In the ‘Mayans M.C.’ recap, the rebels hit Miguel Galindo where it hurts the most and the M.C. is left to pick up the pieces before even more blood ends up on the street…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It’s easy to see (no pun intended) that EZ Reyes is going to be pulled in every possible direction during the first season of ‘Mayans M.C.’ and it’s tough to tell right now if that might just tear him apart before it’s all over.
As we learned in the debut episode of the ‘Sons of Anarchy’ spinoff last week, EZ got out of prison thanks to a deal he struck with the DEA that he would join his brother’s M.C. and help them take down the Galindo cartel from the inside out.
EZ will help them take down one of the most powerful Mexican cartels and in exchange he gets his freedom and both his father and club are free from the fallout from any potential criminal action forthcoming.
Unfortunately, EZ quickly found out that his loyalties would be tested far beyond keeping his informant status secret from the crew that would most certainly kill him if they ever found out. After getting drawn into a battle between the cartel and a group of rebels, EZ then discovered that his brother and a few members of the Mayans were actually helping this group in their war against Galindo.
So now EZ is a DEA informant working with the Mayans’ charter tasked with transporting drugs for Galindo while he’s also privy to the secret that several members, including his brother, have already betrayed the club by teaming up with the very rebels trying to take down the cartel.
The new episode only put EZ in that much deeper after finding out what the rebels did in their latest attack against the cartel that also threatened his ex-girlfriend Emily, who just so happens to be married to Miguel Galindo.
It’s an incredible complicated situation — one that EZ might not survive if he doesn’t find a way to balance his loyalties between the DEA, his club, the cartel, the rebels and the woman he almost assuredly still loves.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Mayans M.C.’ titled ‘Escorpion/Dzec’…
Gone, Baby, Gone
The end of last week’s episode saw the rebel faction known as Los Olvidados (the forgotten ones) getting a message that put them on the trail of Miguel Galindo’s wife and baby son. Galindo’s wife Emily just happens to be the same girl who eight years earlier was pregnant with a child from EZ Reyes, who had just been sentenced to 20 plus years in prison after apparently killing a cop.
The start of the latest episode shows the aftermath of that pursuit as the rebels have stopped the car carrying Emily and her child as they now plan to exact revenge on the cartel through Miguel’s family. The resistance fighters ending up shooting the bodyguard and then taking Emily’s son Cristobal with them as retribution for the continued bloodshed courtesy of the cartel.
Back at home, Emily is desperate to get her son back and Miguel promises to do everything in his power to return him home unharmed. While Emily has stayed away from Miguel’s business practices in Mexico, she reminds him that when it comes to her son, all bets are off and she’s going to start asking questions whether he likes it or not.
To hunt down the rebels responsible for kidnapping his son, Miguel calls in help from his family’s consigliere named Devante, who was once Jose Galindo’s right hand man as well. He serves as the cartel’s advisor and a trusted confidant to Miguel and his mother.
Devante along with the Galindo’s head of security from the United States are put on the case to track down the rebels while Miguel also intends to ask for help from the Mayans to see if they can rattle some cages to find out where his son is being held.
Meanwhile, the club is neck deep in tracking down the rebel faction via the heroin they hijacked a week ago from the Mayan caravan carrying drugs from Santo Padre to Las Vegas. They believe the rebels are going to put this heroin back on the streets and they want to find out which dealers have been receiving new product.
The first stop is the Dogwood crew — a local bunch of drug dealers who pay the Mayans a percentage of their profits as tribute for being allowed to pedal their heroin in the area. Unfortunately tracking down Louis, the leader of the Dogwood crew, is proving harder than expected after they show up at his house and find out from his BB gun packing kid that he’ son the run after hearing that the club was out to kill him.
When they finally track him down — thanks to a tip from a club friend who runs a local dog shelter that fronts as a medical clinic as well — Louis has no idea about any drugs that are being sold outside of the heroin that’s authorized by the Mayans.
It turns out, Louis was on the run after putting a young girl into one of his porno films and then finding out later that she was only 16 years old. On top of that, the girl is apparently Coco’s kid sister, which is why he thought the club was out to kill him.
Bishop spares his life but has Louis up his tribute paid from 12 to 24 percent as a peace offering for Coco’s pain and suffering after finding out this awful news about his sister. As the club leaves, everybody has a good laugh because Coco only has two sisters, both are older and apparently neither one would be suitable for porn.
Following the meeting with Louis, the club gets a call that the cartel is requesting an emergency meeting and it’s all hands on deck.
The Truth Will Set You Free
When the M.C. arrives at the meeting, EZ gets his first look at Miguel’s inner circle including the head of security as well as his right hand man Devante, who has a shared history with Marcus Alvarez from his time bonding with Jose Galindo before his death.
Miguel shares the information with the club that his son has been kidnapped by Los Olvidados and he’s asking them for help in any way possible to track him down if the rebels are still on this side of the border. They pass along a partial license plate that Emily saw before the rebels made off with her son and it strikes a cord with EZ, who has a photographic memory. He spotted the station wagon in question when they were chasing down the Dogwood crew but rather than spouting off like he did last week, EZ keeps this information to himself.
Bishop promises the Mayans will help as they begin to join the search for Miguel and Emily’s son. Complicating matters is Angel and the crew working with the rebels when they find out about the kidnapping and had no prior knowledge that this was happening. Angel decides it’s time to reach out to Abelita to find out about the Galindo baby while Bishop and the rest of the crew start the search.
