A Cartel Boss Seen Through His Own Men, in a Series That Refuses to Look Away

“El Chapo” opens in 1985, and that is the smartest decision the show makes. Joaquín Guzmán is not yet the most wanted man in the world. He is a low-level member of the Guadalajara Cartel. Univision premiered the series on April 23, 2017, with Netflix carrying it worldwide afterward. The series was co-produced by Netflix and Univision. Three seasons and 32 episodes later, it closed on July 25, 2018. The arc runs from those beginnings to his downfall in 2016.

Marco de la O and the Weight of a Name

Marco de la O plays the title role. He carries the show, and he does it without the swagger the part invites. His Guzmán is watchful, patient, a man who reads a room before he speaks in it. The performance holds because de la O never plays the legend. He plays the climb.

That choice matters more than any single scene. A lesser series would cut straight to the kingpin. “El Chapo” spends its early hours on the machinery underneath. The show was created by Daniel Posada, Silvana Aguirre Zegarra, Carlos Contreras, Ernesto Contreras and José Manuel Cravioto. That many hands on the wheel is usually a warning sign. Here the seasons stay coherent, and the credit belongs partly to the writers’ room and partly to a lead who refuses to wink at the audience.

The supporting cast fills out the world rather than decorating it. Valentina Acosta plays Alejandra. Juan Carlos Olivas is El Güero. Humberto Busto plays Don Sol. Alejandro Aguilar is Toño, Hernán Romo is Benjamin Avendaño, Tete Espinoza is Chío, and Hector Muñoz plays Hijo del Chapo. None of them exist to explain the protagonist. They push against him, and the friction is where the drama lives.

A Cartel Story Told From the Bottom Rung

The genre is crowded. Drama and crime, the synopsis says, and that is exactly what it is. What separates “El Chapo” from the pile is its starting altitude. The series recounts Guzmán’s beginnings in 1985 as a low-level member of the Guadalajara Cartel, his rise as head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and his fall. That is a full biography, and the show treats it as a long game rather than a highlight reel.

The middle stretch is the strongest. Power arrives slowly, and the series lets the audience feel the drag. The show understands that the interesting part of a criminal empire is not the empire. It is the paperwork of betrayal that keeps it running.

The final season has a harder job. By then the outcome is public record, and the show has to generate tension around a conclusion everyone already knows. It mostly manages, because the focus stays on the people caught in the collapse rather than the collapse itself.

Release Schedule and Where It Aired

The rollout was split between two platforms, and the timing is worth laying out plainly.

That two-step — Univision first, Netflix worldwide after — shaped how the show was watched. The series is co-produced by Netflix and Univision, and both hands show.

The first season comprises nine episodes. The full run is 32 across three seasons. That is a tight footprint for a story spanning three decades.

What the Show Gets Right

• The 1985 starting point, which grounds Guzmán as a worker rather than a myth
• Marco de la O’s restraint in the title role
• The Guadalajara Cartel years, where the show is at its most specific
• The shift to the Sinaloa Cartel, handled as a business transition rather than a coronation
• The 2016 downfall, given a full season to land

Each of those is a structural choice, not a stylistic flourish. The show is plain. It does not chase atmosphere. It puts men in rooms and lets them negotiate, and when the negotiations fail, the cost is clear.

The weaknesses are equally structural. The show’s reach exceeds its grip in the later seasons. The women in the cast — Acosta’s Alejandra, Espinoza’s Chío — get less room than the material warrants, and the show does not seem to notice.

Where the Series Sits Against Its Peers

The source describes it as a biographical crime thriller. The comparison that matters is not to other cartel shows. It is to the version of this story that the news already told. “El Chapo” is not competing with headlines. In this paper’s view, it is competing with the assumption that the audience already knows how this ends.

That is why the early seasons carry more weight than the late ones. The show is most alive when Guzmán is nobody. Once he is somebody, the series becomes a management drama, and while that is not a failure, it is a narrower thing.

The published critical score sits at 7.5 out of 10, drawn from a TMDB audience score with 1,670 votes. That number is honest. It reflects a series that is consistently competent, occasionally sharp, and never quite transcendent.

The Verdict on El Chapo

The first season is the one to watch. It covers 1985 forward, it has the clearest arc, and it makes the best use of de la O. Nine episodes, released on Netflix on June 16, 2017. If you are going to sample the show, sample there.

Season 2, which premiered on Univision on September 17, 2017 and hit Netflix on December 15, 2017, is the transitional year. It moves Guzmán toward the top of the Sinaloa Cartel and starts paying off the groundwork. It is the season where the show’s ambition and its budget come closest to matching.

Season 3 is the weakest. It premiered on Univision on July 9, 2018, and reached Netflix on July 27, 2018. It has to land the 2016 downfall, and it does, but the landing is procedural. The show earns its ending without ever making it feel inevitable in the way the best tragedy does.

What “El Chapo” gets right is the long view. It refuses to treat Guzmán as an aberration. He is a product of a system that promoted him, protected him, and eventually could not. The show’s clearest insight, as this paper reads it, is that the Guadalajara Cartel did not create a monster. It created an employee, and the employee outlasted the company.

That is a real thesis, and the series argues it across 32 episodes without ever stating it outright. It is also why the show never quite becomes great. A thesis that clean leaves little room for the mess that made the real story so hard to look away from. “El Chapo” is well made, well acted, and a little too tidy. It is worth your time, though it is not without flaws.

Cartel Drama · El Chapo · Marco de la O · Netflix · TV Review · Univision