Narcos Season 3 & 4 Announced, Find Out Who It Will Follow
Netflix releaseed Narcos Season 2 on Friday and if you're like me you've binge-watched most of it over the holiday weekend. The streaming service isn't going to wait a month to announce that the show will continue like they did with Stranger Things. This morning Netflix revealed an announcement teaser trailer which unveils the series' new villain. Watch the Narcos season 3 teaser trailer and learn more, after the jump.
Narcos Season 3 Teaser Trailer
Jose Padilha (Elite Squad, RoboCop) and Eric Newman (Children of Men) will continue to serve as executive producers of the series. The episode count and release dates for the additional seasons has not been revealed.
Season 2 and Real-life spoiler alert: Narcos season 2 was about the fall of Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) and the end of the season sees the death of the Colombian drug kingpin who has been the central antagonist of the series. Many viewers are probably wondering how they could greenlight two more seasons of the show without the involvement of Pablo, and executive producer Eric Newman told The Hollywood Reporter that "Narcos is about cocaine and cocaine continues beyond Escobar" and that "I'll go as long as they'll let me go." Padilha told Variety: "We'll stop when the drug trade stops," Newman adding: "We'll stop when you stop. That's our pact with America."
"There's a reason why we call this show Narcos and not Pablo Escobar. It's very much about the trade. There are other drug dealers and there are alliances formed against Pablo [in season two], so there are a multitude of stories we could tackle."
The announcement trailer reveals that the Cali cartel will become the focus of this continuing story with leader Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (Damian Alcazar) becoming the series' new antagonist. The finale of Narcos season 2 sets up the Cali cartel, which will eventually become responsible for 90 percent of the world's cocaine market.
It's unclear if they will be introducing new protagonists or continuing the story of DEA agents Javier Pena (Pedro Pascal) and Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook). The real-life duo served as consultants on the series and the ending of the second series implies that Pena will continue to play a part in the Cali cartel story. Murphy left Colombia shortly after Escobar was killed, but the series often takes liberties with the characters to dramatize the events so he could remain part of the story. Newman was asked if they will stay from history to keep the show's co-star and this was his response:
"I am really proud of Murphy's story and the evolution. One of the things you have to consider is: Is his story over?"
For me the series has always been about Pablo Escobar, his story and character was utterly captivating. Unfortunately, I was never quite interested in the two DEA protagonists. For me, they served little more than narrators for the history, and when the series delved into their characters it was never quite as interesting as it was when Pablo was on screen.
Who Is Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela?
I'm interested to see if the story of Cali cartel leader Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (Damian Alcazar) will be anywhere as compelling as Pablo. If you want some history on the real life man, which includes potential spoilers for the upcoming seasons, here we go thanks to wikipedia:
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, along with his brother Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela and José Santacruz Londoño formed the Cali Cartel in the 1970s. They were primarily involved in marijuana trafficking. In the 1980s they branched out into cocaine trafficking. For a time the Cali Cartel supplied 80% of the United States through Rodriguez's son Jorge Alberto Rodriguez and 90% of the European cocaine market. The Cali Cartel was less violent than its rival, the Medellín Cartel. While the Medellín Cartel was involved in a brutal campaign of violence against the Colombian government the Cali Cartel grew. The cartel was much more inclined toward bribery rather than violence. However, after the demise of the Medellín Cartel the Colombian authorities turned their attention to the Cali Cartel. The police campaign against the cartel began in the summer of 1995. President Samper dispatched a "joint task force" code named "Search Bloc" formed by top police and elite commandos headed by Police General Rosso Jose Serrano declaring an all out war against the drug cartels.
Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela was arrested by the Colombian National Police (CNP) on June 9th, 1995 during a house raid in Cali. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but temporarily freed in early November 2002, "due to a controversial judicial order issued by deputy judge Pedro José Suárez, who considered that the above reduction was applicable through habeas corpus." He was recaptured by Colombian authorities in Cali in March 2003 and extradited to the United States in December of the following year.
On September 26, 2006, both Gilberto and Miguel were sentenced to 30 years in prison, after pleading guilty to charges of conspiring to import cocaine to the U.S. They took this deal in exchange for the United States agreeing not to bring charges against their family members. Their lawyers — David Oscar Markus and Roy Kahn—were able to obtain immunity for 29 family members. On November 16, 2006 the brothers pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to engage in money laundering. Both were sentenced to an additional 87 months in prison. The two prison terms were set to run concurrently.
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela is currently serving his 30-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility in Memphis, Tennessee.