Detective Montero starts off Episode 1 of Someone Has To Know by talking about a missing person’s case that has been bothering Chile for years. The story then goes back to 1999, when we meet Vanessa Font and her two sons, Eric and Julio Montoya. Sofía is dating Julio, who is the younger of the two.
Julio asks his mom to lie to Sofía one night so he can go out with Leo, his friend. Leo takes Julio and two girls to the La Cucaracha disco. Vanessa realizes that Julio never came home by the next morning.
Leo calls the family and says that Julio didn’t leave the club with him and might still be there. Vanessa and Eric hurry to the club and start looking, but they can’t find him.
As time goes on, a search across town begins. While Vanessa and Eric check the morgues, locals join in, hoping that Julio is still alive. Vanessa also asks people all over Chile for help in a public appeal.
Detective Montero and his team show up two weeks later to take over the case. But things get tense quickly when the Captain won’t let the local police off the case. He also talks about a silent witness who might have seen something.
Montero, who knows sign language, talks to the witness and hears a troubling version of what happened. The witness said that a group of men beat Julio up, kidnapped him, and took him to a cabin in the woods.
At the same time, Montero has a hard time keeping control and telling his team to stay sharp. Vanessa, on the other hand, starts to lose hope because the case isn’t moving forward very quickly.
Later, Montero and Detective Concha go to see Vanessa and Eric to ask about Julio’s last few interactions. Vanessa is willing to help, but she wants to know why the police haven’t done anything about the club owners.
Next, the detectives go to the disco to talk to Bruno and his wife. They say they don’t remember seeing Julio that night. Bruno says that the club had to close because of the investigation. Montero asks them about the bouncer, who might have been working at the time.
Montero and Concha think about getting in touch with the bouncer again as they look over the case. Montero says that Detective Carrasco is already asking him questions.
The bouncer’s talk with Carrasco tells a different story. The bouncer says that Julio was very drunk when he left and suggests looking in the woods nearby.
Sofía meets Vanessa at a restaurant later. She is shocked when she hears about a possible kidnapping and tries to calm her down.
Vanessa goes to the grocery store the next day and confronts Bruno and his wife, blaming them for her son’s disappearance.
Detectives are still working on the case, following up on leads all over town, including a blue van that the mute witness talked about. But after talking to the witness’s wife, Montero and Concha start to doubt what he said.
They come to the conclusion that the witness may have made up the story of the kidnapping. Montero tells the judge, who is shocked to find out that the testimony is not true. He then tells Vanessa that his team is now in charge of the investigation.
At a church, Father Andrés hears a confession from a man he doesn’t know who talks about Julio’s disappearance. Even though he is shaken, the priest can’t say who the confessor is.
Father Andrés is deep in prayer at the end of the episode, and Vanessa is still looking for answers.
The Review of the Episode
The first episode sets up an interesting mystery, but the pacing can be slow and, at times, annoying. A lot of that anger comes from the fact that the town is quiet and almost everyone seems to be unwilling to talk about what happened to Julio.
It’s still too early to say for sure, but there are signs that Julio may have been hanging out with the wrong people. One big hole in the investigation is that Leo, the last person known to have seen Julio, hasn’t been directly questioned. This seems like an obvious step that hasn’t been fully looked into yet.
The last few minutes of the story add an interesting layer, especially the priest’s confession. It is still unclear whether Father Andrés will break confidentiality to help with the investigation, but it seems unlikely because of ethical concerns.
There are also hints that are small but interesting about a mysterious person in the woods. This, along with what the bouncer said, makes it seem like Julio may have ended up there. This raises more questions about whether Montero and his team will follow up on that lead in future episodes.
In general, the episode sets up the series well, even if it takes a while to get there.
