The Reckoning
Episode 9 of Narcos: Mexico Season 3 begins with a message being sent to Mayo. A guy called Romo is strung up by his neck above a bridge, with a message reading “You’re next Mayo”. Mayo feed this back to Amado, who’s obviously on the verge of leaving. He sighs, commenting how things are getting too loud now. Speaking of loud, a rather unpleasant call with Hank sees Amado knocked back down to Earth as Marta’s life hangs in the balance. Now, given Amado has been taking funds from his account, that puts the trafficker in a rather precarious position. Painfully, he tells her she needs to leave alone. Amado’s men thankfully take out an assassin ready to kill her, but also reinforce just how much danger she’s in. With it taking a few days for the Cali money to be withdrawn, Amado is confident that Hank won’t know that he’s taken the money but it’s risky business. Hank is a smart cookie and surely it’s only a matter of time before he learns the truth. At the same time, Guero gets himself arrested, reuniting with Chapo behind bars. While it’s all smiles and warm welcomes, Chapo is reminded that if this is the new world order, Mayo has no need for him and will just work directly with Guero. Victor, still working undercover, sniffs around Vicente’s truck trying to find evidence to incriminate him. He notices Victor messing around and calls him out for it, demanding he stay away from the truck in the future. Thankfully Victor doesn’t get caught, but he doesn’t have much luck running the plates from the car sniffing around the bus depot. It links back to the complete wrong car, meaning they’ve clearly been switched. Elsewhere, Walt gets nowhere with his Arellano tapes. Alex listens to all these different voices and claims he doesn’t recognize any of them. Reassuring himself that Alfredo is okay, Alex continues. Walt is quiet, especially given he knows the man is dead. Anyway, there is a breakthrough, stemming from intel about Benjamin’s daughter suffering from seizures. Benjamin lights a candle for her every Sunday, but this also means that her condition would leaves traces at a hospital. And that would allow them to tail her to an address. Andrea chases up her lead in Tijuana, which links back to a former beauty queen. This woman appears to be the conduit between Juarez and Hank. In order to nail this lead, Salgado tasks the team with digging into the archives and figuring out who this woman actually is. Apparently she lived in Monterrey in the early 80’s under the name of Yessenia and a prominent picture in the newspaper shows Hank’s face too. It’s just the breakthrough they needed, and while there’s nothing on the girl, there is something on one of the others in the picture, a guy called Edgar. He died in a helicopter crash but took orders from… General Rebollo. It turns out Hank and the others have been paying off the General all this time. With a solid story this time, Andrea is tasked with writing this up. News spreads fast, as Jaime rings and breaks the news to Walt that General Rebollo is about to be arrested. When Walt shows up at the military building again, the place is a mess. Documents are being burned, the place is abuzz with nervous energy, and Rebollo is at the end of the line. According to him, he did everything necessary to get the job done, even if that means working with Amado all this time. Walt grabs Alex and takes him away to safety, knowing full-well that the Mexican authorities are going to kill him if he stays. Amado, now out of time, learns that the police have seize the hangar and with it, any chance of flying out.
The Episode Review
So it all comes down to this. Rebollo has been found out to be working for Amado all this time, while Chapo finds his post in prison threatened. Of course, pressure builds diamonds and for Chapo, he’s just starting to find an opportunity to shine. Will he capitalize on the chaos gripping Mexico? And it really is chaos at the moment. Amado loses his opportunity to leave, as the police close in on the men responsible for turning Mexico into a personal battleground. Of course, the real catalyst here is the killing of the cardinal and since then, the noose has been slowly tightening around these men. Alas, that’s what’s happened here as our different characters find themselves fighting an uphill battle. Whether Victor will continue pursing his lead is still unknown at this point, although given his arc I wouldn’t be surprised if he does. Everything is balanced precariously for the finale, with lots of simmering tensions and rising drama ready to explode into action.
