Narcos - Season 3

Without the support of Pablo's hard-to-classify and tamable character, the creators resorted to a straightforward Narcos thriller, which is gets going slowly, but after the 3rd episode it picks up at a very brisk pace. It keeps this up until the 9th episode, even at the cost of a bit of convulsive connections of various storylines. An excellent choice is the character of a "man trapped in the Cali mechanism that he invented". Miguel Salcedo is a good protagonist. The same goes for the cowboy Pena, who can afford a gentle moralizing without sinking the series. Of course, there is no teasing humor, are there are no genre equilibristics like in the second series. But Narcos still remain synonymous with digestible and intelligent entertainment. Caballeros de Cali can hardly achieve Pablo's charism, but the four antagonists offer a fairly diverse field of motifs. It is a pity that the series does not come to a stunning result. Still, I remain a Narcos addict. (23/09/2017)

After Pablo's death, it's more of a classic action film full of clichés and story framing, but the gentlemen from Cali certainly don’t disgrace themselves with their characters and slightly different politics. I dare say the creators milked it as much as possible. Where we lack Pablo's classic straightforwardness and propensity for violence, the protagonists supply us with different personalities with different opinions and attitudes, and it’s very interesting to watch them interact. It is in fact the parade of such diverse characters what makes this season so interesting. And I’m not even speaking only about the bosses. For instance, Salcedo is by far the most thrilling etude of the season, and watching him plan his way out of his own web of pitfalls and traps is very impressive and brilliantly acted. The third season may be lacking behind the first two, but only by a little bit. (05/11/2019)

Season 3 was the weakest one so far in my view. It wasn't bad, though. The biggest problem is that the creators had me overhyped with the previous two seasons. Despite their best effort, they couldn't match their previous work. The Cali cartel bosses lacked Escobar's charisma, and a similar thing happened concerning the DEA team. Don’t get me wrong, Javier Peña was alright, but it just wasn’t the same without Murphy. I didn’t get hooked on the story this time as much as I did in the previous seasons, although I still enjoyed it. (15/07/2018)

I don’t think it’s fair to criticice the third series of Narcos for not being what it once was. The folks from Cali weren’t the kind of psychos who would shoot down cops on sight, their strength, instead, lay in discipline, secrecy and cooperation with the highest heads in the government, which ultimately made them far more powerful than "El Patrón" ever was. The journey to eliminate them may be different than previous time, but it’s not boring. The four bosses of different personalities and skills steal all the space for themselves and zigzag in front of justice as each of them owns it. And the bizarre accounts of how far the Colombian narco-barons would go to achieve their goals is not missing this time either. (29/10/2017)