Cocaine! Whisky! The Netflix logo! Everyone's three favorite things collide in the new teaser for Narcos season 3, which is set to document the rise of a new empire: the Cali Cartel. While seasons 1 and 2 mostly focused on the story of Colombian drug lord and oft-described "King of Cocaine" Pablo Escobar, the third round of Narcos is setting out to prove that the real star of the series is the coke itself.
Showrunner Eric Newman outlined this strategy in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter surrounding the season 2 drop last September. "Just looking at the history of cocaine in Colombia, the natural conclusion that you would draw happened in reality: the Cali cartel aided in the dismantling of the Medellin cartel and benefited by going from being No. 2 to No. 1," Newman said. "They were then taken apart over a period of two years and another cartel rose up in their place. So there's a revolving-door aspect to narco kingpins and we'll certainly exploit that."
From the very beginning, Newman added, the intention was to tell a story about cocaine and not an individual. "We had always planned on continuing on," he said. Thankfully, the cocaine saga will have the chance to do exactly that through at least 2018. The series was renewed for seasons 3 (i.e. the one this teaser's for) and 4 last year.
If the pattern holds from previous seasons, the new batch of Narcos—arriving Sept. 1—will also be met with some pushback from depicted individuals' surviving family members.
