The globe-trotting plot follows three sides of an international cocaine shipment: the sellers (a Mexican cartel), the brokers (an American shipping family), and the buyers (an Italian 'Ndrangheta clan). The series is notable for the large number of languages used by characters: primarily English, Italian and Spanish, but also French, Arabic, the Calabrian dialect and the African language of Wolof.
The series provides examples of:
- And the Adventure Continues: After successfully delivering the shipment to the Italians Emma casually asks the cartel if they can have 2,000 more kilos ready in three weeks for delivery to Russia, essentially starting the cycle over again.
- Badass Crew: Manuel's squad of highly trained commandos is vastly more qualified than narco gangsters. Their training helps them take the cartel world by storm.
- Bait-and-Switch: We watch a young drug courier hide beneath a car after getting stalked by Manuel's commandos. We cut to later, and the courier demands to be let into a hideout because some men were following him, but once they open up, it's revealed that the commandos actually caught him, and they storm the hideout.
- Based on a True Story: Manuel and his Vampiros are based on Los Zetas, who were also Mexican Army-trained soldiers who became enforcers for a cartel and then broke away to form their own cartel in the Monterrey region.
- Blatant Lies: Emma moves heaven and earth to recover her shipment of "chili peppers" so she can "protect her reputation." A Senegalese official calls her out on how obvious it is that her shipment is actually smuggled contraband.
- Bluffing the Authorities: A customs agent becomes suspicious of the extreme measures Emma is taking to ensure her shipment arrives on time, since it's supposedly just a small amount of canned peppers. Emma tries to deflect him by explaining that it's not about the contents of the shipment, it's about maintaining her company's reputation for reliability. He doesn't buy it and correctly deduces that the shipment contains contraband, allowing it to proceed in exchange for a cut.
- Bulletproof Vest: Edward and Emma acquire bulletproof vests on their way to a meeting with cartel leaders, anticipating (correctly) that violence may break out. This results in the classic "pull aside the vest and breathe a sigh of relief upon seeing that the bullet didn't penetrate" scene. In an uncharacteristic twist for this trope, the person who was "saved" by the vest still dies. Apparently the heavy chest impact was too much, despite the bullet not penetrating.
- Bullying a Dragon: A high-ranking cartel member shows nothing but contempt for Manuel and his troop, a group of former commandos who have upwards of 60 trained men under their command. It's a bad move.
- The Cartel: The Leyras run the local Mexican cartel that supplies the drugs being transported. By the end of the series, Manuel and his men have taken over.
- Catchphrase: Edward always tells his children, "Rule one, kiddo..." followed by something different every time. They talk about it and imitate him after he dies.
- Churchgoing Villain: Manuel is established to be an anti-narco soldier who listens to church sermons while his squad tortures narcos for intel. It seems like he's a Knight Templar, but then it's revealed that he's actually corrupt and eventually converts his whole squad to becoming narcos themselves, but he's still just as much a religious zealot.
- Dead Guy on Display: In the final episode, Manuel forces Emma to sit between the corpses of the Leyra brothers to indicate that he is the new boss in town.
- Dead Star Walking: Gabriel Byrne is the biggest name in the cast, and he dies in the beginning of the second episode.
- Death Seeker: It's implied that Chris leaps at his opportunity to sacrifice himself because he doesn't want to suffer the slow torture of his medical condition.
- Decoy Protagonist: It looks like Edward Lynwood is going to be the main character of the brokers' storyline, but he dies in the second episode, leaving his children to take the reins.
- The Dog Bites Back: The Vampiros get no respect from the cartel narcos in the Leyra brothers' cartel. When one boss pushes them too far, it provokes a deadly reaction.
- Downer Ending: The drug deal is completed successfully, which is good or bad news depending on how much you sympathize with the villainous main characters. Meanwhile, all three main characters are left with hollow victories: Manuel has voluntarily estranged himself from his love interest and her child. Don Minu has been forced to murder his grandson and has now killed two generations of his own family. Emma has lost both her father and brother in only a few weeks and has no one left to confide in.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Don Minu holds firm to his belief that women and children are off-limits. His sentiment is not shared by all of the Calabrian gangsters.
- Manuel takes a Leyra brother's wife and child out of the room before he blackmails and then executes him. However, it's unclear if he ultimately spared the man's family.
- A Father to His Men: Zig-zagged by Manuel, who is clearly the big brother of his military unit. On one hand, he sacrifices an incorruptible member of his unit, but still looks after the man's wife and child. When a cartel member demands that he sacrifice a member of his troop to save the rest, Manuel pulls a gun and insists that all of his men are indispensable.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Chris delays Stefano with a wild goose chase long enough to prevent him from stopping Emma's shipment, knowing that Stefano will kill him when he figures it out.
- How We Got Here:
- The first episode starts with a disoriented Edward lying on the ground in the midst of a gunfight. We then flash back to days beforehand. The end of the episode catches up to this scene.
- At the midpoint of each subsequent episode, the plot rewinds to establish how a second storyline was progressing at the same time as the first.
- I Have Your Wife: Stefano's men take his wife and son hostage once they figure out that he can't shake his loyalty to his grandfather.
- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: An interesting variation has one of the Leyra brothers tell Manuel that, before they'll let him and his men join their cartel, Manuel has to execute the least skilled member of his crew to prove his loyalty and ruthlessness. Manuel refuses and produces a hidden gun, so the test instantly decays into a Mexican Standoff. The other Leyra brother quickly vetoes the test and welcomes them into the cartel.
