One thing you’re never gonna do is break up Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. The friends and collaborators first appeared onscreen together in 2001’s queer classic Y Tu Mamá También, went on to create two production companies together, and teamed up to play stepbrothers with dreams of soccer stardom in 2008’s Rudo y Cursi. After more than a decade apart, they’re back at each other’s side in another sports-related project they produced: Hulu’s limited series La Máquina.
Led by showrunner and writer Marco Ramirez (whose writing credits include Sons of Anarchy and The Defenders, and who co-created The Twilight Zone reboot with Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg), La Máquina follows aging boxer Esteban “La Máquina” Osuna (Bernal), who after a major loss considers whether he’s done in the ring. But his flashy manager and Botox-addicted best friend, Andy Lujan (Luna, in some unsettling prosthetics), isn’t ready to hang it up and instead encourages Osuna to launch a comeback; all of that seems like pretty standard triumphant sports-drama stuff. La Máquina takes a turn, though, when a mysterious figure insists to Lujan that Osuna throw his next fight, or else — an ominous threat that impacts Lujan, Osuna, and Osuna’s ex-wife, a journalist played by Eiza González.
“If we’re doomed, we’re doomed together” will probably launch a thousand more ships for Bernal and Luna. All six episodes of La Máquina, Hulu’s first Spanish-language original, premiere on the streamer October 9.
