The Italian crime drama series Sara: Woman in the Shadows is centered around a retired intelligence operative, Sara, who was forced to reconnect with her former colleagues after the sudden death of her son, Giorgio. While the cops deduced that Giorgio died in an accident, Sara was not convinced. Quite unexpectedly, Sara solved the mystery behind Giorgio’s death within the first episode, and we get the idea that it was a subplot. At the center of the drama is a mystery that Sara failed to solve during her time as a secret agent. Life gave her another chance to solve it, and this time she was determined to get to the bottom of the truth. While initially Sara was reluctant about getting back to work again, she gradually realized this was the closure she needed.
Spoiler Alert
Who killed Giorgio?
Sara shared a complicated relationship with her son. As much as she loved him, Sara prioritized her duty as a secret agent over being a dutiful mother. She knew she couldn’t be present in her son’s life, and her job could potentially put her family at risk. Moreover, Sara had fallen in love with her boss, Massimiliano, and that further complicated her situation. Giorgio detested his mother for not only abandoning him but also for never making the effort to reconnect with him. When Sara learned about Giorgio’s death, she didn’t know where to start her investigation from. She barely had any idea about his life, and she ended up reaching out to his partner, Viola. Viola couldn’t believe that Sara had the audacity to meet her. She knew how deeply Giorgio resented his mother, and she was initially not interested in helping Sara in any way. But gradually, after Sara made the effort to be constantly present in Viola’s life, their relationship improved. Viola had handed Sara Giorgio’s belongings, though she was convinced there was no evidence that could explain his murder. Sara sought favor from her former colleague, Teresa, and found out every detail from his phone. She learned that Giorgio had taken the afternoon off and someone else filled in for him at work. She also started looking into Giorgio’s workplace, Naples Biochemical. She wondered if her son was killed because he messed up at work. She followed his colleague and noticed that he met a woman, Colonel Prati, and informed her that he had access to all the information Giorgio had collected. Sara ended up going to the Lago Patria Military Base dressed as a housekeeping staff member to gather information on Colonel Prati. She entered her office and was surprised when she noticed an identical key she’d seen before. Amongst Giorgio’s personal belongings there was a key with a plastic tag with two numbers on it, 1/15, and Colonel Prati had the same one on her desk. Sara requested Teresa to find a way to get Giorgio’s key for her. Teresa warned Sara that this was her last favor.
Teresa’s trust man, Sergio, slyly delivered the key to Sara, and at the end of the first episode of Sara: Woman in the Shadows, we discover that it was a key to an apartment Giorgio had rented. Sara walked into the apartment and found Colonel Silvia Prati seated on the balcony. She introduced herself, and Sara figured out Giorgio and Silvia were having an affair after she noticed an ‘S+G’ pendant on the desk. Silvia confessed that they were madly in love with each other even though they knew that their situation was not ideal. They met for the first three years back, but Silvia chose to discontinue their affair after she fell sick. Giorgio had rented and hoped that they could discuss their situation, but Silvia chose to keep him waiting. Silvia was pregnant at the time, but she decided to keep it a secret from Giorgio because she didn’t want to give his whole life up. She was suffering from cancer, and she didn’t know if she would make it, and she chose to keep Giorgio out of the mess. After they broke up, Silvia found comfort in her doctor, Ludovico. While he was just a rebound for her, he grew obsessive about Silvia. He was a married man, though Silvia added that was not why she broke up with him. She was just not in love with him, though he continued to support her. Silvia added that he could at times be suffocating. Sara recognized Ludovico; he was the man who’d run his car over her son. While he pretended to be innocent and convinced the cops that it was an accident, Silvia knew that he did it intentionally. He couldn’t accept the fact that Silvia was still in love with Giorgio, and he was envious of him. Jealousy drove him to madness, and he ended up killing Giorgio. Silvia wanted revenge— so she broke the lock of a random car and ran it into Ludovico, killing him on the spot. He later burned down the car and got rid of all evidence.
Who was responsible for Sergio’s death?
