In his quest to build a drug empire in the 1980s, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo takes the helm of the Guadalajara Cartel, unifying traffickers. Meanwhile, DEA Agent Kiki Camarena moves his wife and young son from California to Guadalajara to take on a new post. As Camarena gathers intelligence on Félix and becomes more entangled in his mission, a tragic chain of events unfolds, affecting the drug trade, and the war against it, for years to come.