In the ‘Mayans M.C.’ recap, EZ tries to strike a balance between the loyalty to his club and past feelings for Emily while Miguel gets closer to revenge against the rebels…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Years of experience have taught Marcus Alvarez that it’s impossible to trust everybody — even those brothers who are wearing a Mayans patch on their backs.
In the latest episode of ‘Mayans M.C.’, we find that El Padrino himself is wary of information that’s been leaked out of his Santo Padre chapter, which leads him to believe it’s possible that at least one member doesn’t have the charter’s best interest at heart.
Needless to say Alvarez’s instincts are right on the money considering at least four members of his Southern California charter are working side-by-side with the rebel faction that’s working to dismantle the Mexican cartel.
Right now, Alvarez just has suspicions but it’s the first time he’s expressed concerns about the loyalty in his own club while he tries to maintain a relationship with the cartel while ensuring that the Mayans are conducting the best possible business for themselves.
Stuck in the middle of all of this is EZ Reyes, who is housing more secrets than a priest listening to confessionals.
As if things couldn’t get anymore confusing for him, EZ came face-to-face with his past last week when his ex-girlfriend and the woman who at one time was going to have his child came to him for help after her baby was kidnapped by the very rebels he’s currently helping. On top of that, EZ will soon find out the pressure that’s being put on him from the DEA even if his father is doing his best to shield him from it as the responsibility of being a protected informant gets tougher by the day.
And last but not least, Miguel Galindo takes a more tempered approach to track down the rebels responsible for taking his son. He was willing to burn two innocent people alive as a message to those rebels, but now Miguel is doing his best to strike back at them by tearing Los Olvidados apart from the inside out.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Mayans M.C.’ titled ‘Buho/Muwan’…
Somebody’s Watching Me
EZ Reyes’ father Felipe has been growing more and more concerned about his son’s deal with the DEA that helped him get released from prison.
In another flashback to eight years earlier we find EZ covered in blood while giving chase to a gunman who is fleeing the scene. EZ is going after him with a gun in hand as well while exchanging fire in the middle of a construction site. EZ is firing his gun when he hears someone come up from behind so he turns and shoots — and finds out too late that the person he gunned down was a cop.
There’s still no revelation as to why EZ was chasing this gunman, but it seems likely that this is the person responsible for killing his mother, who is already dead when the series began. Throughout this latest episode, EZ references an ‘anniversary’, which once again seems to reference the death of his mother.
That tragic event ended with EZ in prison until his release just recently under the agreement with the DEA that he would help them bring down the Galindo cartel. While he’s lived up to his part of the bargain, the DEA is growing impatient with the lack of usable intel that will help them build a case against the cartel.
Felipe ends up getting a visit from Agent Jimenez — EZ’s DEA handler — and he’s passing along a new phone number that can be called 24 hours a day, seven days a week as he gets more information. Up until now, EZ has been dropping off heroin samples so the DEA can track where the cartel’s drugs are ending up while intermittently feeding them information when he gets it.
Unfortunately this ongoing war between the Galindo cartel and the Los Olvidados rebels has the DEA stirred up even more than usual, hoping that this might be the perfect opportunity to strike back.
The visit from Jimenez is followed up by a car following Felipe from his butcher shop to his home, which leads him to finally confront the people who are tailing him. With a shotgun in hand, Felipe confronts the agent sent to watch him and he finds out that the DEA has been instructed to keep him safe out of concern that the cartel or maybe even the rebels find out about EZ and decide to strike back at his family.
Felipe ensures the agent that he doesn’t need protection before he returns home. When his sons EZ and Angel return home from a long day of work, he doesn’t dare mention his interaction with the DEA. In fact by the end of the episode, Felipe tears up the message from Agent Jimenez with his number inside — a real working number (310-369-4951) that actually contains a recorded voicemail message featuring Katey Sagal’s voice — and doesn’t tell EZ about anything that’s happened.
