But the real Baby Jhon is done with soup. He is done with being a symbol. He is in kindergarten, learning to read, struggling with subtraction, and dreaming of becoming a firefighter or, in his words, “a guy who drives the garbage truck with the claw.”
The family turned down fourteen licensing deals, including a disastrous offer from a canned soup company. They refused a reality show. They rejected a cryptocurrency endorsement (Baby Jhon Coin). Instead, Elena and her husband, Carlos, a sound engineer, did something radical: they put Baby Jhon in therapy.
“I was just a frustrated mom,” she says, pouring coffee in their sunlit living room. “He hadn’t eaten in six hours. I thought, ‘If I film this, my mother will finally believe me that he is impossible.’”
He looks at the spoon resting beside my coffee cup. He looks at me. For one terrifying, hilarious second, his brow furrows. The old magic flickers behind his eyes.
