The final season of Narcos on Netflix - both the entire series and the second segment on Mexico - is full of shoot-outs, raids and body counts. Narcos Mexico Season 3 is the bloodiest of all six, with the three Northen Mexican cartels vying for control.
Arrested at the end of Season 2, Guadalajara jefe Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo (Diego Luna) does not appear in the final season. His lieutentant Amado Carrillo Fuentes (José María Yazpik) takes over.
Fuentes, who's based in Juarez, controls the border there. The Tijuana Cartel has the area close to San Diego. The Sinaloa gang wants a piece of the border action too. When Sinaloan El Chapo (Alejandro Edda), who would get arrested and extradicted to the U.S. in 2015 after several prison escapes, orders hits on Félix Gallardo's family members all hell breaks lose. The shootout at the the Guadalajara Airport that claims the life of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo sets the stage for swift government retaliation.
Chapo spends at good part of the season in prison consolidating control of the heaviily-damaged Sinoloa Cartel. It's too bad Narcos ends before his famous escape. That would make for a solid season in and of itself.
The six seasons of "Narcos" will always be among the best dramatic series ever to appear on TV or streaming services like Netflix.
Several strong female characters emerge in Season 3. Enedina Arellano Félix (Maya Hermosillo), who along with her brother Benjamin (Alfonso Dosal), runs the Tijuana Cartel; Episode 6, "La Jefe," is named for her. Luisa Rubino plays Andrea Nuñez, an investigative journalist at the Tijuana newspaper, La Voz - one of the most dangerous jobs in Mexico. She's also the narrator and provides a sharp perspective on all of the events that transpire.
In addition, Carrillo Fuentes falls for Cuban singer Marta (Yessica Borroto) and hopes to move with her to Chile when the dust clears. It's a romantic notion that never happens. With the Army and police closing, Fuentes, who'd been moving tons of coke into the U.S., earning him the nickname, "The Lord of the Skies" (he's also a pilot), makes several daring escapes.
A secondary plot focuses on femicide, the killings of female workers and prostitutes in Juarez, where many women cross from the U.S. to toil at Mexican factories. Juarez cop Victor Tapia (Luis Gerardo Méndez) takes its on himeself to investigate. What he ultimately finds is ghastly.
DEA agent Walt Breslin (Scoot McNairy) goes where the action is; in this case, Tijuana. But all of his efforts amount to little when General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo (Jose Zuniga), who leads the war against drug traffickers in Mexico, is exposed by La Voz for taking payoffs from Carrillo Fuentes and financier Carlos Hank Gonzalez (Manuel Uriza).
But where the Colombia government was able to put the cocaine cartels led by Pablo Escobar out of business (see Season 3 of the Colombian series), the Mexican drug cartels are still alive and well, terrorizing the populace with machine gun fire and ugly public displays. That's why Narcos needs to continue, to tell the complete story, like La Voz, and not just stop at 1997.
Despite this gripe, the six seasons of Narcos will always be among the best dramatic series ever to appear on TV or streaming services like Netflix. It will be missed.
Previously on "Narcos"