Felipe is going to do his best to protect his son — even if that means keeping him safe from the DEA.
A Mother’s Love
Emily is beside herself while being kept in the dark by her husband about what he’s doing to get their son back. Not only did he lie to her about the retribution he sought against anybody involved with the kidnapping but she also has no idea that Miguel’s father actually sacrificed his own son when a similar rebel faction kidnapped him many years ago.
The frustration only grows after Emily sees the latest video from the rebels that show images from the town square where Miguel dropped off the burned up bodies from the food vendor and his son who he tried to question for information about Los Olvidados. In that same video, the rebels show the pacifier that belongs to Emily’s son Cristobal and it only serves to further torment her without being able to contribute much to finding him.
Finally, Emily reaches a breaking point and demands to go to the town square where she believes her son has been at least somewhat recently according to this video.
Miguel’s mother Dita accompanies her but when they arrive in the town square, they are met with the disturbing images of street sweepers attempting to clean up the charred remains from where those burned bodies laid just hours earlier.
Emily looks around the town square at the same places where this video was shot but she soon realizes that she’s not going to find the answers she’s looking for there.
Little does she know on her way out of the town square, she passes right by Adelita — the leader of Los Olvidados — along with two of her fellow rebels who have returned there to do some food shopping for their group.
Adelita returned to the town square where that video was shot as she looks to gather supplies while waiting on the members of the Mayans to arrange a sell for the last six kilos of heroin that they are still holding onto after the hijacking that took place in the first episode. The sale of that heroin will continue to fund the rebel cause, which is starting to run short on money and supplies.
While they are in town, one of the children who came along with Adelita spots a lonely little boy sitting directly besides the spot where the burned bodies of that vendor and his son where left the day before. The little girl ends up befriending the boy before introducing him to Adelita.
She explains that the boy has no family after the cartel burned his alive as retribution for the kidnapping. Adelita takes pity on the boy and invites him to join the rebel faction where they will care for him as another orphan of the cartel’s crimes.
Little does Adelita know that this boy might be the catalyst that brings her entire rebel cause to an end.
Debts Paid
As for the Mayans this week, Angel makes an unannounced visit to the rebel camp to arrange plans to sell the six kilos of heroin to a Chinese contact, who is looking to set up his own drug ring outside Las Vegas. While there, EZ is able to hold Emily’s baby for a few moments as he continues to struggle with his decision to feed her information on what her husband is up to these days while keeping the secret that he knows where her son is located.
When the meeting wraps, EZ and the rest of the rebel faction of the club head back to the United States for an entirely different meeting.
As the cartel continues to battle the rebels, some of their most important buyers are starting to have concerns about how this war is going to affect the heroin trade. Miguel asks the Mayans to travel to a Native American casino outside of Las Vegas to meet with Chinese faction as well as the two state employees who control the heroin trade in California’s prison system.
When the club arrives with time to spare until the meeting, everybody disperses out to enjoy themselves for a little while until business gets underway. EZ acts as a spotter for Coco, who ends up winning a nice chunk of money while counting cards at the blackjack table. Meanwhile, Angel wanders outside for an impromptu meeting with Jimmy — one of the members of the Chen crew who is secretly the person forming his own drug trade outside of Las Vegas.
Jimmy is going to be the person to pay the M.C. for the six kilos of heroin that was stolen by the rebels. They agree on a price — $30,000 per kilo — and Angel is happy to get this bit of business done before the club can find out what’s going on.
As for EZ, he ends up in an uneasy altercation with a local cop, who gives him a rather rude welcome at the bar. The cop mocks his motorcycle club and then gives him an even harder time after EZ speaks Spanish to the bartender. EZ gets the chance to settle that score by the end of the episode after he’s given permission to punch the cop after he’s reminded that they are standing on tribal land, which means his badge gives him no power there whatsoever.
