It’s been nearly two years since Season 2 of “Narcos: Mexico” exploded onto Netflix with cartel kingpin Felix Gallardo (Diego Luna) taking center stage in this intense, violent, multi-layered drama.
It’s back, finally, minus Luna but with Scoot McNairy (and his dodgy mustache) returning as DEA agent Walt Breslin, still fighting the good fight while facing off against old and new cartel enemies as “Narcos: Mexico” doesn’t miss a beat in its third and final season.
There are a lot of moving parts here as Season 3 kicks off. It’s 1992 and the NAFTA trade agreement is on the horizon, easing trade restrictions between the US and Mexico. Breslin and his fellow DEA agents, including boss Jaime Kuykendall (Matt Letscher), are in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Juarez, the city from which Amada Carillo (Jose Maria Yazpik) and his crew have been transporting massive amounts of cocaine into the US.
Breslin is running “Operation Nissan” — named after the cars that transport the cocaine over the border — and, after spending three months in prison, Carillo is plotting his next big move after bumping off his boss, Rafael Aguilar: aligning himself with powerful-but-shady politician Carlos “Hank” Gonzalez (Manuel Uriza), a feared mover and shaker nicknamed “The Professor” for his humble beginnings as a schoolteacher who sold candy on the side to make ends meet. They were met, and then some.
I was concerned that the long layoff between seasons would make it difficult to play catch-up — “Narcos: Mexico” is largely an ensemble drama, and there are multiple characters to keep track of, but that’s not an issue here. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’re sucked into the guts of this gritty series, which does a nice job of integrating each separate storyline; after one episode (maybe two), you’ll find yourself immersed in each character’s parallel storylines and, yes, even empathizing, at times, with the bad guys. When Carillo is freed from prison and returns to Sinaloa to learn about the death of his young daughter, an asthmatic, it’s hard not to feel his pain as he stoically grieves her loss. Considering that Carillo et al. are based on real characters, that’s quite a feat for a series that’s all about death, drugs, greed and destruction.
The performances here are all solid. The ever-reliable McNairy delivers as the taciturn Breslin, who doesn’t care if he ruffles any feathers and is hellbent on dismantling the Mexican cartel as much as he possibly can — with Kuykendall backing him … to a point. Yazpik, as Carillo — who’s been in all three seasons of the series — returns in fine form, and you’ll meet many new characters along the way.
If you haven’t seen the first two seasons of “Narcos: Mexico,” there’s still time to catch up and familiarize yourself with its contextual surroundings so you can plunge right into Season 3 and enjoy an adrenaline-filled ride that never lets up.