Narcos

Plot

Season 1

Season 1 chronicles the life of Pablo Escobar from the late 1970s, when he first began manufacturing cocaine, to July 1992. The show is told from the perspective of Steve Murphy, an American DEA agent working in Colombia. The series depicts how Escobar first became involved in the cocaine trade in Colombia. He was an established black marketeer in Medellín, moving trucks of illegal goods (alcohol, cigarettes, and household appliances) into Colombia during a time when this was strictly forbidden, when he was introduced to Mateo "Cockroach" Moreno, a Chilean exile and underground chemist, who pitched the idea that they go into business together, with Moreno producing and Escobar distributing a new, profitable drug—cocaine.

They expand beyond Moreno's small cocaine processing lab by building additional, larger labs in the rainforest and, using the expertise of Carlos Lehder, transport their product in bulk to Miami, where it gains notoriety amongst the rich and famous. Soon enough, Pablo develops larger labs and more extensive distribution routes into the United States to supply growing demand. With cocaine's growth into a drug of importance in the American market, one that accounts for a large flow of U.S. dollars to Colombia and escalating drug-related violence in the United States, the Americans send a task force from the DEA to Colombia to address the issue. Murphy is partnered with Javier Peña. The purpose of Murphy's task force is to work with the Colombian authorities, led by Colonel Carrillo, to put an end to the flow of cocaine into the United States. The season ends with Escobar's escape from the prison.

Season 2

Season 2 continues where season 1 ended. Soldiers see Escobar and his entourage right outside the perimeter of 'La Catedral' prison but are too petrified of Escobar to make an arrest. At the embassy, the United States sends a new ambassador who brings the CIA into play. In the beginning, little change occurs for Escobar, as he still has the loyalty of his cartel. This loyalty, however, starts to slip as Escobar needs more time and resources to hide from the government. Among the tricks he uses to avoid being seen are riding around town in the trunk of a taxi cab and using young lookouts to report police movements to him.

Initially, Escobar easily adapts to his new life, giving money to the community while ruthlessly killing those who try to break away from his empire. The Colombian police and Escobar engage in massive battles, resulting in high tension and unrest in Colombia. Escobar's rivals in the Cali cartel form an unlikely alliance with ousted members of his own cartel, as well as with a CIA-backed anticommunist paramilitary group. Agent Peña secretly works with this group, who kill members of Pablo's organization and claim responsibility as "Los Pepes".

After two of Escobar's top cartel members are caught and betray him, Escobar goes on the run. He and his bodyguard hide in a safehouse, where he celebrates his 44th birthday. When Pablo tries to make contact with his family, the DEA and military track him down via radio triangulation and corner him on the rooftops. Pablo is hit twice in the ensuing shootout, and although he might have survived his injuries, a Colombian policeman named Trujillo executes him, amidst shouts of "Viva Colombia!"

Escobar's wife Tata goes to the Cali cartel for their help in leaving the country. Peña returns to the United States, in expectation of being reprimanded by the disciplinary committee for his associations with Los Pepes, but is surprised when asked to provide intelligence against the Cali cartel, implying his future involvement with the DEA.

Season 3

The story continues after Pablo Escobar's death and shows the DEA's fight against the Cali cartel. With Escobar out of the way, business for the cartel is booming, with new markets in the United States and elsewhere. To everyone's surprise, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, the leader of the Cali cartel, announces that within 6 months, the cartel will leave the cocaine business entirely to focus on legal business interests. The decision is met with mixed reactions within the cartel.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main

Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar – a Colombian drug lord and the leader of the Medellín Cartel (seasons 1–2)

Boyd Holbrook as Steve Murphy – a DEA agent tasked with bringing down Escobar (seasons 1–2)

Pedro Pascal as Javier Peña – a DEA agent given the task of bringing down Escobar and, in season 3, the Cali Cartel (seasons 1–3)

Damián Alcázar as Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela – the leader of the Cali cartel and one of Pablo Escobar's main rivals (seasons 2–3)

Joanna Christie as Connie Murphy – Steve's wife, a nurse who works in the local hospital (seasons 1–2)

Maurice Compte as Colonel Horacio Carrillo – a Colombian police chief and commander of Search Bloc (season 1; recurring season 2)

Alberto Ammann as Hélmer "Pacho" Herrera – a Colombian drug lord and high-ranking member of the Cali cartel (seasons 2–3, recurring season 1)

André Mattos as Jorge Ochoa – founding member and former leader of the Medellín cartel (season 1)

