The second season of Narcos on Netflix is quietly one of the streaming service's most popular volumes of any show to date and I can't say that I totally get that. It's a propulsive show with some gripping performances and a number of remarkable action sequences, but when the series does attempt to dig underneath the history-book story of Pablo Escobar, it fizzles out almost immediately. For many viewers, that might not be an issue at all, as the veneer of the story is an engrossing, bloody, and sex-fueled ordeal, but considering the timely air of Escobar's life, I wanted more and the show didn't have anything more to give.
The one element of the new season that is worth mentioning, however, is how the show handles the death of Escobar, with sensitivity, wit, intellect, and something like grace. And that is the very focus of the latest featurette that Netflix has released for the series, which will continue on without Escobar in future seasons. The cast and crew discuss staging the death at the same place where Escobar met his end and how the narrative climax affected everyone involved with the series. It's short but mighty fascinating stuff that's being poured over here, and if the showrunners have any intuition, they might consider some of the things being discussed here when they next start writing the scripts for Narcos Season 3.
Here's the featurette:
Here's the Narcos Season 2 synopsis:
Narcos chronicles the gripping real-life stories of the infamous drug kingpins of the late 1980s and the corroborative efforts of law enforcement to meet them head on in brutal, bloody conflict. Its gritty storytelling details the many, oft-conflicting forces - legal, political, police, military and civilian - that clash in the effort to control cocaine, one of the world's most valuable commodities.
In the second season, notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, played by Golden Globe nominee Wagner Moura, is on the run, with the Colombian authorities in relentless pursuit -- and determined to put an end to his illegal activities.
