Habeas Corpus premieres on Netflix on September 23, 2026, with eight episodes, and its central setup is already clear: Inez, a law professor and former criminal defense attorney, brings students together to reexamine the case of a young man who may have been wrongfully convicted. Official material also establishes that Marina, one of the students, joined this circle with a personal motive tied to an injustice from the past. From there, the trailer turns the criminal review into two investigations at once: the case itself and the relationships among the people reviewing it.
Who is in the criminal review team
Netflix describes Inez as the group’s leader and Marina as its brightest student, whose connection to both the case and the professor runs deeper than it first appears. The first publicity images place four other young characters alongside them; captions distributed with Netflix promotional photos identify them as Kim, Bernardo, Raquel and Lima. Pre-release material, however, still does not assign different legal functions to each student.
| Character | Actor | What is confirmed so far |
|---|---|---|
| Inez | Marjorie Estiano | A law professor and former criminal defense attorney. She leads the team revisiting a young man’s conviction and is the professional center of the investigation. |
| Marina | Any Gabrielly | A standout student in the team. She has a personal motive linked to a past injustice and a hidden connection to Inez and the case. |
| Kim | Nicolas Lee | Identified in promotional images with the student nucleus. His specific function in the review has not yet been officially explained. |
| Bernardo | Felipe Ricca | Identified in promotional material as part of the younger group. The released material has not defined his specialty, position or individual conflict. |
| Raquel | Luiza Gabus | Identified among the students connected to the main nucleus. Details of her role in the review are still being withheld. |
| Lima | Pedro Roza | Also identified among the students. The trailer does not yet support assigning him an exclusive legal function. |
Inez and Marina are the key relationship before the premiere
The clearest announced conflict is not simply defense versus prosecution, but professional trust versus personal motivation. Inez believes she is organizing students for a criminal review project; Marina enters that space because she wants to repair something that affected her family. Netflix explicitly says the student’s connection to the case and to Inez herself goes much deeper than it seems. That establishes tension, but it does not reveal what happened in the past or who will be right when their motives collide.
This distinction matters because the trailer suggests secrets, rivalries and moral ambiguity, but it does not justify treating Marina as Inez’s opponent. Before the premiere, the safer reading is that both are pursuing justice, even if they are not necessarily pursuing it for the same reasons.
Who appears around the team
The announced cast also includes Vladimir Brichta, Danton Mello, Natália Lage, Marisa Orth, Naruna Costa, Paula Cohen, Renata Gaspar, Tato Gabus Mendes and Hypólito. Promotional photo materials identify some character names — including Murilo Villar, Pedro Borrmann, Ana Hueda and Joathan — but the official synopsis still does not precisely describe each person’s function in the central case.
For that reason, it is not safe to label all of these characters as “prosecution,” “defense,” “police,” “family” or “antagonists” solely from trailer editing. What the video does support is that the team’s work runs into inequality, influence, competing interests and facts from the past. In other words, there will be pressure on the review, while individual responsibilities remain intentionally incomplete in the pre-release material.
What the trailer reveals about the team dynamic
- Inez holds the academic and professional authority: she forms and leads the team.
- Marina has an agenda beyond coursework: her family was affected by an earlier injustice, shaping why she approaches Inez.
- The other students operate as a team: promotional images place them together, but Netflix has not yet assigned specific functions to Kim, Bernardo, Raquel and Lima.
- The case review changes personal relationships: as the investigation advances, secrets surface and certainties begin to collapse.
- The conflict is also institutional: the official description points to a system shaped by inequality and influence, not just an individual mystery.
What is not confirmed yet
Before September 23, several questions should remain open. Official material does not spell out the reviewed crime, the evidence that causes the team to doubt the conviction, each student’s technical contribution, who occupies prosecution or state-investigation roles in the case, or the exact prior connection between Marina and Inez. The trailer alone also does not establish who will be an ally or antagonist across the eight episodes.
Keeping that boundary avoids a common pre-release mistake: filling promotional gaps with assumptions that read like spoilers. The most useful map for now separates characters already identified from narrative functions the series is still withholding.
How to approach the premiere without mixing two different questions
There are two separate questions around Habeas Corpus. One concerns inspiration: how the fiction relates to real cases and the work of Innocence Project Brasil. The other concerns characters: who belongs to the team, who has private motives and how those relationships may affect the criminal review. The trailer released on September 1 is more useful for the second question because it emphasizes Inez, Marina, the team and the conflicts created when past and present begin to intersect.
Official sources and reference material
- Netflix: trailer announcement with the premiere date, eight-episode count, and descriptions of Inez and Marina
- Netflix: first images, poster and presentation of the criminal review team
- Official Netflix page for Habeas Corpus
- Promotional photo captions credited to Netflix identifying characters in the main nucleus