Roberto Urbina as Fabio Ochoa – a high-ranking member of the Medellín cartel (season 1)

Diego Cataño as Juan Diego "La Quica" Díaz – an assassin routinely hired by the Medellín, based on Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera (season 1; recurring season 2)

Jorge A. Jimenez as Roberto "Poison" Ramos – a hitman hired by the Medellín cartel, based on John Jairo Arias Tascón (season 1; guest season 2)

Paulina Gaitán as Tata – Escobar's wife, full name Maria Victoria Henao (seasons 1–2)

Recurring

Luis Guzmán as Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha – founding member and former leader of the Medellín cartel (season 1)

Juan Pablo Raba as Gustavo Gaviria – Escobar's cousin and one of the founding members of the Medellin Cartel (seasons 1–2)

Juan Riedinger as Carlos Lehder – Lion's contact in the United States, give the task of distributing the cocaine (season 1)

Richard T. Jones – a CIA officer, also on Murphy's task force (recurring season 1; guest season 2)

Jon-Michael Ecker as El León or "The Lion" – a childhood friend of Escobar's who becomes his first drug smuggler into Miami and subsequently runs Escobar's Miami operations, based on George Jung (guest seasons 1–2)

Ana de la Reguera as Elisa Álvarez – the co-leader of the M-19 guerrilla faction (season 1)

Danielle Kennedy as Ambassador Noonan – a United States ambassador deployed to Colombia under Ronald Reagan (season 1)

Patrick St. Esprit as Colonel Lou Wysession – a Marine officer fighting against communism (recurring season 1; guest season 2)

Gabriela de la Garza as Diana Turbay – a Colombian journalist who was kidnapped by the Medellín cartel (season 1).

Ariel Sierra as Sureshot – one of Escobar's sicarios (recurring season 1; guest season 2)

Julián Díaz as Nelson ("El Negrito" or "Blackie") Hernández – a member of the Medellín cartel, who is frequently seen by Escobar's side (in real life, Escobar had a close friend named Jorge "El Negro" Pabón) (seasons 1–2)

Notable guests

Luis Gnecco as Cucaracha or "Cockroach" (né Mateo Moreno) – the Chilean chemist who first introduced Escobar to cocaine trafficking (season 1).

A.J. Buckley as Kevin Brady – a DEA agent and the partner of Steve Murphy (season 1).

Adria Arjona as Helena Sotomayor – a top-class prostitute from Bogotá, a spy for the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Search Bloc (season 1).

Rafael Cebrián as Alejandro Ayala – one of the leaders of M-19 in Colombia and the boyfriend of Elisa Álvarez, the co-leader of the group (season 1).

Adan Canto as Rodrigo Lara Bonilla – a Colombian lawyer and politician (season 1).

Dylan Bruno as Barry Seal – an American drug smuggler working for the Medellín cartel who uses the alias "McPickle" (season 1).

Juan Pablo Espinosa as Luis Carlos Galán – a Colombian journalist and politician (season 1).

Alfredo Castro as Abel Escobar, Pablo's father (season 2)

Tristán Ulloa as Ernesto Samper – Colombian president (season 3).

Gabriel Iglesias as Dominican gangster (season 3).

Production

The series was announced in April 2014, through a partnership deal struck between Netflix and Gaumont International Television. The first season, consisting of 10 episodes, was estimated to cost about $25 million. The series was primarily written by Chris Brancato and directed by Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, who also directed the critically and commercially successful Elite Squad (2007) and its sequel in 2010, which became the highest-grossing film ever in Brazil. On September 15, 2017, one of the show's location scouts, Carlos Muñoz Portal, was reported as having been found murdered with multiple gunshot wounds, in his car on a dirt road in central Mexico, near the town of Temascalapa. A spokesman for the attorney general in Mexico state said there were no witnesses due to the remote location, and the authorities will continue to investigate. The possibility of narco gangs' being involved is being considered.

Opening theme and title sequence

Narcos opens with a title card, from which the narrator reads: "Magical realism is defined as what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe. There is a reason magical realism was born in Colombia".

Narcos' opening theme, "Tuyo", is a bolero written and composed for the show by Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante. The theme scores the visual montage comprising the title sequence, created by DK Studios under artistic director Tom O'Neill. The 1980s-themed images address Colombian drug trafficking in general, the United States' attempt to control it, the era's glamour, footage from the mountainous regions of Bogota and surrounding underprivileged neighborhoods, shots of local residents, archival news coverage, and violence. The montage excludes some people who were unwilling to appear in the credits, but it does include some news clips and images "of Pablo Escobar and his entourage, like those at the zoo, [which] came directly from the drug baron's personal photographer, who goes by the name El Chino." According to O'Neill, "the production team took inspiration from James Mollison's photo book The Memory of Pablo Escobar."

