If you've already binged all 10 episodes of Narcos' second season on Netflix, here are my thoughts on how the season wrapped up. If you haven't watched Season 2, or made it all the way to the end, this is your spoiler warning.
For the non-spoiler review of Season 2, head here.
Before I dive into the death of Pablo Escobar at the end of Narcos: Season 2, let's be clear about the fact that the show, right in the final moments, set us up for a possible third season that would focus on the takedown of the Cali Cartel. An obvious route, for sure, but also one that lacks the power of Pablo. None of the Cali members feel like fully formed characters like Pablo was so this hypothetical Season 3 already faces an uphill climb. The villains are all just smarmy and nefarious and unless the show all of a sudden decides to take us into their lives like it did with Pablo, the story might run on fumes. Of course, the show could always shift back to the lives of Murphy and Pena and explore those two characters a bit more.
Sure, the show can certainly broaden itself out and become more about the '90s "war on drugs" in general, but the gimmick was Pablo and so it's really hard to see the series go on without him.
Sticking with that, this was always to be the season where Pablo got gunned down. Even if you didn't know Escobar's story, the teasers for Season 2 basically used the impending death of Pablo as the hashtag hook. The real question though, heading into the season, was about when it would happen. Would Pablo die halfway through, leaving the back half of the season open for other stories? Would he die near the end, leaving just one or two episodes to play around with as non-Pablo chapters? Nope. He stuck around until the very last moments of the very last Season 2 episode. And I'm of two minds about that. Part of me loves the character and recognizes the very best the show has to offer us, and the other part of me feels like things got stretched out a bit too much.
Pablo's time in hiding -- I mean deep hiding, with his father -- was great, but it also sort of demonstrated just how little the show could function without Wagner Moura's presence (making me even more hesitant about a third season). It was clear the show needed him, and because of that it kept him around as long as possible. By the end, things got a little repetitive with Pablo and Tata. We'd already seen them swear their love to one another so many other times, and heard Pablo make so many promises to her, throughout the season that it had become rather commonplace and sort of robbed their final moment, over the radio, of some impact.
What I did like here were the arcs of Limon and Colonel Martinez' son. The latter was the "clean" cabbie who joined Escobar's ranks in the premiere and wound up being the one guy who stuck with him right until the very end -- to the death -- after everyone else had fallen away or abandoned their boss. The Colonel's son, on the flip side, found redemption by being the one to actually spot Pablo, having been formerly disgraced during that standoff with Los Pepes when he had his gun taken from him. Those two journeys, from different sides of the law, felt satisfying.
Part of me wishes the season had been a bit shorter -- perhaps 8 episodes instead of 10 -- simply because it was one long fall from grace. Basically, if you were to compare Pablo's rise and fall, his rise to power felt a bit rushed (considering that a lot of it was narrated to us back in Season 1) whereas his demise was drawn out. There's a lopsided quality to the story here. It's as if Breaking Bad gave us Walter White as a drug kingpin right away and then a long time taking him down.
Looking back on the season finale though, the best part was Pablo's little impromptu walk through the neighborhood. It stands as the biggest sign that he was just done with it all. He was ready to get caught and do it among the people who once adored him.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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