'My Brilliant Friend' Season 2 finale promo hints at Lila tackling brutal factory work in Season 3
If season 1 ended with Lila Cerullo (Gaia Girace) starting an unhappy marriage, it starts with her ending it in season 2's finale. Simultaneously, Lenu aka Elena Greco (Margherita Mazzucco) gets engaged -- this time her boyfriend is the much more stable Pietro Airota (Matteo Cecchi), the son of a famous scholar.
In the promo, we see Lenu accepting his ring and marriage proposal and giving him the manuscript of her first novel. According to the episode synopsis, she is close to graduating and when she is "seized by a creative impulse", she gives birth to her first novel. Her supportive fiance, with connections, has the ability to have it looked at by publishing houses and this is just one of the ways in which Lenu's hobnobbing in elite circles allows her to access opportunities unavailable to Lila.
Lila, on the other hand, is seen mutely observing as Ada Cappuccio (Ulrike Migliaresi), her one-time subordinate at the grocery store and Antonio's sister, take over as the mistress of her house. As Stephano's (Giovanni Amura) mistress, she feels threatened by Lila's presence and tells Lila that she has to leave.
And leave she does. To support herself, she ends up working at the meat factory. In the trailer for the next episode, we see Lenu learning about her leaving Stephano after she returns to Naples, ring on her finger. She is told that Lila just left with her son and "left everything here".
Lenu is handed the responsibility of dealing with Lila's things and getting them to her. Among Lila's detritus that Ada wants out of the house, we see the short novella Lila had written as a child, 'The Blue Fairy', with a lovingly hand-crafted book cover colored with crayons. In the books, it is revealed that Lenu's own novel that she gives to her fiance, imitates Lila's "author's voice" that she exhibited in this fairytale. This is something that Lenu herself recognizes and she calls her writer's style, a "pale imitation".
The series has made some small departures from the book and we still don't know if this point around how Lila's writing shapes Lenu's output will be referenced. But given that the title of this episode is 'The Blue Fairy', there should be some focus on Lila's response to seeing the story penned by her as a child, and the memories it dredges up for her and Lenu. Will it remind Lila of the ambitions she once had and how far she has strayed from them? Lenu will also probably tell her about the novel she has written that will further show how the gap between them has grown.
In the promo video, we see Lenu making her way to the meat factory, dressed in expensive clothes. When she sees Lila, wane and overworked, handling animal carcasses, she instinctively shrinks in horror. It is another reminder of how her life could have turned out without proper education. Lila becoming a factory worker also hints at the plotline for Season 3.
As she endures the miseries of the working class, she will, as she always has, be the one to best articulate what the workers are facing, including sexual harassment of the female workers. She will also likely draw nearer to Pasquale who she always credits with a keen understanding of workers' rights and the politics of class oppression.
Lenu, on the other hand, will gain an "academic understanding" of the same issues -- setting up another difference between the girls' understanding of the world around them and their response to it.
'My Brilliant Friend' will air its finale episode on Monday, May 4 at 10/9c.
