Summary
The finale of The Innocent brings the show to a fitting conclusion, for once swerving the dreaded Netflix cliffhanger.
This recap of The Innocent episode 8 contains spoilers. It also includes an open discussion of The Innocent’s ending.
The finale of The Innocent starts with a bang — a couple, in fact. We pick up right where we left off, with Teo dead, and Mat and Olivia still captives of Kimmy. It becomes obvious quickly what her plan is. She wants to make Olivia experience all the things she has over the last few years and plans to do so by tying her to a chair and letting three out-of-shape masked men, like the ones from the orgies, have their way with her. Mat is to watch from the container. It’s a frantic, disturbing scene, but luckily Lorena is able to bust Mat out. Outnumbered, Kimmy still won’t drop her gun, which prompts one of the officers to shoot her. Olivia, though, with her last reserves of strength, jumps in front of the bullet.
Mat and Olivia are both publicly cleared, which Jaime sees on television. He’s the one doing the opening narration for The Innocent episode 8, as we revisit the time he and Sonia visited Mat in prison, as well as Dani’s death. The narration explains that Jaime is haunted by Mat being given a second chance, a rebirth, after only serving four years for killing his son. I see some more trauma on the horizon.
Olivia and her baby, meanwhile, are okay, but she’s concerned about what happened in prison between Mat and Romero for some reason. Lorena is also trying to finger Kimmy for pulling the trigger on Gallardo and Ibai, but her prints can’t be compared to the damaged partial taken from Gallardo’s gun. Lorena does, though, confirm that Aníbal is dead and that the letter sent posthumously by Emma is a confession to that crime. They’re in the clear there, even though they still have their work cut out proving their complete innocence in all other matters, perhaps most especially the murder of Bruno.
After seeing Olivia’s attempts at a heroic self-sacrifice, Kimmy has softened a bit, and gives Olivia Paula’s location, asking if she’ll tell her about her Aunt Kimmy. Olivia is understandably terrified to meet her, but at least she has Mat for support. They’re both free now, which seems to disgust Jaime, listening to the news at home, and also worry Lorena, especially when she learns that the trigger print has been reconstructed and is a match for Mat. A big twist for The Innocent episode 8!
Immediately, Lorena goes to see Mat at Mara’s house. Mat’s reaction, though, really suggests he’s being set up unless he’s a very good actor. He asks if he can tell his family where he’s going, but he only says he’s going to the station, not why. Luckily, Zoe is on the case. She goes to see Aranda in prison and presses him for info on why he went to the press about Romero’s body. Turns out, Jaime paid him to do so and is trying to set Mat up now. Apparently, Zoe can prove this, so Mat does a runner.
Zoe explains to Mat that Jaime has been very careful about covering his tracks. He asks her to drop him off at Jaime’s house and go, but he takes her gun with him. Jaime tells the police he’s there, but they still have to get there, giving Mat plenty of time to do what he needs to do. As the police pull up outside, sirens blaring, Mat continues to push Jaime, who is mightily smug about his leverage in this position. But Mat antagonizes him by claiming he wanted to kill Dani, which sends Jaime on a rant about how he achieved justice when the system couldn’t. Sonia sees right through what Mat is doing, though, which only makes her even more disgusted with Jaime. She wants the truth as much if not more than Mat does. So, Jaime spills it.
The Innocent episode 8 — The Innocent ending explained:
Jaime describes how he became obsessed with Mat, and that moment when he saw him in the hospital in the very first episode, he knew he needed to get revenge. Because of his position at the hospital, he knew Olivia had given birth before. And by following her, he learned that she met Emma at the zoo every week. Following Emma allowed him to witness her death. From there he met with Ibai and Gallardo and learned that Olivia was Candance. He gave them the idea of pretending Paula had a kidney disease. He organized the videos Ibai sent from the hotel room to convince Mat that Olivia was cheating on him.
Ibai and Gallardo, though, discovered who Jaime was and tried to blackmail him, so Jaime killed Gallardo in what he claims was an accident. We revisit his attempted suicide. We also see he’s who Ibai called from the hotel after beating down Mat. Jaime took Mat’s print from his car door handle and planted it on Gallardo’s gun, which he used to shoot Ibai. With the police assembled outside and a police marksman ready to take Mat out, it seems like we’ve reached the end of the story and put the pieces together. But Jaime has a final revelation. It was him who sent Romero to murder him in prison. We see flashbacks of the attack, and Jaime insists that Mat is a murderer, but he didn’t kill Romero. And, thanks to Sonia picking up their roleplay at the crucial time, talking him down as “Dani”, he doesn’t kill Jaime either, even though he deserves it.
The Innocent‘s ending repurposes the opening narration as a closing one, with Mat once again monologuing in the second-person, but this time over a montage during which we see the fates of several key characters. Sonia and Mat leave the house hand in hand. Olivia gives birth to a healthy baby. Lorena is promoted (though she doesn’t look happy about it). Jaime is imprisoned. Olivia meets Paula, and she becomes part of the family. It’s a happy, uplifting ending. But The Innocent episode 6 has one final twist. In a flashback, we see Mat really did throw Romero over the railing to his death. Perhaps nobody is that innocent after all.