Etymology

Narcotics is a late Middle English word derived from Old French narcotique, in turn derived via medieval Latin from the Greek narkōtikos, from narkoun ("make numb" or "produce stupor").

In Spanish, the term narco (or its plural, narcos) is an abbreviation of the word narcotraficante (drug trafficker). In the United States, the epithet "narc" (or "narco") refers to a specialist officer of a narcotics police force, such as a DEA agent.

Reception

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 50 reviews and judged 78% to be positive. The site reads, "Narcos lacks sympathetic characters, but pulls in the viewer with solid acting and a story that's fast-paced enough to distract from its familiar outline." On Metacritic, season one holds a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

IGN gave the first season a 7.8 out of 10 score, saying: "It's a true-to-life account, sometimes to a fault, of the rise of Pablo Escobar and the hunt that brought him down laced with stellar performances and tension-filled stand-offs. Its blend of archival footage reminds us that the horrors depicted really happened, but also manage to present an Escobar that is indefensible but frighteningly sympathetic." Writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tirdad Derakhshani reviewed the season positively, calling it, "Intense, enlightening, brilliant, unnerving, and addictive, Narcos is high-concept drama at its finest." Television critic Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter also reviewed the series positively, saying, "The series begins to find its pacing not long after, and we see the strength of Moura's acting, which to his credit never races, in the early going, toward over-the-top menace or the drug-lord cliches we're all used to at this point. Credit also the fact that Padilha brings a documentary feel to Narcos." Nancy deWolf Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The omniscient-narrator device works very well for a complex story spanning many years and varied sets of players." Critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times said, "It's built on sharp writing and equally sharp acting, as any good series needs to be." However, chief television critic Mary McNamara of Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's a grand if inconsistent experiment that, from the moment it opens with a definition of magic realism, wears its considerable ambitions on its sleeve." Writing for IndieWire, Liz Shannon Miller said, "An unlikeable character, no matter the circumstances, remains unlikeable, but an unlikeable character trumps a bland blonde man whose position of authority appears to be his only really interesting character trait, no matter how much voice-over he utters."

The show received criticism for the quality of the spoken Spanish. Dr. Alister Ramírez-Márquez, a member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, faulted the accents, pronunciation, intonation, and incorrect use of Paisa colloquialisms. Speaking of the show's reception in Colombia, Sibylla Brodzinsky of The Guardian stated, "audiences have been bemused by the stars' ropey accents, irritated by its portrayal of the country's recent history, and – in some cases – simply bored by yet another narco-drama." The Brazilian accent of Wagner Moura was particularly criticized for being incongruent with Escobar's Paisa background. Gisela Orozco of the Chicago Tribune said the show would not engross Latinos due to the mishmash of accents and contrasted Narcos with Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal. In his review of the show, Colombian TV critic Omar Rincón wrote in El Tiempo, "Narcos is the Miami and US vision of NarColombia – something like Trump's idea of us: the good guys are the gringos ... and the narcos are comically dysfunctional or primitives with bad taste ... Narcos may do well outside Colombia, but here it produces anger and laughter."

Spin-off

Narcos: Mexico was released on November 16, 2018. The story goes back to the 1980s, in Mexico, where it sets a shared world with the previous seasons of Narcos (which focus on Colombia), bringing back characters like Amado Carrillo (José María Yazpik) and Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura), for small roles, and introducing new ones like the famous DEA Agent Kiki Camarena (Michael Peña), the drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán (Alejandro Edda), and Miguel Felix-Gallardo (Diego Luna), creator of the first Mexican drug cartel, depicting the clash between them and the eve of the catastrophic Mexican war on drugs.

Video games

In November 2019 a turn-based strategy game, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels, was released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One. It is based on the first season of the show and was developed by Kuju Entertainment and published by Curve Digital. Players choose between playing for the side of the Narcos or the DEA where they control their squad of fighters. The game world's locations and characters were modeled after the series.

A spinoff mobile game, Narcos: Cartel Wars Unlimited, was released in January 2023 for Android and iOS. It is available exclusively for Netflix subscribers, who can play it for free. Players control a drug kingpin and run their own cartel.