“La Piloto” puts a woman behind the controls of a crime story, and mostly earns the effort. The series follows Yolanda Cadena, played by Livia Brito, as she fights to become an airplane pilot while falling into the drug business and a love triangle with a DEA agent played by Juan Eduardo Colucho.
Yolanda’s Runways
Yolanda’s story is the engine here. She starts as a flight attendant, then takes on a delivery job for a drug lord, which forces her to learn how to fly and opens the door to the world of smuggling. The writing keeps her dream of flying in focus even as the show swaps the standard crime drama’s male protagonist for a woman whose ambitions drive every twist.
The show’s real strength is Brito’s performance. She carries the weight of the character’s transformation — her grief over her father’s death, her frustration at being the only woman in a male-dominated field, her quiet resolve. Her scenes with Colucho’s DEA agent are the show’s best, because the tension between them never loses the sense that both characters want the same thing and keep getting in each other’s way.
The Supporting Cast
The rest of the ensemble holds up around Brito. Marcelo Buquet’s Omar Nieves and Joaquín Bondoni’s Jerry both get moments to shine, and Miguel Garza’s El 59 adds menace to the proceedings. The drug lord, played by Arap Bethke, is a solid presence without stealing focus from the central story.
The show’s middle stretch drags in places, with certain storylines about the DEA agent and Yolanda’s family feeling like filler rather than character development. The pacing slows in the second season, and a few late episodes do little to advance the plot beyond what the first season had already set up.
Where It Falls Short
The show’s biggest weakness is its handling of the drug business. The smuggling plot feels thin next to Yolanda’s personal story, and the show leans on convenient coincidence to get her into trouble rather than building a coherent criminal operation. The early promise of a character discovering how far she is willing to go for her dream gets lost in a second season that repeats the first one’s beats.
None of that erases what works. Brito’s commitment to the character carries the show, and the show’s central question — how far is Yolanda willing to go to fly — never loses its weight. The series is a solid, uneven crime drama with a standout lead.
Key facts
– 2 seasons, 162 episodes
– Aired 2017-03-07 to 2018-10-09
– Network: Univision, Las Estrellas
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