentor, Kimmy (Martina Gusman), behind.
We learn a lot in this opening sequence. Emma and Sister Maria are indeed the same person, which still confuses me given what we discussed briefly at the end of the previous recap. The torn photograph is of Maria and Kimmy. Baltierre seems to have known about her past and helped her to secure a new identity, and thus lied to the police about it. At the orphanage, Maria struggled to remain a good, honest Catholic and had to essentially live two lives, one as a nun and one as the raunchier Emma, whose activities we got glimpses of earlier.
The suspicious phone call that Baltierre told Lorena about, though, seems genuine since it came from Mara’s landline and explains why Lorena turned up at the house. Hugo across the street witnesses this, and visits Lorena at the station to fill her in about Mat, who at that moment is with Zoe, piecing together which hotel Olivia might be staying at based on her taxi fare from the airport and the room number — 2507 — glimpsed in one of Ibai’s video messages. There are a few to choose from, but Zoe’s going to pore over CCTV footage to catch them entering. She’s convinced that Olivia is hiding something and starts going over the search history of her laptop. She searched the name Rodrigo Gallardo, a retired cop who happens to be the guy who ran Mat over and held him at gunpoint. In the bathroom, Mat removes the mirror and discovers a cubby hole in the plaster behind it, which contains a gun wrapped in a cloth.
Lorena’s cursory research into Mat reveals his connection to Sonia, so she goes to visit her at home. Sonia reveals that she meets with Mat regularly, but Jaime, who is hearing this for the first time, begins to take over the conversation. He describes when they visited Mat in prison at the beginning of his sentence when he was tearful and begging for forgiveness. And he also brings up Manuel Romero, a fellow inmate on Mat’s block who ended up with a broken neck and fell right in front of Mat’s cell. Lorena goes to see Roberto Aranda (Pedro Hernández), his old cellmate, who gives Lorena the real story of what happened to Romero. He used to bully new inmates, including Mat, but Mat wasn’t having it. After being the victim of a beating he started training and eventually fought back. Romero, in response, tried to shiv him in the night, but ended up falling to his death — the only logical explanation is that Mat pushed him, but The Innocent episode 3 is deliberately coy about showing it. Roberto also recognizes Maria, but not as a nun. She was Aníbal’s girlfriend when they all served time together, so there’s a good chance that Mat could have met both him and her.
When Lorena returns to see Mat, she’s armed with enough new information to make him look mightily suspicious. Hugo has already told her that he didn’t report being held at gunpoint by Gallardo, and Carla, Mara’s babysitter, has let on that it was him watching the kids, not her, the night the six-minute call was made to Maria. With the info from Roberto, she also knows that he might have known Maria personally. Luckily, Zoe is on hand to chase Lorena away, but it doesn’t exactly make Mat look any less guilty. After, Zoe demands the truth, and Mat denies knowing Maria and calling the boarding school.
Meanwhile, in The Innocent episode 3, Teo takes what he has learned to Colonel Prieto, who does what she can to shut down the police investigation into the case. The SCU has been pursuing Maria for a decade, but why? What happened in Marbella that she’s hiding from? Did she kill Aníbal? Is that whose body we saw being dropped off the boat in the previous episode? If Maria returned to save Kimmy from him, and they killed him together, that would explain a lot, as well as give off serious Sky Rojo vibes.
Anyway, Mat, knowing that Hugo went to the police about him, confronts the man and threatens him. In the brief scuffle that ensues, Mat drops a bottle of water that Hugo sneakily bags up. It’s clear that Hugo has never forgiven Mat for what happened to Dani, despite the fact that he and Eva started the fight, and Jaime feels the same. As it turns out, he already knew that Sonia was meeting with Mat since he had hired a private investigator because he believed she might be cheating on him. He blames himself for pushing Dani to go to the party, but he blames Mat for his death. Both of these things he reflects on later as he takes out a silenced pistol, puts it under his chin, and pulls the trigger. Is this a consequence of just his guilt, or is there more to learn?
Elsewhere, Teo turns up at the orphanage with a warrant to toss the place, but also with Emma’s baptism certificate — Baltierre was her godmother, the papers signed back in Bogotá, Colombia, and Teo intimates she might have been up to no good there at the time. Baltierre explains Maria’s arrival, and that she took her in because she owed it to her mother. She also reveals that when Maria first arrived she gave Baltierre what she called her “life insurance”, a key to a safety deposit box that she gives to Teo.
Speaking of giving, Hugo turns up at Lorena’s place (how did he get her address?) to give her the water bottle containing Mat’s fingerprints. His enigmatic “friend in the force” has told him that they haven’t been able to get Mat’s prints from the Justice Department, so this will do. But when Lorena and Crespo run the print, it isn’t a match for the ones Maria’s would-be assassin left on the car. Whatever else Mat has done, it seems like he didn’t try and kill Sister Maria.
But it seems we know who did. In The Innocent episode 3 Lorena receives a match on the prints — they belong to Rodrigo Gallardo (he was apparently arrested in Gibraltar, so the British police had them on file.) At the same moment, Zoe is poring over CCTV footage from the various viable hotels and spots Gallardo meeting with Ibai outside one of them, the Hyatt. She knows where Olivia is and goes to get Mat, just as Lorena gets a similar call about Gallardo’s location.
Outside the Hyatt, Mat calls Room 2507, and Ibai answers — having confirmed he’s inside, he goes to confront him, though without the gun that Zoe tries to force him to take. At the same time, Teo arrives at Mundial Savings, where Maria’s deposit box is located, and Lorena arrives at Gallardo’s location… his car, where he has been literally caught with his pants down, and shot in the head. Mat is in danger. When Ibai lets him in, Zoe, who’s listening in, hears Mat being attacked. She rushes inside and finds Olivia in the room, but no Mat or Ibai.