- Iron Lady: Emma maintains her composure with obvious difficulty when she's made to walk through the carnage of a cartel massacre and sit beside two corpses to conduct a business deal. She does not dignify the cartel with a reaction and even forces herself to smile at several sicarios on the way out.
- Kick the Dog: The Vampiros perform one for story purposes and for plot purposes by massacring a busload of random civilians. They're scaring the local neighborhood into submission and signaling to the audience that yes, they are even worse than the narcos.
- Klingon Promotion: Manuel kills the Leyra brothers to take over their cartel.
- The Mafia: Technically the 'Ndrangheta of Calabria rather than the Mafia of Sicily, though the differences are not large. Their leader, Don Minu, is the one who ordered the cocaine shipment, but a power struggle with his grandson results in the shipment being re-routed to Morocco with disastrous results for all involved.
- Middle Eastern Terrorists: The Lynwoods run afoul of jihadists. As Moroccans, they're of Arab-Berber descent and technically North African terrorists.
- The Mole: The captain of the special forces squad knows there's a mole in the squad feeding intel to the cartel, and threatens to replace all the men if he isn't found. Manuel kills one of the clean squad members, framing him as the mole to protect his own position.
- Motif: Fatherhood.
- The Lynwoods must deal with the loss of their family patriarch through the course of the series.
- Stefano is moved to betray his grandfather to avenge the murder of his father, though they both find it difficult to sever their familial connections in the face of their own interests.
- Manuel murders one of his men and begins courting the man's pregnant wife, to the point that he's positioned to become the surrogate father of the man's child.
- Chris watches a jihadist leader send his own son off to be a suicide bomber and then bless his newborn son.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Each of Manuel's team of anti-narco soldiers has a callsign that was obviously selected to be scary, such as "Vampire" and "C4." The soldier-trained cartel sicarios get called Vampiros in honor of Manuel's nickname and because it's scary.
- Never Trust a Title: The phrase "zero zero zero" is never used in the series and its meaning isn't readily apparent just by watching the show. It's narcotraffickers slang for the purest grade of cocaine, which is itself a reference to the highest grade of pasta flour.
- Offing the Offspring: Don Minu admits that he killed his son, Stefano's father, to end a mob war. That's why he's so reluctant to kill Stefano himself for his betrayal. That would mean he'd killed two generations of his own family. But he ultimately does so anyway when confronted by Stefano's continuing betrayal.
- Outside-Context Villain: As drug brokers, the Lynwoods are comfortable dealing with organized crime figures of all stripes. While driving through Africa, however, they have no idea what to do when they run afoul of jihadists who aren't motivated by money the way normal criminals are.
- Plot Armor: Chris is awfully lucky that he managed to avoid getting killed in a drone strike and that the very person who could get him out of his mess also survived.
- Private Military Contractors: Omar, the Lynwoods' Senegalese fixer, shows up at the jihadists' base with a small group of armed Senegalese men who use military tactics in a daring rescue attempt.
- Pyrrhic Victory: For members of all three factions:
- The Lynwoods: Emma completes the shipment and has established her reputation and capabilities, but Chris and Edward are both dead and she has suffered countless traumas.
- The Italians: Don Minu receives his shipment and apparently regains his former status and power, but was forced to kill his own grandson and heir, as well as several former friends and allies who betrayed him.
- The Mexicans: Manuel and his crew take over the cartel, but he was forced to sacrifice the members of his special forces squad who weren't dirty. He also has to leave forever the woman that he's falling in love with, after revealing to her that he was the one who killed her husband.
- Rogue Soldier: It turns out that Manuel and most of his fellow soldiers are on the take from the very cartels they're supposed to be busting.
- Punch-Clock Villain: The Lynwoods provide a white-collar contrast to the brutal criminal empires of the cartels and the 'Ndrangheta clans. In spite of profiting off of the drug trade, they're pretty normal people.
- Reading Lips: Chris establishes that he can read lips in an early scene at the racing track when he eavesdrops on his father's private business conversation.
- Secret Test of Character: After hitting the Leyras, Manuel passes out some purloined cash to his squaddies. The two soldiers who refuse to take the money get earmarked by Manuel as possible traitors once his crooked dealings rise to the surface.
- Slave to PR: This is Emma's excuse for her excessive effort expended in ensuring a small shipment of "canned peppers" arrives on time — it's not about the peppers, it's about maintaining her company's reputation. The truth is that the shipment actually contains a large amount of cocaine.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- A cartel member who likes to bully Manuel's elite commando squad takes it so far that he impulsively shoots one of Manuel's men while surrounded by heavily armed members of their squad. He's instantly cut down in a hail of automatic gunfire.
- To a certain extent, the Leyras were pretty stupid to hand over so much of their power to a group of commandos who have absolutely no loyalty to them. Did they really think that Manuel would be content to just eat their abuse forever?
- Villain Protagonist: All three storylines are told from the perspective of drug runners, though their level of villainy varies dramatically.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Omar's two remaining Senegalese mercenaries who were driving the trucks? They just vanish at some point between the jihadist camp and Casablanca. Presumably Emma paid them, and they left.
- Would Hit a Girl:
- Stefano's men brutalize his wife after they take her captive.
- Manuel's troops massacre women just as readily as the men.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Don Minu states firmly that one must never harm a woman or child.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Don Minu, an old-school gangster, refuses a request to murder a female witness because women and children are off-limits. His ruling does not sit well with his subordinates.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The general attitude of the Leyras towards Manuel and his men — their value as special forces soldiers was that they could provide intel and sabotage operations from the inside, both of which they can no longer do once they've blown their cover and defected. The situation is later reversed when Manuel, having learned enough of the cartel's operations, simply kills the Leyras and takes over.