Sara had no intention of returning to her old life, but Teresa made sure she didn’t have an option. She showed Sara a video clip of her intentionally speeding her car and running it into Ludovico. If she failed to help Teresa, she would leak the video, and the rest of her life would be spent in prison. Teresa had fallen in love with her informant, Sergio. She tried to keep it strictly professional, but she couldn’t deny the chemistry they shared. Sergio closely worked with politician Tarallo, and his job was to secretly provide Teresa with information. Sergio didn’t agree with Tarallo’s politics, and he was looking for ways to expose him. All of a sudden, when Sergio went missing, Teresa suspected someone had perhaps found out about their arrangement. Later, Sergio’s body was discovered in a tomato farm, and an illegal immigrant was arrested for killing him. According to Tarallo, Sergio showed up at the wrong place and at the wrong time, which was why he was shot. But Sara didn’t buy into the explanation. Tarallo had gained popularity for his anti-immigrant stance, and she suspected that the accused in Sergio’s case was framed to cash in on people’s fear and sway the votes in his favor. Investigative journalist Edoardo Belliti had been working on an article to expose how Tarallo was staging crimes in order to frame migrants, and Sergio had helped him with it. It was obvious that someone had exposed Sergio, but who was it? Towards the end of Sara: Woman in the Shadows, we learn that Sergio’s girlfriend, Rachele, had exposed his secrets out of jealousy. Sara had been keeping a close watch on Rachele, and she’d realized that Rachele had been deeply in love with him, and she missed him terribly. But Sara couldn’t figure out why Rachele had lied to her about the nature of their relationship. She had mentioned they were in an open relationship and were not as deeply attached to one another. Rachele admitted that she was the reason why her partner was killed. She grew suspicious of Sergio when he started to act distant, and one day she decided to follow him. She was devastated when she saw him with a woman much older than him. When Rachele confronted him, he admitted that he was only sleeping with Teresa because he was forced into it. He confessed to her that he was secretly investigating Vigilante.
Who Killed Tarallo?
Sara had learned about Enrico Vigilante towards the beginning of her career. He was linked to neo-Nazis and the Sicilian Mafia, and it was quite evident to them that he intended on planting a bomb, though his purpose was not yet clear. As it turned out, over the years Vigilante had climbed the ladders and was at present using Tarallo to achieve his goals. He wanted to build a nuclear power plant in Campania, and he had been using Tarallo to get it approved. But Tarallo had recently accepted a bribe from a party for backing their cause for renewable energy, and that resulted in Tarallo suggesting Vigilante take a step back and wait for the right time for him to announce his plan for a nuclear plant. Of course, it didn’t sit well with Vigilante, and he had his men shoot him at a party rally, and once again an immigrant was blamed for it.
Vigilante was almost family to Rachele; she’d grown up with him around. He had helped her father with his massive debt, so she felt she had to inform her father what Sergio was up to. She had hoped her father would expose Sergio and he would no longer have any reason to continue sleeping with Teresa. But things went out of control when her father passed on the information to Sergio. Sara confronted Rachele’s father, Anzovino. He explained that he didn’t have much of an option; after all, Sergio had become a threat to Vigilante. Now that the truth was out, Anzovino had no choice but to agree to keep Sara and her partner, Inspector Pardo, in the loop. They had figured out about the possible attack on Tarallo from Anzovino, and they had witnessed Tarallo die the minute he stopped serving Vigilante’s interest.
What happened to Edoardo Belliti?
Edoardo Belliti was vocal about his opinions, and he didn’t shy away from directly questioning Tarallo about Sergio during a press conference. He’d been working on exposing Tarallo, and his former classmate, Sergio, had been helping him with it. One of Edoardo’s informants had lured him to a construction site. While he was apprehensive about going there at first, he ultimately decided to give it a go in the hopes of a more information-backed article. But as it turned out, he had stepped into a trap. Vigilante’s men wanted him gone. They shot him, but it was not fatal. He managed to make it to a nearby locality, and they dressed his wound. The minute he regained consciousness, the locals made it very clear that they wanted him gone. Since he didn’t have money or a phone on him, he asked them for help. A woman asked him to contact a receptionist working at a nearby hotel. Edoardo got access to a computer there, and he left a cryptic message on his social media. Since he knew Pardo and Sara had been following his social media, he hoped that they would receive his message. Pardo and Sara concluded that Edoardo had somehow managed to make it back to his apartment, and he wanted to meet them, but he was nowhere to be found. After tracking the location of the computer, they ended up at the hotel, and to their surprise, they found a dead man in the room Edoardo had momentarily stayed at. The man had come for Edoardo, but he had a gun, and he fired in self-defense.
