Truth Be Told – Season 3 Episode 1 Recap & Review

Under the Sweet Bird’s Throat

Episode 1 of Truth Be Told Season 3 starts with Poppy delivering another podcast episode, with the attention this time on missing children. She mentions 16 year old Emily Mills, who has gone missing and her whereabouts is unknown. Only, Drea Spivey also went missing a year earlier of course, but she was found… until 72 hours ago. She’s gone missing again and Charise is forced to relive that nightmare again.

There’s been 11 missing women in the past 4 years and after 10 hours of interviews with Drea, Poppy is determined to relive those moments and see if there’s anything within this to help. So after all this exposition, we get some more, as we cut back in time and learn about Drea’s Fentanyl addiction. She managed to get herself clean and turned away from taking some new drug called “High Hunter”. She fingers her necklace while mentioning this.

Meanwhile at school, tensions are high as the head teacher, Eva, points out that two girls have gone missing from their school. She messages one of the students and catfishes her, as an example of how easy it is to dupe young people.

Poppy attempts to head into the police station to see Detective Aames, but he instead walks her out, confirming she’s not welcome. All of this is a ruse, as they speak in confidence outside. Poppy points out the High Hunter situation and gets him to check it out.

Just then, a guy called Andrew Finney shows up at the station. This man is actually the front-runner to be the next Mayor of Oakland and he’s partly the reason they’re so fixated on finding Emily Mills.

At school, Lee Hackman and his wife Sybil show up at the gym to deliver a political speech and use the grounds as a means for their various candidate speeches. However, Poppy and a number of other people gatecrashes the entire event and points out that there are other missing girls like Drea who need to be found.

Around campus, news of High Hunter is on the lips of the students, most notably one of Drea’s friends, Tanya. She reveals that Drea was hanging around with a guy much older than her and he could be the “High Hunter.” The situation itself is made all the more precarious as Poppy wonders whether he could be her pimp.

We also learn that Poppy and her father have been spending more time together lately these past few months. He’s still concerned about her though, pointing out that Poppy is lost. Interestingly, it turns out Andrew Finney wants to work with him and the other Capstones too, which is an intriguing development.

That night, Drea rings Poppy and tells her to stop looking for her. She’s absolutely fine but refuses to elaborate, pointing out that she owes this “High Hunter”. Apparently he’s done “so much for her” so now she needs to return that trust by giving sexual favours to others. She also wants Poppy to keep things quiet and not look for her anymore.

Of course Poppy does no such thing and immediately tells Charise and the others. Poppy only thinks about herself (nothing new there) and suggests they air it on the podcast. Charise believes it’s a good idea if it has a chance of bringing her home.

Noa is the voice of reason here and is concerned about Poppy’s way of dealing with this latest development. She worries that it could end badly and she’s not happy about sensationalism, believing they need to do more research before jumping to conclusions and just posting anything. As a result, Noa decides this will be her last podcast episode.

When Noa leaves, Poppy receives a call from Aames. He’s been doing some research and there’s bad news. It’s Drea. She’s been killed. Poppy is determined to find out exactly who wanted to shut her up, as we learn the motel is actually called High Hunter, explaining what that name was referencing earlier. Interestingly, Eva happens to be in one of the rooms just down the hallway, as we learn she’s been using sex traffickers too.

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The Episode Review

The show nobody asked to be renewed is back, and Truth Be Told does absolutely nothing to justify that decision. Now, to be fair it might do big numbers for Apple but the second season was such a meandering mess and this third doesn’t exactly start on the best foot.

After learning about Emily Mills going missing, Poppy decides to change the narrative completely to focus on her issues, namely Drea whom she has a personal vested interest in. Toward the end, the whole missing person case is turned on its head when Drea contacts her. Does Poppy go the police? Does she ring Aames and ask for help? No, she goes to her family instead.

And as a result of that time-wasting and potentially her meddling, asking loud questions and acting “boisterous”, Drea ends up killed. Now, I’m not saying the police may have changed anything but given Drea was just held up at a motel within the exact same town she went missing from, the writers need to have a damn good excuse as to why nobody has found Drea these past few days.

It seems the investigation now is going to be looking into the cause of Drea’s murder, and it could well be linked to the disappearance of the others girls who have actually gone missing, rather than dropping off the grid and just hiding. How does Emily Mills tie into this? What about the other girls who have gone missing? All of that leaves the rest of the season wide open but just like before, this is likely to be a very long season unless the show steps it up and starts to double-down on its writing.

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You can read our full season review for Truth Be Told season 3 here!