Why did Fernando leave 3%? Michel Gomes kept a wheelchair at home for a month to build him — and was gone after season 2

Fernando Carvalho was the one candidate in 3% who never cheated, never lied, and never sold anyone out. The actor playing him wasn't a wheelchair user at all, and what he did about that is the more interesting half of the story.

Michel Gomes is credited as a series regular for seasons 1 and 2 only. 3% ran four seasons and 33 episodes on Netflix between November 25, 2016 and August 14, 2020 — the platform's first Portuguese-language original series.

The month with the wheelchair

Before shooting season 1, Gomes kept a wheelchair at his home for a month. Every day he spent 15 minutes parked in front of his building, on the street, doing nothing. He told Brazilian press it made him feel awful, because he could read the pity on the faces of people walking past.

The casting itself drew criticism. Mediaversity's review of seasons 1 and 2 praised the writing of Fernando — underestimated, stubborn, allowed to be frustrated rather than saintly — while noting that an actor who actually used a wheelchair could have brought more to it. Gomes was 27 when the show premiered, playing a 20-year-old.

"They always give me exactly this age range, seriously," Gomes told BuzzFeed Brasil in 2017, adding that he'd like more beard.

What the show does with him

Fernando is the son of Antônio, a street preacher who built a religion around the Process. He reaches the final stage of Process 104 and is asked to design a test of his own. Ezequiel then uses it against him, lying that Michele has been eliminated. Fernando quits to follow her out and fails the test he wrote.

Season 2 puts him back in the Inland with nothing. He coaches Glória and Ariel for the next Process, steals a communicator from a Division agent, and broadcasts the truth about the Offshore's forced sterilization to anyone listening. In "Chapter 09: Necklace" he finds out who turned him in for it: his father. He punches a wall until his knuckles bleed.

In the season 2 finale, "Chapter 10: Blood," Fernando cuts his own hand open and contaminates the fluid holding the Process records. Joana finds him unconscious and ties off the wound.

The season 3 disappearance

Season 3 arrived on June 7, 2019, set a year later, built around the new settlement called the Shell. Fernando isn't in it. His fate is delivered entirely through other people: Marcela shows Glória footage of Fernando beaten half to death after recruiting for the Shell, tells her he has hours left, and hands over his location. Glória walks out of the Process to go get him. She doesn't get there in time.

By episode 7, Michele is defending herself in an argument about him and says plainly that she didn't know Fernando was dead until Glória brought her the body. The death happens off screen. Neither Netflix nor Boutique Filmes issued a statement about the actor's exit.

Read more: Who killed JJ in Outer Banks? The killer finally gave Kiara his reason in the final season

Where Michel Gomes went

In December 2018 — the gap between seasons 2 and 3 — Brazilian outlets reported that Gomes had been cast as the young male lead of Globo's 6pm telenovela Nos Tempos do Imperador, playing Samuel opposite Gabriela Medvedovski in a 19th-century love story about racial prejudice. It premiered in August 2021.

He'd been working since childhood: young Bené in City of God (2002), the lead in Última Parada 174 (2008), João Alves in Record's Rebelde, then Joia Rara and Sexo e as Negas back at Globo.

For the record: the actor who spent a month practicing immobility went straight from 3% into the kind of role that requires a horse.

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