Television

'Narcos: Mexico' Season 2 Is Already Filming, Diego Luna And Scoot McNairy Returning

Narcos Mexico season 2
By Ben Pearson

It was only a few days ago when Netflix announced that Narcos: Mexico was renewed for a second season, but a new report says the show is already filming in Mexico City – and its cast has been officially announced. Diego Luna (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) will return to reprise his role of a cartel boss, and Scoot McNairy (Argo) is coming back in a larger role after being teased at the end of the newest season.

Narcos Mexico Season 2 is Already in Production

Entertainment Weekly says that McNairy, who narrated the whole first season of Narcos: Mexico, is confirmed to return after finally appearing in-person as the season came to a close. He's playing Agent Walt Breslin, "a grizzled DEA agent who plans to escalate the drug war south of the border." Luna will return as Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the leader of Mexico's Guadalajara cartel – a man who united conflicting drug traffickers together in the 1980s and jump-started the country's drug trade as we know it.Narcos: Mexico is sort of a combined spin-off and prequel to the first three seasons of Narcos, moving the action years earlier than the previous seasons and exploring an entirely different cartel in the process. [Warning: spoilers ahead.] Narcos: Mexico ends with the kidnapping, torture, and death of undercover DEA agent Kiki Camarena (Michael Pena), and wraps up with Gallardo still in charge of the cartel and now with an army of corrupt police officers at his disposal. McNairy's character lands in Mexico after Camarena's murder and finishes the season with this narration (via THR):

"What happened in Guadalajara in the early '80s was the beginning. The last moment before it all got fucked up. Spun out of control. It was that moment when it all fell apart. What happened in Guadalajara gave birth to the first cartel. From that, others would follow. And the violence and money and drugs, they just fucking explode. It changed the DEA, too. Maybe it woke us up, I don't know. But it's where the first shot was fired, the one that started the drug war. And after that, none of it would be the same. How could it be? ... we knew we were in a war. Now, it was our turn. Pretty soon, they were gonna know, they were in one too."

There's no release date for the second season yet, but since production is already started, it's not unreasonable to think we may see new episodes in the fall of 2019. This is speculation on my part, but I'm wondering if they had to jump into production quickly because Luna is reprising his Rogue One role of Cassian Andor in a new Disney+ live action Star Wars series, which is set to start filming sometime next year.

Here's the official description of the first season of Narcos: Mexico:

Narcos: Mexico will explore the origins of the modern drug war by going back to its roots, beginning at a time when the Mexican trafficking world was a loose and disorganized confederation of independent growers and dealers. Witness the rise of the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s as Félix Gallardo (Diego Luna) takes the helm, unifying traffickers in order to build an empire. When DEA agent Kiki Camarena (Michael Peña) moves his wife and young son from California to Guadalajara to take on a new post, he quickly learns that his assignment will be more challenging than he ever could have imagined. As Kiki garners intelligence on Félix and becomes more entangled in his mission, a tragic chain of events unfold, affecting the drug trade and the war against it for years to come. Narcos: Mexico is produced by Gaumont Television for Netflix. Eric Newman is Executive Producer and showrunner. José Padilha, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard are Executive Producers.

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