'Narcos: Mexico' Season 2 Episode 2 'Alea Iacta Est' has 3 main characters moving past the point of no return
Spoiler Alert for ‘Narcos: Mexico’ Season 2 Episode 2 -- ‘Alea Iacta Est’
“Alea iacta est” is a Latin phrase famously uttered by Julius Caesar as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy. It means “Let the die be cast” or “The die has been cast”.
With everything that went down in the first episode of ‘Narcos: Mexico’ season 2 -- DEA agent Walt Breslin (Scoot McNairy) and his band of mercenaries kidnapping a Mexican federal agent, one of the men who tortured and killed Kiki Camarena (Michael Peña) -- it seems oddly fitting that the second episode’s title would imply that there was no turning back.
Episode two begins with Breslin and his men interrogating Sergio Verdin. It seemed, however, that they may have bitten more than they could chew. The man was, after all, trained by the CIA to resist interrogation. Add to that, Breslin and his men were basically wandering in the dark. Hours of beating and torture seemed to amount to nothing.
In the meanwhile, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (Diego Luna), the boss of the Guadalajara cartel, is trying to make new deals with a man called Don Juan of Honduras. In episode one, Gallardo promised that if his new venture was successful, he would be bigger than the Cali cartel of Colombia, the players who were controlling the cocaine trade at that point. One can surmise that Gallardo wanted to find an alternative route for the trafficking of cocaine, in an attempt to cut the Colombians out of the deal altogether.
And, perhaps, it is only Gallardo who could not only come up with such an audacious plan but also have the strategy to execute it, the charisma to win over a new ally.
But while Gallardo is trying to become bigger, his empire, the band of savages he has united under the metaphorical Roman banner, is at the risk of collapsing.
Benjamín Arellano Félix (Alfonso Dosal) and his sister are busy trying to make off-the-book trades with Americans who would take their cocaine and turn it into crack cocaine. In the previous episode, we also saw Isabella Bautista (Teresa Ruiz) attempt to strike up her own deal with a player in the Cali cartel. Her reasons were obvious. Gallardo had wronged her a lot in the past. Isabella, in this episode, even approaches Benjamín to join in. But he remains apprehensive of going against Gallardo.
What makes the episode a visceral experience (and it is perhaps, one of the best episodes in all of ‘Narcos’ and ‘Narcos: Mexico’) is not the graphic violence shown during the torture of Verdin. Rather, it breaks the idea of how torture is commonly imagined. It takes the viewers through a different world where one enters the mind of both: the one tied to the chair, and the one asking the questions. It makes one understand the conundrums one goes through when they decide to commit themselves to do whatever it takes to extract information out of a person.
In more ways than one, this episode marked a step taken too far and one that could no longer be taken back. Whether it was Gallardo’s move to cut the Cali cartel out, or Breslin’s move to let Verdin live, albeit almost dead, or Isabella’s plans to hack at Gallardo’s empire, a die had been cast, and now the players would have to proceed as such.
‘Narcos: Mexico’ season 2 is available for viewing on Netflix.