User Reviews

The extremely violent ending was totally unexpected and maybe not necessary. I understand the meaning but maybe it was exaggerated.

This was a good episode of the show, but my complaint is the same as the past episodes: it ran for far too long.

We're seeing a slow build to the finale, but it will be a good one. As long as we get some intrigue and some violence like we got tonight it will be a good one though.

Well, that was a double whammy of a shocking ending, perhaps the two most violent scenes in Narcos's history played in quick succession. They represent two breaking points in Rafa and Gallardo's frustration in their situation, and they will both have large ramifications. Now that innocent Americans have been killed by a Mexican drug trafficker, America will suddenly be a lot more interested in the drug trafficking than they were. And Gallardo's brutal kill, no matter how satisfying, will surely worry the other criminals at his table.

Rafa is still the low point of this season. He's a horrible boy, greedy, obnoxious, self-obssessed. The way this show presents him it's as if we're expected to pity him, but if so it's a misjudgement on the showrunners' part. I couldn't care less about Rafa and I wish his time had been up already. By this point we know everything there is to know about him and no scenes tell us anything new about him or show another side to him. I suppose this is the challenge of basing a show on real events, but it does feel like Rafa's storyline could have been handled differently. He could have been sidelined to the margins of the plot when necessary. Or he could have been portrayed in a more sophisticated way. On the other hand Don Neto gets far more interesting development in the way he reacts to the death of his son. It's not related to the main plot but it doesn't matter, as it shows him to be a deeper character than Rafa could ever be.

Gallardo and Kiki surprisingly have similarities. Both are so engrossed in their jobs that they neglect their family life. Gallardo is in denial of this fact at the start of the episode, but by the end he rejects his wife, having realised where his true passion lies. It's an interesting take to draw this parellel between such different characters. Still, Kiki's poor balance of his job and his family life is something we've seen in prior seasons of Narcos, and a different way of dressing it up can't hide that fact. There's only so much you can squeeze out in retelling the drug war before you start repeating yourself, I suppose. 8.1/10

In "Jefe de Jefes" Miguel start moving cocaine through his network, putting weed on the back burner and angering Rafa. Don Net grieves after his son his killed in a bar fight. Kiki gets relocated to San Diego but has one more go at stopping Miguel by partaking in an unsanctioned flyover of the weed fields with cameras and leaking it to the State department. Marìa begs Miguel to go back to Sinaloa but he refuses, instead casting his wife out. He has a big meeting in which he reassigns tasks of his underlings, much to Isabella's chagrin as she remains without any control or territory. Miguel kills Nava for going too far with his bribe requests. A pair of American tourists get mistaken for DEA agents and are killed for walking in on a private Narcos party.

This was a very plot heavy episode with a lot of different storylines taking place. Miguel has turned the corner a bit here and seems to be a lot more cold-blooded. He went from being portrayed as almost a sympathetic character organizing a business into the power-hungry, filandering murder that we have now. Rafa has gone completely off the rails and I'm not even sure what he's contributing anymore. Kiki doesn't really want to leave with things the way they are. Back in the season premiere, we got that foreshadowing of him being kidnapped in the cold open. That's now happened so we know there's more to come with him...