‘Narcos’ Season 2 Finale Recap: Adios

They went out with a bang.

“Al Fin Cayó!”, the tenth and final episode of Narcos Season 2, was the series’ finest episode. That’s a major achievement in itself, entertainment value aside — a sign that the season and the show got better as they went, which was by no means a guarantee. Particularly regarding Pablo Escobar, Narcos in general and this episode in particular wound up pulling off a work of real emotional alchemy. It made him more human — sympathetic to the point of it being hard to watch him endure his agonizing downfall — even as grew more unequivocal about the monstrousness of his crimes.

Contrast him with comparable TV crime bosses. By the final season of Breaking Bad, even as we pulled for Walter White to get out of each scrape, it was difficult to not want him to suffer. Despite committing several of his most heinous acts in The Sopranos’ last season, Tony was always a more appealing character than his New York rivals. On the flip side, Marlo Stanfield, the archvillain of The Wire’s waning years, was pure evil, impossible to see as anything but a dead-eyed killer.

But with Pablo Escobar, Narcos managed to make you feel like you were watching a human being’s life fall apart as he lived in mortal terror and depressing isolation, and that he was a world-historical murderer who’d killed countless thousands so he could sit around palatially appointed estates in the world’s ugliest sweatshirts. It’s difficult to think of another show so certain that both halves of such a story needed to be driven home even in its final hour.

And what a final hour! Despite all we know about him, Pablo experiences moments of great (if illusory) joy during his last day or so on earth that are all but impossible to feel along with him. Think of that fantastically funny opening daydream, when he pictures himself becoming President of Colombia…on his birthday, no less! The cheerful news graphics, the joint he smokes in the receiving line and subsequently shares with now-former President Gaviria in a “hey man, let’s let bygones be bygones” moment — this is beautifully silly stuff.

But it also serves to show the enormous gap between Pablo’s narcissistic “I’m just a simple man who managed to make his way to the top, I coulda been legit if they hadn’t gotten in my way” self-conception and the reality: He was a two-bit crook who lucked into the most lucrative racket in crime, got rich on the strength of cunning and brutality, and lost it when he ran into enemies more cunning and brutal than him, no more and no less. No presidential palace for Pablo — just a lonely birthday cake while the mother, wife, and children he’ll never see again serenade him. Knowing what we know, this is just excruciating to watch.

Or consider the near ecstatic scene where, racked with cabin fever, he goes out for rolling papers and ice cream incognito, then slowly gains the confidence to take off his concealing sunglasses, sit in the park, and enjoy the beautiful day and bustling crowds in what used to be “his city.” The look of happiness on his face, shown with one last signature swivel shot, is irresistible…except to the passers-by who half-recognize him, half-deny themselves the knowledge that they even laid eyes on him.

He does manage to have a lovely chat on a park bench…but it’s with his murdered cousin Gustavo. Sure, they have a genuinely funny conversation — Pablo: “You look like Che Guevara.” Gustavo: “You look like you ate Che Guevara.” — but he’s slipping out of life even as he continues to live. He’s a dead man walking.

Indeed, as befits the episode chronicling his killing by the Search Bloc and DEA, there’s action to spare. One particularly well-constructed sequence features his hunters quietly filling the neighborhood where they believe him to be located: Director Andrés Baiz absolutely fills the frame with soldiers moving in every conceivable direction, up and down diagonal staircases, across catwalks and balconies and streets, even shimmying vertically up poles and columns. The sense of infiltration and takeover is so complete that it obscures what’s coming, the oldest trick in the cat-and-mouse thriller book: a Silence of the Lambs–style fakeout where crosscutting makes it look like they’ve found their man when in fact he’s someplace else entirely.

When they do get him, the firefight and chase are desperate, brutal, ugly. Pablo becomes the world’s most slovenly gunslinger, blasting soldiers with a gun in each hand despite the obvious futility of his situation. He clumsily runs across rooftops barefoot. His last remaining employee and friend, Limón, gets blown away out of nowhere. When Pablo finally takes enough shots to go down, he lies there like a fish tossed from a tank on to the ground, his own fish-white belly exposed. The killshot cuts short Agent Murphy’s grandiose, entirely superfluous narration about how the Devil doesn’t look like much up close. We can see that quite clearly ourselves.

The follow-up is just as mordant. Pablo’s killers pose for pictures with his corpse like a trophy, a seemingly too-good-to-be-true detail ripped right from real life. His mother Hermilda hears the news on the radio as her fellow bus passengers cheer for her son’s death. His wife Tata steadies herself in the family’s hotel as she prepares to tell their pitifully adorable children the news. Hermilda gives a press conference explaining he never did anything wrong in his life — this is shown using the actual real-world footage of Hermilda, not even the actor playing her — juxtaposed with clips of the Avianca bombing, the Bogota bombing, the countless bodies Pablo and his men scattered all across Colombia.

And what was it all for? The Cali cartel and their right-wing associates, now bigger and badder than Pablo ever was, are left to celebrate his demise; Agent Peña, booted back to the States for his refusal to play ball with that group any longer, is now tapped to take them down. The cycle continues, the war is eternal, and Pablo Escobar is just a chapter in a much bigger book that will go on just fine without him. So bring on the already-approved Seasons 3 and 4. If they maintain this level of quiet intelligence and un-showy quality, they’ll be worth the return trip.

[Watch the “Al Fin Cayó!” episode of Narcos on Netflix]

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, the Observer, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.