Truth Be Told- Season 3, A Review

There’s no such thing as a child prostitute.

Truth Be Told Season 1 Review. Season 2 Review.

The third season of Truth Be Told follows Poppy (Octavia Spencer, The Witches) as she takes on another case, this time involving child trafficking and a whole group of missing girls. The season kicks off with Poppy looking into the disappearance of Drea Spivey (Nia Sondaya), a young girl who has disappeared but is being largely ignored by the Oakland PD who are pooling all of their resources into looking for white teen Emily Mills (Jane Widdop). Poppy is then approached by Drea’s school Principal Eva (Gabrielle Union) who wants to help in any way she can, forming an alliance between the pair.

As Poppy and Eva work to track down several missing girls Marcus’ (Mekhi Phifer) daughter Trini (Mychala Lee) is then also taken, leading the trio to believe she has been sexually trafficked. As Poppy and Marcus work to find Trini and the other girls, Eva’s own motives come into question and Poppy begins to question whether she can actually trust her or not. Eva has a past of her own involving trafficking, potentially clouding her judgements when it comes to the investigation. Can Poppy work to find all of the girls and get them home before it’s too late or will yet another group of young black girls go missing without a trace?

Season three tackled the very important issue of child trafficking, taking Poppy and the show in a new and dangerous direction with this being her first live case so to speak with the previous two murder investigations happening after the fact. This time around we got to see Poppy actively on the hunt for the missing girls and really going down some dark avenues, taking Truth Be Told in a whole new direction. Seasons one and two saw her pursuing singular murder cases but here it was countless young girls in danger where the guilty parties had been getting away with trafficking for years, making a lot of the evidence a lot harder to stick. Murders are a lot simpler with the verdicts being very open and shut but here Poppy really had her work cut out for her, tracking down the girls, getting them to testify and then going after some very public figures, the whole show felt bigger and better than ever before.

Eva was such a fantastic character and a real interesting addition to the season. Her own history with child trafficking made her a useful ally against the cause but her own personal feelings also made her somewhat reckless, making Poppy wonder whether she could actually be trusted. From interviews I’ve seen that a lot of this season was based on real life experiences for Union and so I can only applaud her for giving such a powerhouse performance, it must have been difficult to portray Eva but she was obviously able to put herself into the character. I really liked Poppy having such a strong-willed friend because in all honestly she doesn’t have many people outside of her immediate family and so I really enjoyed this new bond formed and was all the more gutted with how it ended. Eva really was the force behind this season and she really kicked off everything with refusing to let matters lie and pushing to get to the truth no matter what.

Trini’s own trafficking really added a personal touch to the season with Poppy actually knowing this victim and being so close with Marcus and Zarina (Merle Dandridge, The Flight Attendant). Obviously the other victims were equally as important but I think with Trini it made everything feel so much more real and a lot more dangerous because one wrong move could have been the end of everything. On Trini’s side I really loved her journey, going from the naïve and trustworthy girlfriend to then having her entire world change. Everything that happened to her massively took its toll both on her and her family and I really liked the first hand view we got of a trafficking victim, especially one we’d grown to know over the show’s runtime.

The Emily Mills storyline was a really interesting addition to the season both as a comparison to the main storyline and as a mystery by itself. Despite the whole number of young girls missing/being trafficked the police and media put all of their energy into Emily and her disappearance mainly because she was white and rich. Aames (David Lyons) was forced to devote most of his energy into finding Emily rather than assisting Poppy and as a whole the storyline acted as a constant overshadow, massively reflecting what happens in real life all the time. The fact it was then revealed Emily was never missing at all and the whole thing was one big con spoke real volumes and I think perfectly compared real issues that go ignored and fake issues that take up the majority of screen time, Emily Mills and everything she stood for really made a dent in this season and I loved the constant comparison.

This season we also got to see some slight interference on Poppy’s podcast from her new bosses, creating some issues and even prompting Noa (Katherine LaNasa, Katy Keene) to leave- which was a shame because I really liked her character. After being bought out Poppy is now under contract and technically limited on what she does or doesn’t post, creating some problems for her later down the line. The storyline wasn’t massive and I do actually wish they’d taken it further but it was interesting to see Poppy actually being dictated to and controlled on what she does in her quest for justice.

Overall I really enjoyed this third season of Truth Be Told, it felt like the best we’ve seen so far. This time around we really got to see Poppy going down this dark path as she attempted to stop the trafficking of the young black girls and return them all safely, a task that didn’t come without its obstacles. Eva was a fantastic addition to the series and I loved both her dynamic with Poppy and her own personal history and how it connected to the present case, it made for a really interesting character study. Season three really looked at some difficult topics and I liked the constant comparison to the Emily Mills case which was very telling of today’s society, it was all very clever. Another great season for Poppy, I really hope we get to see more from her in the future.