The Nun
Episode 2 of The Innocent begins with a young girl called Lorena packing her things up, blaring music loud to block out the sound of her parents arguing. Eventually, she leaves with her Mother. Clutching her dolly, she hurries downstairs but realizes she’s forgotten something. While Lorena hurries back up the stairs, her Father slumps by the side of the bed, sobbing. the house. Unable to deal with his pain, he grabs a gun and some pills. Lorena heads back inside and hears a gunshot pierce the air; her Father’s body lies on the floor. This time the narration we hear is from Lorena’s perspective and she’s left at an orphanage. Lorena distances herself from the other girls, eventually growing up and boxing, adamant that she’s going to be a fighter. Unfortunately her life turns into a downward spiral of misery, eventually culminating in her ditching her old persona and becoming Detective Ortiz. Well, our Detective Ortiz is brought to her old orphanage which is now a crime scene. A Sister called Maria has jumped out the window. Principal Baltierre steps out her office and greets Lorena. She reminds the officer that suicide is a sin, prompting her to promise not to tell any reporters abut this for the time being. Inside Maria’s dorm room, Lorena finds a ripped up picture of the girl at a club with her arm around…someone. The other half of the picture is ripped off, making it difficult to discern who it is. On the back of the picture are the words “forgive me.” The handwriting is a match for Lorena’s notebook so it’s definitely her who wrote this. Someone at the orphanage knows what’s going on, especially if the suspicious glances here are anything to go by. For now though, no one is saying anything. Lorena arrives at the morgue next, talking to the coroner about the cause of death. Everything here is consistent with Sister Maria jumping out the window. Only, this nun has a tattoo on her body reading “Hannibal”. She also seems to have had consensual sex that night too. This nun is far from saintly, and further analysis shows that she had breast implants as well. One of the more guilty looking girls at the orphanage, Claudia, gives her statement to Lorena. She was sneaking around at night and noticed a figure hurrying down the hallway at around 1.30am. This eventually brings Lorena back to the crime scene again, along with forensics to piece together what happened. It seems the pillowcase may have been changed. It also looks like the chair was moved. Something is not adding up, so Lorena phones Carlos back at the morgue and asks him to reconstruct Sister Maria’s face again. A crumpled up piece of paper in the toilet holds more clues. Lipstick and a phone number for a guy called Antoni. As we soon find out, this man happens to be married and he’s called in for questioning. The facial reconstruction brings up several nasty injuries, including broken bones. However, the cause of death now seems to be suffocation. There are cotton fibers over Maria’s face, which seems to hint she was gasping for air when she was killed. The events from that night confirm Maria and Antoni did have sex but he’s not the culprit. In reality, their lovemaking ends with them both parting ways. Maria is given his number, which she disregards and uses to wipe off her lipstick, dumping it in the toilet. An attacker arrives and suffocates her with a pillow, repeatedly asking “where does she live?” Maria manages to thwart the threat, eventually throwing herself out the window and unwilling to succumb to his wishes. However, this attacker heads outside and looks like he’s close to vomiting, holding a car rooftop. Lorena continues to investigate, finding the fingerprints and running it through the system for a match. As she arrives at a house and rings the doorbell, she slips a card under the door asking Mat to ring as soon as possible. And just like that, he opens the door.
The Episode Review
The Innocent nicely switches things up with this second episode, introducing a brand new character in Lorena. The way this ties into Mat’s issues is really nicely handled and the show does a great job bringing those both together at the end. Lorena’s backstory, including that narration at the beginning to introduce us to her, nicely brings a consistency to the story. The timelines are starting to overlap now and it could well be that Mat is involved in what happened to Maria. Given how much emphasis is placed on the mystery itself, it’s far too early to judge this show. Most mystery series live and die by their ending, so we’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out. Based on this showing though, there’s definitely a lot to like here.
