The tagline for the final season of Narcos: Mexico is simple. “Chaos reigns supreme.” Jose Maria Yazpik confirms as much when asked if there’s any validity to the claim.
“First of all, get a lot of popcorn, okay? Because you’re gonna binge watch this,” Yazpik says in an interview with BackstageOL.
Narcos: Mexico glides onto Netflix for its final season starting on November 5. Narcos as a whole has seen a wealth of critical success going back to its Pablo Escobar days and the birthing of the Medellín cartel in Columbia. The shift to Mexico and the Guadalajara cartel has done nothing to slow down the show’s popularity, and it currently sits with a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 85% and an audience score of 92%.
So what exactly can be expected in the show’s last hurrah? BackstageOL spoke with returning and new cast members to get a glimpse into the show and character insights.
Where Season Three Begins
One of the more notable names not returning for Mexico‘s final season will be Diego Luna. Luna portrayed drug kingpin Félix Gallardo, El Jefe de Jefes (the boss of bosses), in the drug world, who was imprisoned for the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena (Micheal Peña). Gallardo’s departure leads to a power struggle among warring factions that emerge following his arrest.
Deadline reports season three’s plot as the following: “As newly independent cartels struggle to survive political upheaval and escalating violence, a new generation of Mexican kingpins emerge. But in this war, truth is the first casualty – and every arrest, murder and take-down only pushes real victory further away.”
The Draw of the Outlaw
Executive producer and showrunner Carlo Bernard has been an integral part of Narcos going back to its Columbian days. The outlaw lifestyle has always been one of the show’s biggest draws, and Bernard knows it.
“I think people like stories about outlaws. I think we’re always drawn to stories about people that play by their own rules, even if how they go about it we don’t approve of,” said Bernard. “The fact the show uses real-life events as inspiration and serves to pull back the curtain a little bit on the drug trade, I think that also is part of the appeal for people is they feel a sense of being able to see how things really work.”
Violence is an inescapable aspect of the drug war but Narcos excels when it observes the human toll such a lifestyle brings. While chaos does reign in these worlds, Scoot McNairy, who plays DEA agent Walt, thinks there’s more to the show.
“I think it’s a little more in-depth than that. I feel like that’s sort of a blanket to our overall interpretation of the season,” said McNairy. “For me personally, it dives a lot more into the individual characters’ struggles and although this season has its normal narcos entertainment in it, it also touches on the personal things that the characters are going through and the struggles and their morals and whatnot.”
Each member of the cast and crew gives their own unique responses when asked what draws people into the world of Narcos. Mayra Hermosillo, who plays Enedina Arellano Felix, gives credit to the writers of the show and the trust given to actors to accurately portray characters.
“They trust in us to make that character. That’s something very magical because when you know that someone is trusting in you for making a character, maybe you’re not famous and you’re not blah, blah, blah, and you have that character in your hands, you give more love to that character,” said Hermosillo.
New Cast Members
As prominent players in Mexico leave, others step into the spotlight. Luis Gerardo Méndez, Alberto Guerra and Luisa Rubino join season three as regulars to the final season.
Another newcomer is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, although most people probably know him by his stage name, Bad Bunny, who apparently held his own on-set, according to Bernard.
“It’s funny ‘cause he hadn’t acted before and I knew he was a natural performer but I didn’t know how he would handle… it’s a different thing obviously,” said Bernard. “He took to it really well and was super conscientious and really professional and he did great. We had moments where we asked him to ad-lib and he was great at that. He sort of just really took to it and everybody on the cast and crew really enjoyed working with him.”
Méndez will portray a conflicted Juarez police officer drawn into a series of mysterious brutal killings. He describes his character as someone who wants to do the right but he occupies a universe that is “completely corrupted and gray.”
There is a separate issue that the Mexican-native Méndez is more concerned about shining a light on.
“In Mexico, we are still dealing with this femicide issue, which, for me, is the biggest problem we have in Mexico right now,” said Mendez. “Every day, 10 women get killed in Mexico. And that started in the 90s in Juarez. So it’s a really, really complex, painful universe to portray but I think it’s also very necessary to put it out there.”
Narcos: Mexico arrives on Netflix on November 5.
