Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Law According to Lidia Poët’ brings its trailblazing protagonist for another round of solving murders and fighting for equal rights for women. The first season focuses on Lidia Poët trying to become a bonafide lawyer, but with several rejections in her path, she briefly considers leaving for America. In the end, she decides to stay back and continue the fight. She knows that the power of changing the system lies in the hands of lawmakers, so she pushes for a bill that calls for equality for women in workplaces after her idea of getting voting rights for women is rejected. In the midst of this, she also has work on her cases, the most important of which is the murder of a dear friend, Attila Brusaferro. The entire season revolves around this overarching mystery. In the end, it turns out to have a connection to a greater conspiracy.
The Law According to Lidia Poët Season 2 Recap
In the first episode, Attila Brusaferro is murdered, and by the end of the episode, it is revealed that his killer is Carlo, who not only worked with Attila but also considered him his dear friend. When he is caught, Carlo kills himself. He prefers it to getting arrested because he knows that the people who asked him to kill Attila will eventually have him killed anyway. His suicide makes Lidia and Jacopo even more adamant about solving the murder, and slowly, they start to uncover the truth behind it. Jacopo discovers that Attila had been looking into Cavalier Juvara, who owns the Bank of Turin.
A few days before his death, he met a bookshop owner named Nitti, who is in the wind the moment Jacopo comes around asking questions. After a lot of effort, Nitti finally decides to come forward, but then, he is killed. Lidia and Jacopo eventually find the murderer, who reveals the whole truth to them. Meanwhile, Lidia forms a connection with Senator Cravero and his wife, who suggest that Enrico should run for parliament. Once elected, he could support Lidia’s bill for women’s rights. The plan works, but it is after meeting Nitti’s murderer that Lidia discovers that Enrico’s election to the parliament was also a part of the conspiracy.
What is Operation 15 March? Does Lidia Foil the Plan?
Operation 15 March was supposed to be a coup d’état. A few ministers in the parliament conspired with Cavalier Juvara to kill the President and take over the government, which would be entirely under their control. Juvara’s backing allowed them the financial means, among other things, to get the job done. In return, the government would do favors for his bank, which would make him wealthier and more influential. With the President coming to Turin, the idea was to have a banquet thrown for him, where a blast would happen, claiming his life, as well as those of his supporters who could forward progressive bills in the Parliament, which would not do Juvara any favors. The bomb was fitted in a grandfather clock, and initially, it was to blow up in the residence of Senator Cravero. The blame would fall upon the extremists, and the coup would go down without a hitch.
Attila was on to this conspiracy, which is why he had been looking into Juvara and several other ministers, including Senator Cravero, with whom he had a brief meeting a couple of days before he was killed. By that time, Attila had discovered quite a mountain of evidence in the form of bills and the paper trail left behind by the conspirators via Nitti. All this evidence was hidden in the rare, the clue for which he left for Lidia and Jacopo in the letters he wrote for them. In one of those documents, Jacopo finds the bill for the grandfather clock, which leads Lidia to make a shocking realization.
At the time, the authorities were searching Senator Cravero’s house, believing that it would be targeted because that’s where the banquet was supposed to be held that night. But then, Lidia remembers that Cravero had gifted a grandfather clock to Enrico in support of his nomination to the Parliament. At the same time, Enrico was to host the President in a private meeting. From here, Lidia starts to piece together several other things about Senator Cravero that had bugged her, including the note of a meeting between him and Attila. It made sense to her that Senator Cravero was one of the conspirators and had been masquerading as a supporter for Lidia and her cause, only to bring it all down at once.
She realizes that his support for Enrico and pitching him as a candidate for the elections was also a part of Cravero’s plan. Knowing that the blast is going to happen at her house, she and Jacopo run there, reaching just in time to throw the clock out of their window. Moments later, the blast takes place, and Lidia’s suspicions are confirmed. The President is saved, and her own family is prevented from being killed. The coup is foiled.
What Happens to Senator Cravero?
One of the most shocking revelations for Lidia is the true nature of Senator Cravero. He had posed himself as a good guy, ready to forward the bill for women’s rights in the Parliament and offering his support at every turn. But he turns out to have been working on his own plan to overthrow the government, and he doesn’t care who is killed in the process. Later, the assassin reveals his name, along with every other minister’s (at least, the ones he knows about), to reveal the extent of corruption in the Parliament. However, the truth is not revealed to the public.
While the President is happy that the coup didn’t go as planned, he also knows that the revelation of a conspiracy happening right under his nose would not present him as a strong leader to the public. He doesn’t want his enemies to use it against him, so he asks Lidia and her family to keep the details of the case to themselves. Still, he can’t sit by and let the people who conspired against him go free. Senator Cravero and every other conspirator, including Juvara, are arrested, though they are not charged with treason or conspiracy. Instead, some other charge of corruption is levied on them, sending them to prison and destroying their political career for good.
