General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Diablero

Diablero is a Mexican supernatural horror series produced for Netflix, created by Pablo Tébar and José Manuel Cravioto and based on the novel El diablo me obligó by F.G. Haghenbeck. It follows a fallen priest who recruits a legendary demon hunter, or "diablero", and his associates to search for a kidnapped girl in the underworld of Mexico City.¹^•² The first season premiered on December 21, 2018, and a second season followed on January 31, 2020; Netflix has not produced a third season.³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Mexican horror fantasy thriller series, TV-MA, in Spanish, 2 seasons (8 episodes in season 1, 6 in season 2)³^•⁴
Premiere	Season 1 on December 21, 2018; season 2 on January 31, 2020³
Source material	The novel El diablo me obligó (2012) by F.G. Haghenbeck, with influence from Edgar Clement's graphic novel Operación Bolívar (1994)⁵^•⁶
Creators	Pablo Tébar and José Manuel Cravioto; produced by Morena Films (Juan Gordon and Pedro Uriol)¹^•³
Main cast	Christopher Von Uckermann (Ramiro Ventura), Horacio García Rojas (Elvis Infante), Gisselle Kuri (Nancy Gama), Fátima Molina (Keta)²
Filming	Announced in August 2017 as a Netflix original filmed entirely in Mexico¹
Status	No third season; reported in March 2022 as effectively canceled behind the scenes³

Spoilers

Premise

The story begins when a young girl disappears under mysterious circumstances in a big city, and a desperate priest, Ramiro Ventura, seeks out Elvis Infante, a demon hunter known for his unorthodox methods. With the help of Nancy Gama, described in Netflix's announcement as a modern-day superhero, the group searches the underworld of Mexico City for the child.¹^•² Netflix framed the series as a supernatural battle between demons and angels with a comedic twist.¹

In the second season, the Diableros face a mythological demon, the Ahuizotl, a creature drawn from Mexican legend; defeating it could be the key to finding Mayaquen and achieving what the characters want most, to be normal.⁷

Origins and adaptation

The series adapts El diablo me obligó, a 2012 novel by F.G. Haghenbeck, which itself expanded the universe of Edgar Clement's graphic novel Operación Bolívar (1994) by introducing elements about angels and demons fighting for the pleasure of humans.⁵ The show does not tell the same story as the novel: it takes the characters and moves them from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico City.⁵ Both Haghenbeck and Clement appear in the series in minor roles.⁶

Showrunner and director José Manuel Cravioto, whose earlier credits include El Chapo and Sr. Ávila, said the series draws on ideas of how Aztec demons were conceived and their codes, while not being strict purists about Mexican legends.¹^•⁵ The writing team included Pablo Tebar, Veronica Marza, Gibrán Portela, Luis Gamboa, and José Rodríguez, and Rigoberto Castañeda (KM31, Paramédicos) served as director alongside Cravioto.¹^•²

Production and context

Netflix announced Diablero on August 2, 2017, at the "Vive Netflix" event in Mexico City, with Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos presenting it as part of an expanded investment in Latin American production; the company said 50 new and returning original productions would emerge from the region through 2018.¹ It joined a slate that included Ingobernable, Club de Cuervos, La Casa de las Flores, Narcos, and 3%.¹ Cravioto described it as the first Mexican horror fantasy series on Netflix, a deliberate move beyond the narcoseries and romantic comedies that had dominated Mexican screen stories in the preceding decade.⁵ A scholarly analysis describes the series as fundamentally a Mexico-Spain co-production designed to reach global audiences through familiar supernatural horror tropes while integrating mythologies and iconographies connected to Mexicanness.⁶

Reception and second season

The series found audiences outside Mexico; actress Fátima Molina, who plays Keta Infante, noted that the show had been viewed in cities such as Berlin and Buenos Aires, and attributed its popularity partly to editing and production work in a genre rarely explored in Mexican productions.⁸ The second season, released in January 2020, drew on Mexican visual art, 1980s cinema, and superheroes, and became the first Latin American Netflix series to receive an exclusive composed song, by the Mexican band Café Tacvba.⁸ On JustWatch, the series holds an IMDb rating of 6.8 from about 3,000 votes and a JustWatch rating of 44 percent.²

Cancellation

No third season was produced. In March 2022, What's on Netflix reported from sources close to the production that the show would not return, describing it as "ghost-canceled", a pattern in which Netflix releases the cast and crew without a public cancellation announcement; the show's official social accounts had gone dark about a month after the second season's release.³ The same report noted that, despite some loose ends, the two-season series wraps up well enough to warrant watching from start to finish.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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