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‘Narcos: Mexico’ Renewed for Season 3, Diego Luna Not Returning

Tyler Hersko
·2 min read

Netflix renewed the crime drama “Narcos: Mexico” for a third season on Wednesday. The upcoming season of the show will not include series star Diego Luna, who portrayed drug cartel leader Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo earlier in the series.

Luna’s departure from the series had been anticipated; the actor told IndieWire earlier in the year that the show’s heavy subject matter had weighed him down and he was eager to dedicate time to comparably lighter projects.

“Not for now, not for now, no, no, no,” Luna told IndieWire in April when asked about filming more “Narcos: Mexico” episodes. “At the beginning it was fun, but then it became really heavy for me. I need rest, those two years were really intense for me.”

Per Netflix, “Narcos: Mexico” Season 3 will also feature a new showrunner; Eric Newman will hand over day-to-day showrunning duties to co-creator and long-time collaborator Carlo Bernard. Newman is currently under an overall deal with Netflix on both the feature side (“Bright,” “Power Project”) and the television side (“Hemlock Grove,” “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico”), and he will segue into overseeing a broadening Netflix slate that includes the previously announced opioid TV drama “Painkiller,” “Escape From Spiderhead” starring Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, and “The Upper World” starring Daniel Kaluuya. Newman will continue to executive produce alongside Bernard and Jose Padilha. Wagner Moura, who starred as Pablo Escobar during the first two seasons of “Narcos,” will return to the series and directs two episodes in the new season.

The show’s Season 3 synopsis reads: Set in the ’90s, when the globalization of the drug business ignites, Season 3 examines the war that breaks out after Felix’s empire splinters. As newly independent cartels struggle to survive political upheaval and escalating violence, a new generation of Mexican kingpins emerge. But in this war, truth is the first casualty — and every arrest, murder and take-down only pushes real victory further away.

As for Luna, the time away from “Narcos: Mexico” will allow the actor to focus on his upcoming untitled “Star Wars” series for Disney+, which will be based on the Cassian Andor character he portrayed in the 2016 “Rogue One” film.

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