From Narcos To Golden Globe Winner

Wagner Moura has been the toast of the town in 2025 and 2026, but his rise to international fame actually began a few years ago with his performance in Narcos, one of the original great Netflix shows. The 2026 Golden Globes are complete, and among the many winners of the night was Wagner Moura.

Moura won in the Best Performance Motion Picture – Drama category for his role as Armando in the Brazilian political thriller, The Secret Agent. The film also won Best Motion Picture — Non-English Language. It’s another piece of hardware for the actor this awards cycle, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who saw his early work.

Narcos Launched Wagner Moura’s International Career

Wagner Moura’s career began in the late 1990s, becoming one of Brazil’s most acclaimed actors, but it wasn’t until his performance as Pablo Escobar in Narcos that international audiences began to take notice. As the legendary drug lord, Moura earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.

Though he only appears in the first two seasons of the show, Moura leaves such an impression on Narcos that his character’s exit leaves a hole that takes until Narcos: Mexico to fill. After the series, Moura’s international career began to take off with roles in Shining Girls, The Gray Man, and Civil War.

Netflix’s Industry Takeover Started With Shows Like Narcos

As one of the oldest streamers, Netflix had a leg up on the competition. However, it was never going to draw enough viewers by simply being a repository of movies and TV shows. If someone wanted to pay to have access to a rotating library of movies and shows, there were other options.

Netflix needed to start creating its own original shows and movies to justify people joining the service, and it’s thanks to shows like Narcos that people and critics began to take the production work of the streamer seriously. The Crown, House of Cards, and Narcos signaled that a new power was rising.

Narcos Is Still One Of The Best Netflix Original Shows

Netflix original TV shows may be many, but their quality varies wildly, and that’s assuming the streamer even lets a show come to a conclusion. Narcos is an example of the great heights Netflix can reach when it gives the creatives the space and time to tell the story they want.

The series is a fantastically paced, strongly written series filled with excellent performances from just about everyone who appears on the long call sheet. Sympathetic but always grounded, Narcos inspects the faces behind the drug wars and digs up wise insights about people and our understanding of justice.

Release Date

2015 – 2017

Network

Netflix

Directors

Andrés Baiz, Josef Kubota Wladyka, Fernando Coimbra, Gerardo Naranjo, Guillermo Navarro

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