Innocent and Guilty
Episode 8 of The Innocent Season 1 begins with a race against time, as Lorena phones Zoe and tries to find where Mat and Olivia are. As we know, they’re down by the docks and not in a good way. With Olivia tied to her chair, Kimmy sits in front of the girl and reveals the bitter truth. She’s the anonymous source Gallardo used. When the lights turn on, Olivia is kept tied up in the middle of the room, in full view of Mat who’s still trapped in the shipping container. As he pleads with Kimmy to stop, she allows several of these masked men from the orgy parties to arrive and have their way with her. Wearing black masks they untie Olivia and get undressed. Lorena arrives just in time, saving Olivia and allowing Mat and her to be reunited. Kimmy meanwhile, refuses to give up her gun. Olivia gets caught in the crossfire, saving Kimmy from being fatally shot, and taking a bullet in the shoulder. As Kimmy is taken away in handcuffs, Mat pleads with the authorities to call an ambulance. Thankfully Olivia is still alive, and as she’s taken to hospital, the doctor confirms that the baby’s heartbeat can still be heard. News of this stand-off down at the docks breaks publicly too, as the scene cuts to Jaime watching the broadcast. We then jump back 12 years earlier. Jaime and Sonia visit Mat in prison. Mat regrets his actions, while Jaime bitterly told him to die if he really wants to feel Dani’s pain. While Jaime is enraged and desperate for revenge, Sonia starts to empathize with the boy. Now we see things from Jamie’s perspective. He’s always hated Mat and his pain manifested itself into a wild animal. He follows Mat’s progress, unhappy with his four year sentence and bitter that he has another chance – something Dani will not be given. Back in the present, Kimmy is interviewed by Lorena down at the station. She claims Emma killed herself, shrugging off the charges and claiming she just wanted Olivia. When she leaves, the Colonel shows up and asks for the tapes. Given how intricately linked she is to Teo, Lorena is quite rightly wary of her. She’s called away to the coroner’s though, where a dead body has been found out at sea. Lorena observes Carlos working while reading the letter to Olivia from Emma. Within this, Emma admits to killing the man – who’s now confirmed to be Anibal thanks to the dental records. He’s definitely dead. At the police station, Olivia is brought in to talk to Kimmy. She wants to know where Paula is. She’s safe, as it turns out, and Olivia’s act of kindness is enough for them to move past any hostility. Both girls finally move past their issues, with Olivia apologizing for leaving her at the club all those years ago. Lorena gets her hands on the tapes and hands them in to the authorities. Kimmy being incriminated is enough for justice to be served… or has it? Her partial prints aren’t a match for Gallardo and Saez’s killer. Apparently the reconstructed print belongs to Mat. When Lorena shows up to tell Mat, he’s unhappy about this being pinned on him again. It turns out Jaime is the one responsible for this, and also the man behind paying off Romero in prison to kill him. Mat hightails it away from the police, jumping in the car with Zoe and desperate to pin evidence on Jaime to clear his own name. He heads straight over to Jaime’s place and confronts the man about the murders. Unfortunately police swarm around the house, complete with a squad in full body armour. They’re not messing about and neither is Jaime. Jaime smugly tells Mat that he’s won this round. However, Mat kicks the hornet’s nest, telling him that he pushed Dani as hard as he could; he wanted to hurt the boy. This loosens Jaime’s lips, as he admits he orchestrated all of this to get justice for their boy. Now we finally see how and why he did this. After Dani’s death, Jaime was overcome with grief-stricken rage and unable to move on. The day he saw Mat the hospital is when his hatred manifested into something much worse. He knew Olivia was lying and decided to use this to his advantage. Jaime followed Olivia, realizing she was going behind his back to meet Emma at the park. He was outside the orphanage that night and bear witness to Emma falling to her death. He also noticed the man at the window. This only incentivized Jaime to search harder for the truth. He met Gallardo and Saez, handing over money in exchange for information. In fact, Jaime gave them burner phones and used Olivia to concoct a fake story about her daughter Paula having kidney problems. He wanted to lure Olivia out to Berlin with all her savings. Jaime planned this with Saez to make it look like she was having an affair and cast seeds of doubt in Jaime’s mind. He wanted to ruin their marriage after ruining their bank account. Jaime didn’t bank on Gallardo and Saez getting greedy. Gallardo demands half a mil, leading Jaime to kill the man in his car. He convinced himself it was an accident though. All of this leads to Saez ringing his contact inside the hotel. This contact happens to be Jaime himself. Having come too far now, Jaime killed Ibai Saez but made it look like it was Mat, using a fingerprint of Mat he obtained from the man’s car door. Wrapping this print around the gun’s trigger, he framed Mat to try and exact justice for Dani’s death. Back in the present, Sonia has heard enough. She heads out with Mat and tells the police everything. Jaime is put behind bars while Mat rebuilds his life, deciding to help other inmates start anew when they’re released. Mat and Olivia also welcome a new life into the world, as Olivia gives birth. Paula returns, living with them, as we cut to a happy 1st birthday for their child. Lorena meanwhile, is promoted to Captain for her stake in closing this case. She drops off her badge at the memorial site of her Father, a symbolic gesture. And so we have our happy ending…or do we? As we cut back in time, we see Mat was the one who pushed Romero over the edge of the railing in prison after all.
The Episode Review
The finale to The Innocent brings everything to a conclusive end, as we see that no one is really that innocent in this series. Mat really did push Romero over the edge of the railing all those years ago but lied about it to make sure he remained innocent. Meanwhile, Lorena gets her promotion at work but it’s bittersweet given the memories she holds for her Father. She’s also probably quite torn up about the incident with Teo too, which could well have triggered those memories. However, the final episode does tie up all the loose ends and answers the big questions we’ve been plagued with all season. For a final chapter, this extended 65 minute episode is nicely paced and the back and forth narratives do a great job to flesh everything out and explain what’s been happening. In the end, no one is truly innocent in all this and as questions of justice and loyalty are brought forward, the ambiguous final shot leaves with niggling doubts over whether Mat really is that innocent after all.