According to the President’s wishes, the whole picture of the matter is not revealed to anyone outside the ones involved in the investigation. So, no newspaper writes of the conspiracy. With his new newspaper, Jacopo tries to bring the whole truth to light, but before he can print even a single word, he is stopped by the authorities, who confiscate every word he has written about it and every piece of evidence he has on the matter. This shows that even he cannot write about the coup and must make peace with the fact that he helped stop it. The only good to come out of the coup is that now, Enrico is in the Parliament and having saved the President’s life, he has become part of his inner circle, giving more power to change the laws of the country.
What Happens to Fourneau? Does He Go Forward with the Operation?
While tension remains between Jacopo and Lidia, she gets a new love interest in the form of the Royal Prosecutor Fourneau. He is dedicated to the fight for truth and justice and doesn’t consider it beneath him to take help from Lidia, who is usually fighting against him to free her clients. For Fourneau, it is better to work with her and find the true culprit rather than have an innocent person go to prison. He is also immensely impressed by Lidia, and slowly, she too starts to have feelings for him.
Despite her complicated feelings for Jacopo, Lidia decides to move on when Fourneau makes his move and invites her for dinner. The more they work together, the better Lidia feels about their relationship, which seems to have more balance than what she had with Jacopo. There comes a moment when she and Jacopo reconnect, but she backs off and tells him about her intentions of continuing and exploring the relationship with Fourneau. Meanwhile, the prosecutor falls in love with Lidia, and this changes his outlook on life. Fourneau reveals to Lidia that he has a sickness that is meant to consume and kill him in a few years. It has something to do with his brain, and while he takes medication for it, the doctors have told him that his condition will slowly deteriorate and he is doomed to die young. What he doesn’t tell Lidia is that there is a way for his illness to go away permanently.
Fourneau is given two options by the doctor. One option is surgery, which has a high-risk factor. It could be a success and give Fourneau a chance at having a long and normal life. But then, the surgery could also go awry, and he could die on the operating table. The other option is to skip the surgery and live as long as the illness allows him to. Death is certain in this option, but at least he won’t die immediately. Initially, Fourneau decided to choose the second option. He had nothing to live for, and he didn’t want to take the risks the surgery posed. He had limited time, but he was determined to make the best of it. And then, he met Lidia.
After falling in love with Lidia, Fourneau starts seeing a future for himself. At the end of the season, her brother is to leave for Rome now that he is a minister. At first, Fourneau believes that Lidia, too, will accompany him. But then, she decides to stay in Turin. While she tells him that this is because she wants to continue working on her fight for women’s rights, which she started in Turin, Fourneau also takes it as a hint that she has stayed there for him. Encouraged by her decision to stay in Turin, Fourneau decides to take a chance on the surgery. He doesn’t tell her about it because he doesn’t want to burden her with the possibility of his imminent death. If he survives the surgery, he will tell her everything. If he doesn’t, she’ll still find out about it. In any case, the truth will come to her eventually. So, Fourneau takes his chances, though whether or not he survives remains to be seen.
Why Does Jacopo Go to Rome?
Lidia and Jacopo’s love affair began in Season 1, but then, Jacopo proposed marriage to Lidia, and she refused him. It’s not that she didn’t love him, but she had decided never to get married. This leads to a rift between them, ending their relationship and leading to more problems when Jacopo sells the villa where the Poëts had been living so far. In the second season, they try to keep a distance from each other, but Attila’s death keeps them in each other’s circle. It becomes clear that they still have feelings for each other, but while Jacopo focuses on his work, Lidia finds romance with Fourneau, which irks Jacopo. In the end, Jacopo realizes that he has no future in Turin. He wants to start his own newspaper, with socialist leanings and entirely uninfluenced by anyone, only working to serve the truth to the public. But there are too many factors holding him behind in Turin.
So, when he gets the offer to come work in Rome, where he has the freedom he desires, he decides to take the opportunity. With Enrico also moving to Rome, it would seem logical for Lidia to move with her brother, which would keep her and Jacopo together. But he knows that she will not leave Turin, which is why they are forced to bid each other farewell for good. By this time, Jacopo has also realised that Lidia and Fourneau seem better matched, and while she still has feelings for Jacopo, they are not strong enough to make her leave Turin and Fourneau. So, he accepts his defeat in this love triangle. He and Lidia share a kiss on the train, but it only seals an end to their relationship, leading both of them to find their destiny away from each other.
Read More: Netflix’s The Law According to Lidia Poët: True Story of Italy’s First Female Lawyer