As for the meeting, Marcus, Bishop and the rest of the club meet with the prison officials as well as the Chinese faction to ensure them that the heroin trade will move forward without any further hiccups. The Chen crew accepts the explanation and the promise that the club will deliver 12 kilos of heroin on the next run just like what was supposed to land in their hands before the previous shipment was hijacked.
As for the prison officials, the club agrees to a two-percent increase in their profits as a way to compensate them for any concerns they might have about this ongoing war between the cartel and the rebels.
Once business is settled, the prison officials leave and the Mayans prepare to enjoy a toast with the Chen crew. That’s when Bishop brandishes a gun that was left for him in the basket containing the special bottle of single malt arranged for this meeting and he ends up shooting Jimmy in the back of the head.
It turns out the Chinese crew was suspicious that Jimmy was striking out on his own and attempting to form his own side project selling heroin outside Las Vegas. Once that information was confirmed, the Chen crew passed along a message — by suggesting that toast — and it served as the signal for the M.C. to pull the trigger on the traitor.
Jimmy’s dead, the M.C. has helped the Chinese settle an internal beef and by doing all of this they’ve paid back their debt to the cartel for failing to protect that shipment that started the entire chain of events.
Sadly, Angel is left stunned because Jimmy was the contact who was supposed to buy the heroin from the rebels. Now he’s left to wonder if Jimmy ratted him out to the Chinese and if that might get back to the Mayans.
Back at the clubhouse, Bishop wonders why Alvarez instructed him not to tell his entire crew about the planned hit with the Chinese. Alvarez responds by saying that Miguel Galindo seemingly forgot about the Samoan crew who jacked their heroin because he never actually found out who fed them the information about the run from Southern California to Las Vegas.
The only people privy to that information were the higher ups at the cartel and the members of the Mayans Santo Padre charter. Alvarez isn’t ready to call anybody in his crew a rat just yet but he’s learned through painful experience that it’s never safe to trust everybody just because they are wearing a Mayans patch on their back.
As for EZ, he returns home to his father’s house after another violent day at work and deposit the money he made from Coco’s winnings at blackjack into a giant duffle bag filled with the cash he’s been raking in as part of the M.C. EZ plans on escaping this life once he helps the DEA bring down the cartel but it’s safe to assume he won’t be leaving any time soon.
Blood Brothers
Miguel Galindo’s plan to intimidate and scare people into giving up the rebels hasn’t been working very well so far. Burning two people alive and leaving their charred bodies didn’t have the desired effect and the information they’ve received from the street has been unreliable at best.
So Miguel decides to take a different course of action to get back at the rebels.
He sends out his hit squad to begin rounding up all of the junior crews working around the town where the rebels keep popping up and shooting videos. These crews are run by teenagers and children as they peddle small amounts of drugs while doing their best to stay out of the way of the Galindo cartel.
When Miguel brings in the first teenage leader of one of the crews for questioning, it appears that he’s about to start chopping off limbs or perhaps burning somebody alive again to get answers. Instead, Miguel takes a knife and slices across the teenager’s hand before taking his blood to wipe on his own face.
Miguel is initiating these kids into the cartel so they will serve as his spies while going after Los Olvidados. In reality, Miguel is just going through some made up ceremony to make these kids believe the are really part of the cartel family so he can gain loyalty from them to work as his spies on the streets.
Towards the closing minutes of the episode we catch up with Adelita, who has returned to the site of her rebel base of operations along with the little boy who was left orphaned after the cartel allegedly killed his family. Remember that street vendor only had one son and he was burned alive by the cartel.
In the end, the little boy picks up a biscuit left for him by Adelita and we can see the cut across his hand — just like the one Miguel gave the teenager who is now serving as one of his spies against the rebels. This kid has just infiltrated Los Olvidados and Miguel is now closer than ever before to getting his son back and exacting revenge on the rebels who took him.
‘Mayans M.C.’ will return with a brand new episode next Tuesday night at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
