This one throws you right into the heat, the desperation, the brutality, and you’re watching Teresa Mendoza’s life get ripped out from under her and rebuilt in the flames. And the way it grabs you? It’s not just about the cartels or the action. It’s about survival, it’s about transformation, it’s about watching a woman who never asked for this life slowly realize that it’s the only way she’s going to live.
It begins to be small, nearly a mocking soft: Teresa is simply this young woman in Mexico, in love with Guero a cartel pilot. She believes that she has her life planned, though it is tinged with danger. The rug is then pulled out under her though, Guero is murdered and before her she has a target on her back. The manner of landing of that moment is frenzied. It is not only a killing boyfriend. It is the time when innocence is killed. It is possible to literally imagine how Teresa sees the end of her life when she has no choice but to run out of her life, being pulled into this bloody and murderous world she did not even desire.
And that is the beats of this first season--you think Teresa has managed to gain some sort of ground, and then the earth opens up and pits her somewhere in between. She is caught in the middle of the battle between Camila Vargas and Epifanio, a man-wife couple running their business as a bloody chess game. Epifanio aspires to be a politician playing clean but dirtying his hands using other people. Camila? She is the actual queen, intelligent as a razor, operating business with this kind of frightening lack of humanity and grace. And Teresa? She is swept up in that tempest, sucked into the world of Camila, where she begins as he is another chess piece yet you can watch slowly, so gradually, you can watch that fire in her.
Even the shootouts or the betrayals are not the moments that help you to remember the movie. It is the silent decisions that Teresa makes that demonstrates that she is not merely surviving but she is developing. Similar to when she has to smuggle drugs on behalf of Camila, or when she has to demonstrate her loyalty in order to remain alive. You can see what she is afraid of, but you see her eyes grow hard. She’s learning the rules, she’s watching, absorbing, planning. And as a viewer, you’re torn—you want her to get out, you want her to escape this brutal life, but there’s another part of you that’s fascinated, almost thrilled, by watching her learn to master it.
Another character that makes everything tough is James Valdez. He is the right hand man of Camila, cold and calculating in the surface, however, you know he is seeing something in Teresa. Their chemistry is not enforced, it is the silent one, the one that develops in the pauses, in the looks, in the manner he teaches her to find her way around a world that is made to destroy her. You do not know whether you trust him, nor Teresa, but you feel yourself leaning towards it whenever they are together, not business, not business, but survival, mentality, something more simmering there or other, you cannot tell.
What is truly memorable about Season 1, however, is the way in which Teresa did change her position as a victim and began operating as a strategist. Not overnight and that is the reason why it works. You watch her go wrong, you watch her have a nervous breakdown, you watch her weep, but you watch her count, hoard knowledge, read people, work out whom to believe and whom to deceive. This is one of the most dramatic scenes when she kills the first time. There is no glorification of it, it is raw, brutal, shaking. You can experience how it leaves a scar on her, yet you are aware that there is no turning back once that is done. It is a crossing over, and it will never be the same with her.
One more thing that leaves under your skin is the relationship of Camila and Teresa. Camila identifies herself with Teresa, you can tell. She idolizes her, though she wants to possess her, use her, shape her to her purposes. It is almost motherly at one point but perverted, corrupted by authority and wealth. Teresa does not give in, but she does learn with Camila how to negotiate, how to make people respect her, how to apply intelligence in the world when everyone else is using fear. Their scenes are electric and two women revolve around one another in the world where men are dominant and each realizes the power in the other.
The season is full of this ongoing tension--you know that Teresa is going to do something bigger, because the show is flirting with this right at the start, with that flash-forward of her as the mighty Queenpin. However, it is the excitement of following how she arrives there, inch by inch. Each betrayal, each partnership, each bloody sacrifice is bringing her a step closer to that crown, and breaking her humanity. And as a spectator you are torn between rooting her on, when she gets through, when she gives victory but you also feel the slice of her that she is losing on the way.
The thing that broke me was seeing her yet to bear a fragment of her former being her fidelity to Guero, her acts of generosity, her self-denial to give up altogether her heart. She is not turned into a monster, not yet. She is on that razor thin border between naivety and brutality, and it is the breath that is taken away by that line that makes the season so strong.
At the end, you are out of breath. You have seen her suffer betrayals, make impossible decisions, lose and make friends and you know--you are not only a witness of Teresa Mendoza surviving. You are witnessing the birth of legend, one that is soaked in blood and pain and yet strength and power. And the wildest part? You do not even know what to think of it. You’re proud of her. You’re terrified for her. You want her to win. You want her to escape. And you see she can not have both.
Season 1 of Queen of the South isn’t just a crime drama—it’s a raw, unfiltered story of transformation. It’s about what happens when life leaves you no choice but to become the very thing you feared. And sitting there, watching Teresa take step after step into that darkness, you can’t look away. Because deep down, you know—you’re witnessing someone claim a throne she never asked for but was always destined to wear.
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