FX’s Mayans M.C.
3×04: “Our Gang’s Dark Path”
Directed by Brett Dos Santos
Written by Bryan Garcia & Sara Price

* For a recap & review of 3×03, click here.
* For a recap & review of 3×05, click here.
Angel and Adelita sit together for a conversation after all this time. She isn’t saying a whole lot, though. She remains broken and traumatised. Angel never thought he’d see Adelita again. She tells him their baby’s dead, which shocks him. She then tells Angel about her terrifying childhood. She talks about nearly being forced to work in a brothel as a sex worker, but she chose to cut her own throat rather than “let someone control my body.” She says that with the government and Potter, she wasn’t able to find a knife. Just a tragic, awful thing to recount.
Back at Felipe’s shop the mail is piling up. He hasn’t been there for a long while, to the point essentially all his stock has gone bad. An absolute mess. That’s why he calls up his new friend Gaby to give him a hand. Then there’s Bishop, crashing on Antonia’s couch and looking like an absolute mess. We get a bit more of the backstory between the two about their dead child; the anniversary that Bishop was recently trying to pretend he didn’t remember. Bishop wants to keep honouring their lost son, whereas Antonia feels a need to move on from the past.

At the clubhouse, Coco turns up looking awful again, not instilling any confidence in Gilly that he’s actually trying to get clean. We see Tranq check up with Nails, who’s in a terrible mood because of everything with Angel; she’s obviously threatened by Adelita and has no real idea about the relationship between them. Soon, everyone’s meeting at the table. Bishop says that “somebody talked to BP.” Taza thinks it was Alicia, but EZ believes she wouldn’t do that. EZ suggests Vicki and her grudge might be the problem; Gilly seems to agree. Bishop tasks EZ with going to see Alicia, hoping EZ might find out something. He then mentions The Bridge on the River Kwai as a suggestion for how they move forward with their business crossing the border. Others aren’t so sure about the “Kwai move,” but it’s Bishop’s decision.
Montez is off somewhere meeting with “a fucking ghost,” otherwise known as El Palo. He and Palo discuss how fucked up things have gotten. He mentions all the history between the Mayans and the Sons; he doesn’t want war coming in the way of money. Montez says he has a plan. He wants to keep an eye on Bishop’s charter. Palo needs some money to keep him going right now. He asks Montez for some, then suffocates the latter to death with a plastic bag over the head. At the same time, the LNG have left a horrific gift, which Sederica and others find: several dead people hanging from nooses off a bridge; typically a cartel calling card. When Sederica talks to Galindo about it he merely calls this “unfortunate collateral” and all “part of it” being in this business. And she takes offence to such disregard for human life, even if she’s sleeping with a major cartel boss.

In prison, EZ visits Alicia, though his own memories of being inside plague him. He checks up on her, asking whether she’s spoken to anybody. She swears she hasn’t talked to anybody, neither does she have any friends inside prison. She knows EZ’s concerned she may talk, but she promises she won’t say anything. Then she mentions Vicki and what Vicki advised her. EZ says “We‘re not like that” when Alicia suggests that turning on the Mayans would get her family killed. He also tries to give Alicia hope while she remains in prison. He tells her she needs to “bury all that shit” about her identity outside the prison’s walls, otherwise it’ll become a weakness, something people can use against her. Yet Alicia worries how to “turn it back on” when she’s out of prison. That’s not something EZ can offer answers for himself just yet, despite being free quite some time now.
Later, Steve goes to pick up Vicki. But just him showing up there alerts her that things have gone sideways. She makes a run for the tunnels. But unfortunately there’s already Creeper and Taza down there waiting, and Vicki meets her death at the end of Taza’s gun barrel. Hmm, certainly doesn’t jive with what EZ told Alicia; the Mayans are, indeed, like that.

Coco’s surprised when Isaac and Butterfly drop by the clubhouse. He isn’t happy to see them. Neither is he happy to see Isaac took photos of him passed out from using heroin. Isaac is trying to blackmail Coco, threatening to show the picture to the MC. He wants “a kilo of heroin” in exchange. So, really, Coco’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. He’s got until Friday to make a decision. Butterfly leaves Coco with some drugs to tide him over, but this is a horrible situation for Coco to be in, and it won’t end well, no matter how it goes down.
Beautiful moment as EZ listens to “Something On Your Mind” by Karen Dalton with Gaby. Their relationship is so sweet. Unfortunately, every time EZ gets close with Gaby he starts to see all the violence of his life like a reel in his mind, and he worries about the collateral damage the MC can cause; unlike Galindo, collateral damage bothers EZ. It isn’t easy for him to get close to somebody, even if he wants to do it. Gaby says she isn’t someone that EZ needs to protect. She’s hard her own struggles: “You don‘t know what I‘ve been through, what I‘ve seen.” But right now, EZ’s shut down, and Gaby feels like she’s cluttering up his life. Makes me sad, dude.

Gilly continues to worry about Coco and he refuses to let his friend keep spiralling the drain. He bursts into the bathroom and sees Coco ready to rail a line off the sink, telling him: “We‘re fucking done.” The more Coco’s alienated from his friends in the MC, the more he’ll continue to do stupid, destructive things. At the same time, Taza comes back to see Bishop, letting him know what happened with Vicki. Shitty for Taza, who was close with Vicki, yet he knows it “had to be done.” Bishop’s angry that people don’t understand family and loyalty these days. All the same, he pushes away his own family when they try to comfort him about the upcoming anniversary of his dead boy. Bishop is just trying to keep his eye on business, to make sure nothing bad happens to the charter. None of the Mayans are exactly level-headed men at the moment. Things only get worse after Montez turns up with his face painted, dead, laid out on a bike outside the Mayans clubhouse. A strong message.