Withdrawal: Pablo dies, cocaine survives

Wagner Moura confirms his departure from Netflix drama ‘Narcos’ after season two

Wagner Moura, who stars on the Netflix cartel drama, Narcos, as a famed Colombian drug dealer, confirmed Wednesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that his character will be killed off in season two. “This is definitely the last season for me,” Moura said. It’s hardly a spoiler – in real life, Escobar died in 1993 at the age of 43,” Hollywood Reporter quoted him as saying.

According to him, season two of the drama will be more character-driven, and cover a smaller period of time, 18 months, as Escobar begins to lose his power, his money and his safety. “This is the season where we’re going to start see the fall of this guy,” Moura said. “We’re going to see Pablo Escobar very vulnerable.”

Although Moura has hinted before that his time on the series would be limited, it still means a huge creative change for the drama, which has not yet been formally renewed for a third season. “The show is not about Pablo,” executive producer José Padilha said. “Pablo Escobar happens to be the man who created the mass business of cocaine trade. He is, for lack of a better word, the founding father of this business but the show is about cocaine. It’s about drug dealers that deal cocaine.”

Padilha calmed nerves that the show is still going to be the show it is, but that it would take on a broad perspective in season three looking at other drug dealers. “We plan on stopping when cocaine stops. I think there’s a reason why we call this show Narcos and not Pablo Escobar. It’s very much about the trade,” executive producer Eric Newman said. “There are other drug dealers and there are alliances formed against Pablo so there are a multitude of stories we could tackle.”

Season two of Narcos premieres September 2 on Netflix.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th, 2016.

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