# El Señor de los Cielos (2013)

> A ruthless Juárez cartel boss rises through the 1990s drug trade on a fleet of airplanes in this long-running Spanish-language telenovela.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/40840

## Facts

- Seasons: 10
- Episodes: 861
- Episode runtime: 45 min
- Status: Returning Series
- Genres: crime, drama
- Created by: Luis Zelkowicz, Mariano Calasso
- Network: Telemundo
- Cast: Rafael Amaya, Lisa Owen, Leonardo Daniel, Gala Montes, Guillermo Quintanilla, Alejandro López, Alberto Guerra, Jesús More
- TMDB rating: 6.8/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2777882/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: brutal
- Tone: melodramatic, tense, glamorous, operatic, violent

## What critics say

Audience reception is mixed, with strong praise for the later seasons' drama and cartel intrigue and criticism of uneven earlier seasons.

## Synopsis

El Señor de los Cielos (2013-present) is a US-produced Spanish-language telenovela crime series created by Luis Zelkowicz and Mariano Calasso for Telemundo. Rafael Amaya plays Aurelio Casillas, the Juárez cartel leader nicknamed Lord of the Skies for the airplane fleet he uses to move narcotics, while Lisa Owen plays his wife Doña Alba Casillas and Guillermo Quintanilla plays Isidro Robles, a rival power player. Carmen Villalobos and Fernanda Castillo bring further family and rivalry threads into the storyline. The engine of the show is ambition: a trafficker expanding his routes, laundering enormous sums through Colombia, and defending his empire against rivals, informants and the state. Each episode mixes shipments, betrayals and boardroom-style confrontations with romance and family intrigue. The series runs for ten seasons and hundreds of episodes as one continuing saga. Set in the 1990s across Mexico, Colombia and beyond, it is a glossy, melodramatic narco soap with operatic emotion, sudden violence and a tense, glamorous atmosphere. Fans of Narcos, Breaking Bad and Rebelde will find resonance in its blend of cartel crime and soap opera passion.

## Shows like El Señor de los Cielos

- [El Capo (2009)](https://ember.film/tv/28808)
- [La Querida del Centauro (2016)](https://ember.film/tv/57671)
- [The Cartel (2008)](https://ember.film/tv/6940)
- [Monarca (2019)](https://ember.film/tv/78921)
- [Operación Pacífico (2020)](https://ember.film/tv/83478)
- [Narcos: Mexico (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/69342)
- [Somos. (2021)](https://ember.film/tv/104765)
- [Griselda Blanco: The Black Widow (2014)](https://ember.film/tv/54124)
- [El Chema (2016)](https://ember.film/tv/60295)
- [La piloto (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/63053)

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