Diego Luna and Michael Peña Join ‘Narcos’ Season 4

Netflix's acclaimed drug cartel thriller experiences yet another big casting shake-up.
Diego Luna Michael Pena

Netflix’s acclaimed drug cartel thriller experiences yet another big casting shake-up.

Yesterday, Netflix released a new teaser introducing season 4 of Narcos to the world and revealed a rather large bombshell: a brand new leading duo. Diego Luna (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Flatliners) and Michael Peña (The Martian, Ant-Man) will be the new stars of the show. Watch the teaser below:

Initially headlined by Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook during Narcos‘ first two seasons, the show shifted its focus after the resolution of the Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) storyline that defined much of the earlier premise. The show’s third season picked up with just Pascal as DEA agent Javier Peña, with Holbrook’s Steve Murphy departing and the narrative shifting to shine a spotlight on with Escobar’s successors: the Cali cartel in Colombia.

Spoiler alert, but Pascal himself had been cagey about a return post-Narcos season 3. He determined in an interview earlier this year that his character had pretty much reached the end of his journey, albeit in a rather horrific way:

“I do think that we’ve told Peña’s story pretty effectively. ‘The only way to win is not to play’ is a certain aspect of it. He has been irremovably changed by this experience and whether he’ll be happy in his life at home? I would say no. I don’t think it’s a particularly happy ending for him. But I think it’s certainly accepting the futility of this … It’s definitely a defeat for him and his only move is to just say, ‘I can’t continue to function.’ What’s tragic about it is that you’re losing truly one of the good guys. He’s put in positions where he has to do terrible things and does them and comes out of it feeling like he’s probably pretty broken.”

Luna and Peña fourth season will continue the Narcos narrative in a whole new country — Mexico — and track the Guadalajara cartel in the late 1970s and early 1980s (yes, that means a jump backward in the show’s timeline). This won’t be the first time Luna and Peña have worked together. Luna cast Peña as the eponymous lead in his English-language directorial debut, César Chávez, although this will be the first time both men perhaps share a screen. That’s a presumptuous take, obviously, since we have no idea who Luna and Peña will be playing in the fourth season of Narcos.

According to Variety, production on season 4 of Narcos recently began in Mexico City. The new season is slated to premiere sometime in 2018.

Sheryl Oh: Sheryl Oh often finds herself fascinated (and let's be real, a little obsessed) with actors and their onscreen accomplishments, developing Film School Rejects' Filmographies column as a passion project. She's not very good at Twitter but find her at @sherhorowitz anyway. (She/Her)