As for EZ, he goes to visit his father with hopes of connecting with DEA Agent Jimenez, who is his handler while acting as informant against the cartel. EZ wants to call them in to help with the kidnapping because he just wants Emily to get her son back. Felipe reminds his son that trusting the DEA with even more of his life is only going to get him in even deeper. It’s better to handle this alone without their involvement or risk the DEA holding even more over his head as time goes on.
Meanwhile, Miguel is handed a video from Los Olvidados that has already gone viral as they talk about the coming revolution to take back Mexico while showing that they have burned some of the heroin they took from the cartel. The rebels are offering the people of Mexico a fresh start, free from the grip of the cartels and by burning the drugs they are proving that they aren’t just another group trying to usurp power from the current criminals in charge.
Back at home, Miguel finally gets a lead on the rebels when a deep dive into that video features a song playing in the background — it’s a tune played by a local street vendor and if Los Olvidados was filming in that area, chances are the guy running that food truck would have seen something.
As the Mayans are called back to meet with Galindo with his latest bit of information, we find Coco working at a scrapyard that serves as a front for the club’s business. There he interacts with a familiar face from the past as Chucky — the one fingered wonder who always accepts that — has moved from Charming to Santo Padre and now he’s working for the Mayans. As fun as that brief appearance from Chucky might have been, the more interesting twist is Coco taking a look at a porno site and seeing a girl that looks very familiar to him.
At the end of the episode, Coco goes to find the local prostitutes and calls one over to his car before instructing her to get inside. He’s not looking for a good time, however, because it turns out this woman is his mother. Perhaps the girl that Louis put into the movies at 16 really was his sister but apparently not even the club knows about her?
Suffer the Little Children
When the Mayans arrive at the Galindo’s warehouse where Miguel holds church — the same place where the Samoan’s arm was lopped off last week — they have captured the street vendor who was nearby when Los Olvidados were shooting their video that was taunting the cartel.
Miguel demands to know what this street vendor saw and who the people were behind that video. He claims to know nothing and as punishment, Galindo’s head of security tosses a pot of boiling grease in his face. When the man still won’t answer, they decide to make his young son sit behind him to get the same treatment.
Unable to witness this torture any longer, Angel fakes a call and shares the information about the station wagon that EZ had spotted on their run earlier. The little bit of information is enough for Miguel to stop torturing the father and his kid so they can go hunt down this vehicle used in the kidnapping of his child.
The car eventually leads the cartel back to that same shelter where the Mayans visited earlier in the episode. The shelter is under protection from the Mayans but the cartel is only interested in information.
When the club arrives, guns are drawn and it looks like things are about to get bloody when Bishop and the Galindo head of security opt for a less deadly solution. Everybody puts their guns away and they just have a good old fashioned fist fight to let out some of this anger and aggression.
Back at the Galindo home, Miguel is contemplating his next move when Devante is forced to share a terrible family secret with him courtesy of his mother.
It seems Miguel had an older brother who died of pneumonia before he was even born but that’s only the story he was told. Miguel’s mother Dita tells him the true story that his older brother Cristabol was kidnapped by the Sonora cartel (the same one who popped up on ‘Sons of Anarchy’) and held for ransom.
Jose Galindo was enraged and promised to do anything to get his son back but he soon realized that catering to the men responsible for kidnapping his child would only lead to the collapse of his cartel. So instead, Jose sacrificed his eldest son and refused to bend to the will of his kidnappers, which only further escalated the war between the Galindo and Sonora cartels.
Devante suggests that perhaps Miguel needs to do as his father did because chances are he’s never going to see his son again anyways. While Emily is desperate for answers, Miguel refuses to talk to her and instead tells Devante to exact retribution by sending a rather loud and violent message back to the rebels that they won’t be held hostage by the kidnapping.
Down in Mexico, Angel meets with Abelita, who informs him that the baby is safe but he belongs to them now. Angel also shares that his brother was once in love with Miguel’s wife but promises that won’t cause any interference. Apparently, Angel is in love himself — with Adelita but she’d rather not complicate things while they are focused on selling off the rest of the heroin and focused on taking down the cartel. For now, Abelita isn’t worried about the cartel catching up to them because they are like smoke in the wind.
Unfortunately, she underestimated what Miguel was willing to do for payback as they soon hear screams from the town square.
The cartel has returned the father and son street vendors who were taken earlier — except they have been burned alive and each of them has a message stuffed in their mouths from Los Olvidados that was plastered all over town after the kidnapping. The cartel is out for blood, even if it’s not the people responsible for taking the Galindo’s baby.
Sadly this act of retribution may only serve to further the escalation between the cartel and the rebels and Los Olvidados still has Miguel and Emily’s child.
Finally, EZ gets a call to return to his dad’s butcher shop where he’s arranged a meeting but instead of the DEA showing up, he’s reunited with his ex-girlfriend Emily, who has come to ask for his help. Emily knows that Miguel is keeping things from her regarding their son’s kidnapping and she’s turning to EZ for help in getting the truth so they can track down her child.
EZ then informs Emily about the father and son who were burned alive by the cartel as retribution and she realizes rather quickly that her husband may not have their family’s best interests at heart. EZ promises that he’s not going to allow anything to happen to Emily’s child as she leaves the store to return home.
While glancing outside, EZ gets another flashback to eight years earlier when an ambulance and police cars were outside his father’s store and they were taking away a woman on a gurney who was already dead. By all accounts this looks like EZ’s mother and Felipe’s departed wife, who he still speaks to regularly when he’s at home alone. Obviously this family has faced plenty of tragedy before and judging by the current state of affairs, the same fate could be awaiting them yet again.
‘Mayans M.C.’ will return with a brand new episode next Tuesday night at 10 p.m. ET on FX
