Cali Cartel: Meet the New Villains of ‘Narcos’ Season 3

The show is called Narcos — not Pablo Escobar.

That is how the boss of the Netflix drug cartel series explained the decision to continue Narcos after Escobar's death in season two. "From the beginning when we decided to call the show Narcos and not Pablo Escobar, I had always had in mind to tell the continuing story of cocaine," showrunner Eric Newman told The Hollywood Reporter when the series was picked up for a third and fourth season. "[The creators] and I wanted to tell a story about the drug war and never just about one person or organization. We had always planned on continuing on."

After two seasons of tracking the DEA's manhunt for Escobar, Wagner Moura's famous kingpin was gunned down on the actual Medellin rooftop where Escobar died in 1993 at the end of the sophomore season. The third season, which releases Sept. 1, shifts its focus to Escobar's real-life successors in the drug trade: Colombia’s Cali Cartel. Or, as Netflix described them, "the biggest drug lords you’ve probably never heard of."

Now that the hunt for Escobar has ended, the DEA turns its attention to the richest drug trafficking organization in the world, which is led by four powerful godfathers. This cartel operates much differently than Escobar’s, preferring to bribe government officials and keep its violent actions out of the headlines.

The trailer provides a first look at Cali — now "public enemy No. 1." DEA agent Javier Pena (Pedro Pascal) explains, "It was fucking cocaine incorporated. They ran it like a Fortune 500 company." The trailer also shows glimpses of the new agents Chris Feistl (Michael Stahl-David) and Daniel Van Ness (Matt Whelan), newcomer Miguel Angel Silvestre (Sense8) and the return of CIA station chief Bill Stechner (Eric Lange), who revealed himself to be pulling the strings behind the Colombia operations at the end of last season. 

Below, The Hollywood Reporter provides an introduction of the new villains of Narcos.