The Mess You Leave Behind – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Count To Three

Episode 3 of The Mess You Leave Behind begins with Raquel heading home as the truth surrounding her affair and blackmail remain dark storm clouds rumbling in her mind. As we soon find out Simon is the man in the video and he happens to be a close associate to German.

Unsure how to respond, another text comes through telling her the video will go public if she doesn’t act. Interestingly, the number is the same one that Viruca responded to in the past.

Raquel heads back to class and immediately takes out her frustration on the kids, writing “No” up on the board and telling them their exam is in 2 days.

In the past, Viruca and Iago grow closer together as the latter happens to be a personal trainer at the gym. He helps Viruca but watches her constantly with pretty pervy eyes. Anyway, it rattles Viruca who locks eyes with his Father in the car park as they both leave and go their separate ways.

Raquel’s friend Tere arrives in town and they head out together to the woods. There, Raquel spills the truth about the blackmail and the affair she’s bottled up and hidden all this time. It turns out their affair was going on for 3 months and since then she’s felt guilty about what she did. Raquel never told Tere originally as she was too ashamed to face the truth.

Raquel remains determined to find out who could be behind the blackmail threats but when looking at student grades, the one boy who comes up above everyone else for computer science scores happens to be Roi.

Just before meeting him, Raquel finds documents relating to Viruca and the financial issues her family were facing. It’s not much but certainly something that could have tipped her over the edge and begun drinking again before her “suicide”.

Raquel meets Roi and questions him over the phone and the blackmail. Her voice breaks while talking to him and she pleads with the boy to do everything he can to figure out who was responsible. If it’s not Roi, Iago or Nerea then who could it be?

Back home, Raquel starts to lose control while tryig to find her favourite book. German arrives to comfort her, eventually bringing the girl down to the hot springs for some much-needed R&R. There, German admits that he’s going to buy out a stake of the restaurant.

Only, they’re interrupted by German’s buddy Gabriel arriving to spoil the party. Afterwardfs, he invites the pair up to his house where numerous people are drinking and partying.

Interestingly, Raquel sees a photo of Viruca up on the wall alongside numerous other people. When she questions Gabriel about this, he’s cagey and doesn’t given much away about his connections to her. Raquel has her suspicions.

Eventually German and Raquel cycle home where she makes a big decision and decides to sell her Mother’s house. This should be enough to drum up the cash needed for German to buy out their stake of the restaurant.

In the middle of the night, Raquel has a bad dream and begins panicking. It seems like a night terror as she’s unable to move, prompting German to give her a pill to help calm her down.

The next evening, German receives a message from an unknown number asking if he wants to see a porn movie or not. He writes it off as nothing but Raquel knows this is more of the blackmail and on the back of this, is forced to change the exam questions.

Things aren’t looking good and Raquel eventually speaks to Mauro, asking for guidance on what to do. She asks whether Viruca went through the same thing as her and touches on the blackmail. Mauro is convinced that Iago is behind this though and goes on to tell Raquel that her student may have forced himself on Viruca.

As we see from a flashback after class, Viruca happened to be having an affair with Iago’s Father, Tomas.

The Episode Review

Could Tomas be the one behind everything that’s happening? It seems likely now that German isn’t the one involved but it still raises the question over exactly who’s blackmailing Raquel and why. This is compelling enough to keep watching, as flashbacks to the past help to flesh out more about what’s happening.

If not Tomas then it could always be Mauro that’s behind this. It’s obvious there’s no love lost between him and Viruca at the end and his disdain toward Raquel could be enough for him to research and find out information about her. That’s just a theory at this point though.

Quite what Iago has to do with all of this too, remains to be seen but it seems clear now that he’s definitely involved quite heavily in what’s been happening – especially if his Father was having an affair with his teacher. Is this enough to blackmail Raquel? We’ll have to wait and see but this series continues to deliver a compelling mystery at its core.