Consider any misgivings we might have had about Diego Luna‘s role in Narcos: Mexico gone. The affable actor is portraying Miguel Félix Gallardo, “the Rockefeller of marijuana,” the ruthless drug trafficker behind the Guadalajara cartel. While Diego has been known to play characters that riff on his angelic features, Gallardo is proof that he’s just as good at playing bad ones. What helps: his rather unruly facial hair which really amps up the sleaze factor in Netflix’s new Narcos offshoot. After spending three seasons tracking the drug war in Colombia, first following Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) and then the Cali cartel (starring Arturo Castro and Javier Cámara, among others), Narcos: Mexico will focus on the 1980s when Gallardo united a loose network of cartels. It’ll be an origin story of sorts that, from the looks of its first full trailer, will give us the bloody Scarface-like action we’ve come to expect from the bilingual action drama.
As with seasons past, the DEA plays a big role in Narcos: Mexico. This time around, we get to follow undercover agent Kiki Camarena (Michael Peña). If Luna is playing against-type (just wait until you see how the explosive trailer below ends), Peña is giving us the charming, can-do attitude that’s made him a scene-stealing player in films like Ant-Man and End of Watch. The two are set to go head to head in a season that will feature gaudy parties, bloody shootouts, and plenty of violence set against the dry dusty desert heat. Joining them is a an A-list cast made up of actors from all over. They include Alejandro Edda as El Chapo, Alyssa Díaz as Camarena’s wife, and Tenoch Huerta as Rafael Caro Quintero, another drug trafficker.
Appropriately scored to the anti-cocaine hip-hop anthem “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It),” the show’s first full trailer invites you to see the birth of Mexico’s drug war. With plenty of split-screens and more gold chains-wearing characters than you can count, Narcos: Mexico will rightly join the ranks of similar shows like Queen of the South, Snowfall and El Chapo. Then again, with a cinematic flair for striking images (Gallardo on a balcony looking out to the sea, a platter of cocaine splattering all over a sky-blue pool) the Netflix show is clearly raising the stakes of this well-trodden genre. Check out the full exclusive trailer below.
Narcos: Mexico drops November 16, 2018, worldwide on Netflix.