Summary
DENSE with exposition, The Innocent episode 5 nonetheless provides some important reveals and sets the stage for the final three episodes.
This recap of The Innocent episode 5 contains spoilers.
The Innocent episode 5 opens with a meet-cute and some fitting explanation of Candance’s backstory following the revelation in the previous episode that she and Olivia Costa are one and the same. It begins with her meeting Mat in Marbella, him very out of practice considering his prison sentence and her just happy to be shown some genuine attention. Her narration explains how she was born into a poor family in Mexico, never knew her father, and had no memories of her mother, who flashbacks reveal died of an overdose. Lured to Spain by a postcard from distant cousins, she found herself homeless for two years, turning to petty crime to stay alive until she was eventually arrested and threatened with deportation. Aníbal “saved” her, in a sense, but only really delivered her to a new hell that she had to invent a fiction in order to survive. That fiction was Candance. The first time she became Olivia was, really, when she met Mat.
Mat isn’t exactly thrilled with all this, since he trusted Olivia with everything about his past and his time in prison, and she never extended him the same courtesy. But she explains that she didn’t know how — all she had ever known in her life until she met him was fear. With Mara on her way home, there’s just enough time for Olivia to explain how she became embroiled in Aníbal’s underage orgies. None of the girls were on board, but none of them could do anything to stop it. One night, a particularly sadistic client went too far with one of the girls, and Lavanda tried to intervene. She ended up dead, and this was the body that Ibai dumped into the water.
Back at the club, Kimmy tried to refuse to participate in the orgies, but Aníbal beat her. Kimmy and Olivia both resolve to make him pay, and Kimmy reveals she has a hidden gun that might allow them to do just that, even if Lavanda’s replacement, Cassandra, is a liability. Kimmy and Candance started skimming from the profits, and Emma covered for them, but Cassandra’s beady little eyes were everywhere and she ratted them out to Aníbal. He and Ibai savagely beat them both and then cruelly made them perform, bruised and barely able to stand. Emma catching Aníbal with Cassandra was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She crafted a plan for the three of them to get away by stealing one of the blackmail tapes in particular — Number 27, the man who killed Lavanda, apparently an extremely powerful man who could ruin Aníbal. Emma steals the tape, but when Aníbal discovers it missing, he assumes that Cassandra took it, hence why he beat her to death. Emma and Candance promptly arrive with Kimmy’s gun and their demands, but while he’s handing over the passports and cash they need, Aníbal pulls a gun of his own. He shoots Candance and tries to strangle Emma, but Candance shoots him dead. That’s when Emma comes up with the idea of switching her clothes with Cassandra’s and using Kimmy as their alibi (she was away servicing a client, so couldn’t participate in the plan).
Emma and Candance take Aníbal’s body out on the boat and dump it (that was the flashback she had right before her death.) Then Emma leaves Kimmy a voicemail that brings the whole plan together. The picture of Emma and Kimmy was left behind with her, intact. Emma and Candance fled to the orphanage together, and Baltierre looked after them both, nursing Candance back to health and creating new identities for them both. Emma and Candance never lost touch and met every week at the zoo, but Emma never stopped worrying that someone would find them.
The Innocent episode 5 finally catches up to the present day, where Zoe calls Mat asking how she can help. The thing is, though, she can’t, since the police are already tapping his phone and putting out arrest warrants for him everywhere. He pushes Olivia further, asking why she disappeared that day, and she reveals that she has a daughter, Paula, who she gave birth to while still working at El Paraiso. Aníbal made her give the child up for adoption, and Emma handled it, but that day she and Mat were viewing their new house, the call she received was about Paula. The caller said they’d take her to her daughter in exchange for 50,000 euros. Of course, the caller was Ibai, who she meets at the hotel with Gallardo. The latter had managed to figure out she was alive after being hired by Paula’s adoptive parents to find her biological mother. With Cassandra’s autopsy report revealing she had AIS, he put two and two together. Now, Paula apparently has a genetic disorder and is in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Mat is rightly skeptical of the validity of all this, and Olivia also reveals that Aníbal was alive when they rolled him into the sea, though the chances of his survival seem unlikely. I’ve heard that before!
When Mara returns home, the police ambush her. Teo pulls Zoe from one of the cars, and we see that Zoe was forced to make the call to Mat under duress. He also wrests the case from Lorena. Olivia offers to surrender herself so that Mat can sneak away — they have nothing on her — and attend the meeting in Marbella. She smiles as she hears him drive away, and an angry Teo cracks his knuckles just like Number 27.
