Welcome to our weekly chronicling of Mayans M.C. episodic moments that live up to the mindset of the series’ former co-showrunner, Kurt Sutter, whose Sons of Anarchy included some depraved gems over the course of seven seasons. As of this month, Elgin James has now fully grasped the showrunning reins after FX fired Sutter, so we’ll have to see how that plays out. Be on the lookout later this week for Dustin Rowles to deftly read too much into this episode while diving deep into callbacks and theories about where this club goes from here, particularly with this season’s episodes being named after prominent folklore figures from the Mayan culture.
This season’s penultimate episode of Mayans M.C. (written by Kurt Sutter and Elgin James) cleaned up some of last week’s chaos and kicked up plenty of new flotsam. The episode’s title, “Itzam-Ye,” refers to a bird-god who helps maintain order in a world full of chaos, so the fancy label actually makes sense this week, proving that whole adage that a broken clock is still correct a few times a day. With that said, the fallout here is still moderately gut-wrenching, so that therapy session that J.D. Pardo gave us might still be valuable as we ride toward the season finale.
Obviously, the first point of business here is checking in on the Mayan casualties (thereby checking for fake-out potential, always a risk when things suddenly hit the fan, even in a biker drama) after the Vatos Malditos ambush. Well, Coco’s definitely been blinded in one eye, although doctors think there’s a chance that he’ll eventually recover. At no point does anyone even slightly question whether his sniper capabilities will be affected, and there’s every possibility that he’ll be as deadly as ever. However, Loco Coco is mad as hell over the prospect of never riding again. Whatever happens, he’s gonna look extra fearsome once he gets a stylish eye patch.
As for Riz, he sure as hell appeared to be dead after taking several gunshots to the chest, but he’s hanging on with a breathing tube when we first catch up with him. Everyone’s convinced that he’s gonna pull through (seriously, because his hair still looks lovely), and maybe he would have? Yet Che “Taza” Romero does a little something about that during our closing moments. It’s a very strategic code-blue.
That’s pretty cold-blooded stuff, even with Taza whispering that he loves Riz like a brother before killing him. Well, Riz flatlines and definitely dies (we see the body bag, though I’d love to see Zombie Riz, whose hair would be even better). Aaand we’ve got a silent form of mutiny coming from the VP of the Santo Padre charter. So much for Bishop’s hope for peace, right? Sure enough, Bishop gets word that Riz didn’t make it and immediately declares war against Vatos Malditos. In other words, the season finale will be bloody, all of which will carry far-reaching implications now that the Santo Padre charter is the centerpiece of the Mayans universe.
I don’t know if this war business guarantees that more Sons will show up next week, but we could use another round of Chibs (once again, ranting about comparative Scottish sensibility) and a bonus Tig for good measure.
Next up? EZ’s photographic memory conveniently kicked in to prove my suspicions correct: Dita is not only a loose cannon, but she’s a murderous, vengeful, and vindictive one, and she shall kill again! Yes, that statement’s a dramatic one, but so is Dita. She hired the hit on EZ and Angel’s parents, man. I knew it.
So, Miguel’s off the hook, but Emily’s all freaking riled up about EZ’s accusations against her husband. That was a nice little aside with Emily insisting that Miguel wasn’t capable of killing anyone and adding, “On this side of the border.” Also, Felipe is completely miserable now that he’s realized how his affair with Dita left his family in shambles, and he’s probably also exhausted after dropping another dump truck full of exposition. I mean, seriously, he’s held everything inside him for seasons, only to catch verbal diarrhea lately. Suddenly, everyone who matters to him has the backstory — before he was the only butcher in Santo Padre, he was a federale and also working for the Galindo cartel, and “that’s where shit got complicated.” Indeed.
Now that the mystery of who ordered the Reyes hit has been solved, can we see Felipe gain revenge on Dita and then maybe go enjoy a nice Caribbean vacation? That won’t happen, but I’d love it, and god only knows that Edward James Olmos deserves a damn break from monologuing.
This week’s long-winded Felipe speech did get us one step closer to an EZ-checkmate on Potter, though. Emily’s promising some intel, which she only received because Miguel realized (super, super late) that he’s close to torching his marriage because Emily’s taken to drinking wine by the pool instead of sleeping next to her husband. “I fucked us up, hermano,” Miguel confided to a few dudes on his payroll. Yep, he’s got that right. Emily was in no mood to deal with his sudden attack of truth-telling.
Miguel’s convinced that all the women in his family are losing it. Pal, you’ve got no idea.
To sum up, the Mayans are going to war. Dita’s secretly been at war with the Reyes family for nearly a decade. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up holding people at gunpoint next week and rambling about how much she loves fires before Coco has to figure out how to shoot from afar while relying upon one eye. I mean, that’s the best-case scenario, right? And then Miguel can wax rhapsodic again to fill the monologue gap before Emily steps in to slap someone again, and Marcus gives EZ another lecture about what he does to liars, just so we can give EZ yet another thing to worry about. Bring on the soap opera theatrics, I say! See you next week.
‘Mayans M.C.’ airs Tuesday nights at 10 pm EST on FX.
