*Episode premise spoilers.*
Penultimate episode time! All kinds of big stuff going down in this one.
The big day has arrived. Félix’s operation needs to go collect 70 tons of cocaine from Colombia and traffic it to the U.S., knowing full well that the Colombians will show no mercy if anything goes wrong. Speaking of which, Walt’s team knows about the shipment and decides that it’s the ideal time to strike—the prospect of catching the cartel with that much coke is mind-boggling.
The stakes are super high on all sides, so most of the episode is an all-but-literal countdown to the big clash. Will the DEA catch their white whale? Will Félix, Amado, and co. stay one step ahead? What will Calderoni, the DEA’s inside man, do to affect the outcome? The tension builds and builds until we reach the brutal climax.
Lots of interesting stuff for Félix today. As the big boss, he’s out of the direct line of fire while everything’s going down, but even if he’s not under the immediate threat of physical danger like some of his some of his men are, the mental weight of the whole operation is hanging heavily on them. Not only is he well aware of what Cali will do to him if he can’t pull this off, he’s staking everything on the success of this shipment. Even if the Colombians backed him into a corner to agree to it, he now needs to bring it home for his own sake, the ultimate power play.
As he does all this, Félix has also been trying to get closer with his ex-wife, María Elvira. He’s feeling nostalgic for the past, perhaps because he knows he’s dead if he fails, and maybe he’s trying to mend fences before it’s too late. The dynamic between them is interesting, because María Elvira knows exactly who Félix is and calls him out on his shit, even as she also starting to get pulled back in herself. Félix brings up his past transgressions, saying, “I haven’t forgotten what I did to you,” and she simply replies, “Neither have I.” He looks toward the future, pinning all his prospects on the success of the shipment, and says, “I’m almost there.” In response, she asks, “Where is ‘there’? And what happens when you arrive?”
As another bit of nostalgia, the episode opens on a flashback to the old days, before the series even started. We look back on a scene when Félix was still a cop, when life at home with his family was simple and Rafa was out in the greenhouse experimenting with sinsemilla. It’s wild to see Félix like this, and Diego Luna does a great job with it—his entire bearing is different.
It’s in stark contrast with his present, where he’s trying to convince María Elvira to give it another go while simultaneously having a harder grip on the cartel than ever before. When his judgement is questioned, he puts it plainly: “That’s right. You all rose with me. Without me, everyone is fucked.” We’ve watched Félix’s transformation so gradually over the course of the two seasons that it’s almost shocking to go back and see how he used to be. For Luna to play both radically different versions of the same character in a single episode is so effective.
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