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On this week’s episode of To Catch a Kingpin:

And, uh, that’s about all there is to it. The fourth episode of Narcos Season 3, “Checkmate” (again, can we please try a little harder with these titles?), chronicles the unlikely capture of the most powerful of the four Cali cartel godfathers, Gilberto Rodriguez. Yeah, you heard me right. Pablo Escobar took two seasons, twenty episodes, and the most elaborate and expensive manhunt in the history of the modern world up until that point to take down. The senior Gentleman of Cali, by contrast, got nabbed about halfway through his season’s third episode thanks to intel gleaned by a couple of DEA dudes who’d barely been in-country for a week, with nary a shot fired.

Which is great, as far as everyone involved is concerned, right? Well, yes and no. It’s certainly a tremendous coup for the DEA, particularly the agents who spearheaded the operation: young bucks Feistl and Van Ness and their guru Javi Peña. It’s a feather in the cap of Colonel Martinez, the Last Honest Cop in Bogota, who nailed Escobar and whom Peña asked to helm the raid despite the Colonel’s distaste for him over his involvement with the Los Pepes death squads. It’s not even that bad for Cali, if you compare it to the years-long war of attrition against Colombia, America, rival drug cartels, and fascist paramilitaries that led up to Pablo’s downfall. Even the Colombian government, which had approved the six-month surrender timetable Rodriguez and his cronies were counting on, wind up looking at the arrest as a boon — at least that’s how it’s seen by President Samper, who overrules his querulous cabinet regarding the idea of just letting Gilberto go. (I’m not sure if the show will bring this up, but Samper was accused by his conservative opponent in the election he’d recently won of accepting Cali cash for his campaign, though he eventually dodged the charges; perhaps this motivated him to keep Don Gilberto locked up.)

Of course, not everyone’s excited. Gilberto is obviously pretty upset by the whole thing; his shellshocked affect during the entire episode is powerful testament to that. His brother Miguel is deeply shaken, as is security guru Jorge Salcedo, who’d been tasked by Miguel with collecting the son of his mistress from her dead husband’s furious mother and thus was unable to prevent the raid himself. The Rodriguezes’ partner Pacho Herrera is stranded in Mexico now, where Juarez cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes can continue to bend his ear about staying in business after the brothers surrender (or are captured, whichever comes first). Crooked Cali cop Calderon is so pissed at the deception involved in the raid — the Americans took him and his men to storm a bogus address while Martinez’s elites did the real work, in order to avoid tipping the godfathers off — that he uses that cache of files Feistl and Van Ness nabbed last episode to falsely accuse Martinez of corruption, leading to his resignation from the force. And CIA wildman Bill Stechner is pissed as hell at Peña for upsetting the political apple cart: “YOU BROKE IT, YOU BOUGHT IT, ASSHOLE!” reads his furious note.

But the arrest of Gilberto Rodriguez causes the biggest problems of all for Narcos itself.

There’s a case to be made that the ease with which Peña and company knock him off the playing board shows just how fatally cocky the Gentlemen of Cali had gotten following the fall of Escobar and the establishment of their sweetheart deal with the government. The show makes this case itself with the musical montage that leads up to the raid: A portrait of Gilberto’s life as the happily married husband to three different wives, all of whom know each other and are perfectly content with the arrangement, cleverly soundtracked by the camp swagger of LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali” (a song Gilberto himself probably wouldn’t be caught dead listening to, which is why the music cue works). In his own way, the elder Rodriguez is an interesting figure, and Damián Alcázar is entertaining and convincing in the role; he looks like a well-tanned chief executive of a medical supply sales company or something, which is exactly the vibe of affluent anonymity the character wanted to cultivate for himself.

But the quick-and-easy downfall of the season’s central antagonist points to the void left in this show by Escobar’s death. While Gilberto’s fortune, power, and influence may have been larger than that of Pablo Escobar, Pablo Escobar was larger than life — a supervillain in Robin Hood drag who sincerely fancied himself a man of the people (and looked the part) even as he sent countless thousands of Colombians to early graves. And actor Wagner Moura was the face of the whole show in the role, radiating stoned malevolence from his dark eyes despite his cool-uncle mustache and doughy physique. Perhaps the show will make a play to build Pacho Herrera, the most unique and compelling of the four Cali godfathers, into someone worthy of slipping into Pablo’s sweatshirts. With at least six episodes to go, they’ll need it.