‘Narcos: Mexico’ Season 3 Episode 4 Recap: Old Friends and New Blood

Where were you the day Pablo Escobar died? For the purposes of this episode of Narcos: Mexico, you were right here, right now. 

The fourth episode of the show’s third season—titled “GDL” after the abbreviation for Guadalajara International Airport, for reasons that will soon become apparent—opens with what amounts to a flashback to the original Narcos’ second-season climax, in which the Colombian kingpin is mercilessly hunted and executed during a rooftop chase. More than merely an opportunity to put the episode’s director, Escobar actor Wagner Moura, back on screen, this throwback sequence situates the events of the rest of the episode within a specific time frame. The Wild West days of the Colombian cartels are, for now anyway, over. The time of warlords like Escobar, and his Mexican equivalent Félix Gallardo, are over. The time for a new breed of more refined gangsters, namely the Cali and Juárez cartels, is at hand.

To that end, the episode reintroduces several familiar faces. Joining the freshly returned Pacho Herrera are his partners Chepe Santacruz (Pêpê Rapazote) and Gilberto Rodríguez (Damían Alcázar), who travel to Cuba for a sitdown with Juárez boss Amado Carrillo Fuentes. This is Amado’s opportunity to sell the triumphant Cali bosses on a partnership with his recently reorganized operation—a true business arrangement, rather than an alliance of “psychopaths” like those forged by Pablo and Félix, he says. 

Amado’s proposal is for the Cali boys to pay him not in cash but in cocaine itself, allowing him to open a wholesale operation in America. This would all be strictly regulated by negotiations between the Colombian and Mexican outfits, ensuring cooperation rather than competition while simultaneously reducing the exposure of both sides to legal entanglements. When the Cali crew finally agrees to Amado’s proposal, he celebrates with a several-day fling with a beautiful musician named Marta (Yessica Borroto). The problems back home can wait.

But they can’t wait long. After Chapo’s botched hit on the Arellano Félix brothers, which succeeded only in killing Enedina Arellano Félix’s civilian husband, the pressure is on his Sinaoloan cartel to find allies. Independent operator El Mayo assures them of his friendship, but declines a partnership. Amado, busy with the Cali contingent, won’t take their calls. Chapo decides that only an in-person meeting will do to convince the Juárez boss to partner up.

Meanwhile, events across the Mexican-American border continue to build steam. DEA Agent Walt Breslin prepares for his transfer to Chicago after several frustrating low-level busts fail to generate any evidence against Amado. Crooked Juárez cop Victor begins to take a legitimate interest in the spate of murders against random women and girls plaguing his city. Reporter Andréa Nunez is tasked with continuing to report on the connections between the narcos and Tijuana’s elite by her editor, who’s still stinging from the murder of his old partner for asking too many questions about the wrong people. Most importantly, Arellano Félix lieutenant David Barron has been deputized to recruit American gangsters from his California birthplace to travel south of the border as muscle for his bosses’ organization.

The episode ends with the show’s second major climactic shootout in a row. Ramón Arellano Félix, his chief hitter Barron, and their mixed crew of narcojuniors and American gangsters try and fail, spectacularly, to gun down El Chapo as he attempts to make a flight to Juárez to bargain with Amado. I can’t say it’s a particularly tense fight—the desperate flight from the nightclub in the previous episode felt a lot more urgent to me—but it’s certainly a disastrous one. Among the god-knows-how-many victims gunned down simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a Catholic cardinal, bringing major international and domestic scrutiny to this new inter-cartel war. You get the sense from the news reports that the violence in Colombia, now largely contained after the death of Escobar, has simply been copied-and-pasted to Mexico.

But true to form, Amado sees this crisis as an opportunity. In a meeting with megarich dirtbag Carlos Hank González, Amado argues that this is the perfect time to invest in a new partnership with his cartel, since he has no part in the attention-grabbing battle between Sinaloa and Tijuana. Indeed, the entire purpose of the new infrastructure he’s built is to avoid attention, messy legal entanglements, costly raids, and gang warfare. Like the so-called “Gentlemen of Cali” with whom he’s now in business, he’s a businessman, just like Hank, even if their portfolios are concentrated in slightly different sectors. The time to invest is now.

To me, the Narcos franchise is only rarely a series that offers up thought-provoking imagery, though when it does, it tends to connect in a major way. I mean, I still think regularly of the signature shot associated with Pablo Escobar, a semicircular spin around the druglord as he gazes off into the distance, plotting his next move, and the last one of those happened four seasons ago. So the episode-closing closeup on Amado, quiet and confident, is lingering with me. Amado’s a killer, no doubt—but so is, like, every president America has ever had. Could it be possible that there’s a kinder, gentler way to profit off the cocaine trade? And could Amado hold the key?

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

Watch Narcos: Mexico Season 3 Episode 4 on Netflix