‘Mayans M.C.’ Season 3 Premiere: Recurring Character’s Life in Jeopardy After Brutal Attack

The Mayans M.C. Season 3 premiere put a fan-favorite character’s life in jeopardy right from the start: El Coco. Played by Richard Cabral, Coco is a full-patch member of the Mayans and a U.S. Marine veteran, but this season finds him in bad shape. Warning: spoilers for Mayans M.C. lie ahead!

The premiere finds Coco still reeling from the eye injury he sustained at the end of Season 2, which turns out not to have blinded him permanently but to have hurt him badly. Coco was apparently given some Oxycontin to help ease the pain but has since become addicted to it, going to great lengths to re-up his supply. After trading his daughter’s iPad for a fix, he finds his way to a place called Meth Mountain, where he tries to rob a dealer named Butterfly for a massive score. Sadly, this gamble does not seem to pay off for him.

Coco holds Butterfly at gunpoint and even gets away with a pretty sizable score. However, as he is making his escape, Butterfly whistles some kind of signal, and with surprising coordination, the other residents of Meth Mountain descend on him all at once. They destroy Coco’s car and drag him out of it, and even his association with the gang cannot save him.

The premiere ended with Coco getting hit over the head with a baseball bat, leaving some fans terrified that this is the end for him. Others expect him to awaken as a kind of prisoner — perhaps a bargaining chip for Butterfly’s group to make a deal with the Mayans. One way or another, his actions put the gang in a precarious position.

This storyline is particularly tragic for Coco due to his background as a Marine sniper. That makes his eyesight everything to him, so any prolonged damage to his eyes is sure to break him emotionally. In Season 2, Episode 8, “Kukulkan,” Coco was hurt in a fight with a rival M.C. after the Sons of Anarchy left town. Riz (Antonio Jaramillo) was killed in that same fight.

The lasting damage to Coco could renew the enmity between the Mayans and the other gang, although it could as easily spark a new grudge with Butterfly. Either way, the entire premiere made it clear that the Mayans will not see peace for a while yet.

Mayans M.C. Season 3 premiered on Tuesday with a special 2-episode event. Those episodes are streaming now on Hulu. The next new episode premieres on Tuesday, March 23, at 10 p.m. ET on FX.