When last we left Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo at the end of My Brilliant Friend’s second season, these two young ladies—friends since their 1950s girlhood in a rough Naples neighborhood—were headed in such different directions that it seemed they might never meet again.

Lila (Gaia Girace), arguably the smarter of the two, had burned through one bad marriage and was raising a son essentially on her own, while doing whatever low-skilled work the bosses in her mob-controlled community would allow.