Summary
Good Morning, Veronica bows out with a short but impactful final season, though nothing manages to evoke the dread of its earliest Season 1 episodes.
Few shows jump the shark as much as Good Morning, Veronica did between its first and second seasons. Season 1 was a taut exploration of domestic violence inspired by some true events; Season 2 was a more over-the-top and generic crime story. Season 3, which runs just three episodes and is reportedly the final outing for the Brazilian Netflix original, provides a satisfying conclusion but still can’t live up to those earliest episodes.
The word of the day – or season, I suppose – is “Doum”, the enigmatic figure at the heart of a conspiracy involving human trafficking, brainwashing, religious extremism, horrific abuses (especially against women), and plenty more fun stuff besides. Unraveling threads established in the first two seasons, Veronica continues to delve headlong into the murky depths of a notorious orphanage, following the web of corruption wherever it leads.
Veronica, still a tenacious but not especially good investigator, has her story intertwined with that of millionaire Jeronimo and his mother Diana, and there are, as ever, some deeply unpleasant turns. Good Morning, Veronica has always been a show prone to darkness, sometimes literally but always morally, trafficking in the very worst humanity has to offer.
You can kind of track this as the show has progressed. Veronica’s character arc reflects it too. As the plunge gets deeper, the light dwindles more and more, and Veronica’s character has hardened to suit. Across three seasons she has undergone what is essentially an origin story, the birth of a vigilante who has seen too much and been failed too often by traditional systems to ever believe in a version of justice that isn’t her own.
Tainá Müller is very good at embodying this. She has been since the beginning, but the changing shape of the show has asked a lot of her, and she has met its demands quite reliably. Her principles and morality are palpable; her anger is believable. She’s a harder character now than she once was, all her softer contours planed away, and you can see it in how she carries herself. It’s an all-encompassing performance, an actor really growing into a role and living it fully. I haven’t loved any season since the first, but Muller is great in all three and is worthy of credit for that.
The problems with this third season are reminiscent of the second and the back half of the first. The central mystery is prone to cliché, and to obvious plot twists that signpost their imminent arrival from miles away. Some of the characterization is thin and there’s little time for a tighter, more introspective focus. It’s all just a bit over the top. But some of the problems are unique to Season 3, which as mentioned runs for only three episodes. Coming down from eight episodes in Season 1 and six in Season 2, three installments don’t feel like enough, but their longer-than-usual runtimes feel too long. It gives the entire run a weird pace.
A decent conclusion to a declining series
It’s hard to imagine that anyone who has stuck with the show until this point won’t at least be moderately satisfied with the final three episodes, which offer a cathartic resolution to Veronica’s arc. The build to that denouement has a lot of tension and the payoff is there if you’re looking for it.
It’s still easy to lament what this show became, though, especially given what it was in its earliest episodes. That fascination with the darker corners of human nature remains, but it’s in a more crowd-pleasing package, and some depth has been sacrificed along the way. It isn’t a total dealbreaker, but it’s still a little disappointing.
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