'Baby' Season 3 Ending Explained: How Chiara and Ludo's secret life got exposed after a roller-coaster season
Spoilers for 'Baby' Season 3
If you've followed Netflix's international hit 'Baby', you would very easily understand how the twisted events culminate into cops dismantling one of Rome's underage prostitution rings. Season three's first episode dramatically begins when Sofia Manchini (Alessia Scriboni), an underage prostitute, is caught by police. Referring to Sofia as "one of Manuel's (another pimp) girls," Fiore (Giuseppe Maggio), a dangerous and manipulative pimp assures his "girls" Chiara Altieri (Benedetta Porcarol), Ludovica Storti (Alice Pagani), and a woman who has been in the "game" longer, Natalia (Denise Capezza) that the cops don't suspect a thing with him.
Chiara, a powerful and outspoken high school girl, is deeply immersed in the life of prostitution, or as Ludo puts it, "obsessed" with the life of freedom and control. She is wanted for Ludo to be safe. Since they move their operation from a hotel to an apartment that Fiore bought, it was hard for police to find them. Various characters, revenge plots and determined loyalty result in the ultimate trial that was set up to prosecute Fiore and protect young women like Chiara and Ludo.
After Sofia is caught, she doesn't reveal much to the cops until they inform her that a leaked tape had shown her having sex with Roberto De Santis. Santis was the father of Brando De Santis (Mirko Trovato), who in Season 2 was blackmailing Chiara after he found out what was going on with Ludo, her, and Fiore. In order to shut him up, Chiara had not only given Sofia Roberto's number but had also forwarded Brando the video of Sofia and his father. Brando, upset with his father's disdain and homophobia towards him, anonymously gave police the incriminating tape.
Sofia reveals to police that a girl named Emma from the Collodi institute was also involved in prostitution. Emma was the fake name that Chiara used with her clients.
On the other side of the town, Damiano Younes (Riccardo Mandolini), Chiara's ex-boyfriend who had earlier found out what Chiara was up to, was being sent pictures of him and Chiara by a PI hired by his own father. In the previous season, he had broken into the PI's office and deleted all material that could have incriminated Chiara. As he tried talking to Chiara about why she continued to take clients and got nowhere, he decided that he could offer her a way out. The PI told Damiano that he just wanted money by blackmailing the girl's pimp, and all Damiano had to do was help him catch Fiore by putting a camera in the apartment that Fiore had set up.
Damiano had earlier worked with Fiore, and was easily brought back into the business by the pimp — he was asked by Fiore to fire Natalia who had threatened to go to the cops. In that process, Damiano was able to get the keys to the apartment from Natalia and plant the camera in a teddy bear in Chiara's room. That is how the PI was able to get evidence about the prostitution ring, but instead of blackmailing Fiore, he blackmailed Chiara's parents who paid him off to protect their daughter and their reputation. Chiara's mother Elsa Altieri (Galatea Ranzi) was running for a spot in the elections and couldn't have her reputation ruined. This is how Chiara's name never made it to the cops.
After Damiano had spilled to Fabio Fedeli's boyfriend (a journalist) that students at Collodi were also part of the prostitution ring, rumors ended up pointing to Ludo, who was already a self-proclaimed rebel. Unfortunately, Elsa blamed Ludo for what Chiara had done and sent photos of Ludo and Fiore to the school — she had these photos from the PI. Police assumed that Ludo was Emma and charged her with inciting underage prostitution because Sofia had named Emma as the person that gave her Roberto's contact.
Ludo, who had quit the prostitution ring, and wanted to focus on her future was now the center of this scandal. But she didn't want to turn Chiara, the real Emma, in. Ludo's mother had known about her daughter's shortcomings and that Fiore was a pimp but had done nothing to stop it. To be fair, nothing was in her control. So, when Ludo decided to run away with Fiore to save her family the trouble from the scandal, her mother Simonetta (Isabella Ferrari) had to admit to the cops that she knew that Fiore was a pimp so they would start a search for Ludo. Simonetta was arrested for aiding and abetting underage prostitution.
Chiara, who wanted to save Ludo, couldn't do much and was advised by her mother to move on. But, an ex of her, Niccolò Rossi Govender (Lorenzo Zurzolo), told Chiara that her mother was the one that got Ludo into trouble. Chiara now wanted to take responsibility and went live on social media admitting to the world that she was Emma. She begged Ludo to come back now that everyone knew that Ludo wasn't the only one involved in the prostitution scandal. With Chiara's confession, police had no choice but to move the charges that Ludo was facing to Chiara who now had to face trial along with everyone else involved. Ludo was able to trick Fiore and run away from him, leading cops to his whereabouts, so he too had to answer to charges of prostitution in court.
With Fiore claiming that he was exploited by Damiano, Ludo, and Chiara, the trial was not going in favor of the teenagers. Fortunately for them, Natalia agreed to be that last witness to testify — the only woman that could help the trio prosecute Fiore. So, this is how the double life that Chiara and Ludo led for a year and a half became one of the biggest scandals of Parioli.
'Baby' Season 3 is now available to stream on Netflix.