Edoardo knew he was in trouble; the politicians, the mafia, and now the cops would be searching for him, so he had to escape. According to airport surveillance footage, Edoardo had bought a ticket to Lisbon, and he simply disappeared.
In Sara: Woman in the Shadows’ ending, Pardo solved the mystery behind Edoardo’s cryptic text. He realized that Edoardo hadn’t asked them to meet at his apartment, but instead he had described the kid’s room of his neighbor’s apartment. Edoardo was close with Ely, the kid who lived in his next-door apartment, but Pardo couldn’t figure out why he’d mentioned her room. After talking to Ely, Pardo learned that Edoardo had gifted her a toy, and he’d asked her to always keep it close to her. Pardo figured it was a clue, and upon tearing the toy open, he discovered a USB drive. It had all the documents and information Edoardo had gathered over the years. To honor his efforts, Pardo exposed Edoardo’s findings, and it immediately became one of the biggest scandals in Italian politics. The entire nation discovered that Tarallo, the regional Campania candidate, had based his entire electoral campaign on xenophobia. People also learned how organized crime rings recruited illegal immigrants to commit crimes in Campania, and their arrests helped boost Tarallo’s popularity. Even though Edoardo was no longer in Italy, his dedication and his determination to expose the ones in power resulted in a shockwave, and presumably the world would demand accountability. Perhaps Edoardo was watching the news from somewhere in Lisbon, and hopefully he felt that everything he’d been through was worth it.
Why did Teresa shoot Vigilante?
Pardo wondered how someone like Vigilante could operate all on his own; there must have been someone on the inside constantly covering his tracks. Looking back, Sara figured that the only person she thought could have helped Vigilante was Lembo, who acted as a bridge between the department and the state. She learned from her former colleague, Catapano, that during the attack in Florence when he and Massimiliano were in Rome, Lembo didn’t let him in the boardroom. He remembered Massimiliano and Lembo had a lengthy discussion after which Massimiliano had stepped out and stated that they were back in square one since the interceptions were useless. Both Catapano and Sara refused to suspect Massimiliano, but it was obvious that Lembo was involved and he worked for Vigilante. By the time Sara confronted Lembo, he stated that it was too late. She warned him that this time Vigilante would not manage to escape his fate after all; there was enough proof to suggest his involvement in Tarallo’s murder. Before Lembo left, he advised Sara to forget whatever she had just discovered, just like Massimiliano did. Sara never suspected her partner; after all, he was as passionate about the truth as she was, but in the end she was left wondering if he chose to maintain silence even after knowing everything. Maybe he did it to protect his job, his department, or perhaps he was afraid of losing everyone and everything that mattered in his life for daring to go against Vigilante. He was helpless, and he did what he had to at the time. Teresa comforted Sara, stating that he was surely innocent, knowing well that was not the truth. She lied just like Sara did to comfort her when Teresa learned about Sergio’s secret operations.
The ending of Sara: Woman in the Shadows revealed that Teresa followed Vigilante to the park he regularly went to run. She got his location, thanks to the tech genius Anna Maria, and she shot him. Teresa had nothing to lose anymore. Her department was closed, she had lost her lover, and she perhaps thought that before her career came to an end, she deserved to go out with a bang. Vigilante, of course, didn’t operate alone, and one cannot help but wonder if the mafia would try to solve the mystery behind his death. Or maybe they will let it pass to stay out of the investigation that had recently unfolded? Either way, Teresa was unafraid of the consequences; she didn’t wish to live with the guilt of not doing anything even after finding out the truth.
