Maeve McDermott

USATODAY

No "spoiler alert" here: Viewers who've been following Wagner Moura's remarkable transformation into Pablo Escobar on Narcos likely know the gristly fate that awaits him. That's the downside to playing a real-life character that dies a dramatic death.

The second season of Netflix' bilingual thriller, out today, will be Moura's last. While he's still around, catch up on everything you may not know about the series' breakout star — who's already achieved leading-man status in Brazil.

He gained 40 pounds for the Narcos role

The actor's lithe physique didn't look much like the overweight druglord, so Moura packed on the pounds to play Pablo Escobar. In an interview with NPR, he said he's since lost the weight, thanks to a vegan diet.

But as he told the New York Times, he's ready to shed the physical — and mental — burden of playing Escobar. "It was time to let that character go and get rid of that body, get back to my former weight," he said. "That wasn’t my body. I was living in his body for two years, and I’m not only talking about the physical body, but also the energy I was dealing with. It wasn’t nice at all."

And (important!) learned Spanish.

Before he even got the role, the native Portuguese-speaking actor decamped to Colombia and started learning Spanish. "I was in a classroom with German businessmen and Japanese teenagers," he told NPR. "It was interesting."

He also moved his family to Colombia, introducing his children to a new corner of Latin America. "Brazil is very culturally isolated in South America because we speak Portuguese, so it was a very deep cultural experience for me as a Brazilian, working with these actors from Latin America," he told the New York Times. "I brought my kids to live there, and they learned Spanish, too. It was great."

For Moura, learning the language was an exercise in accuracy, which he thinks Hollywood can learn from. “I always thought those World War II films with German people speaking English with German accents was weird,” he told the New York Times

He starred in Brazil’s highest-ever grossing film

While Moura is still a rising star in America, he's a major name in Brazil, leading the cast of 2010's Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, which became the country's highest-grossing film in history. Elite Squad and Narcos also share a director, Jose Padilha, who brought his former leading man on to play Escobar when Netflix came calling.

And broke someone's nose training for the role

While training for Elite Squad and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, Moura signed up for Rio's elite police boot camp to prepare himself to play a military captain. According to Rolling Stone, when one of his trainers threatened his newborn son, Moura reacted just like a battle-ready soldier would, and broke the guy's nose.

He's in a band called Your Mom

Technically, Moura sings in a group called Sua Mãe, which roughly translates to "your mom," playing original songs:

And classics, like this cover of The Cure he showed off on Brazilian TV:

He saves the day in Elysium

Moura appears in Neill Blomkamp's 2013 sci-fi thriller, playing Spider, the smuggler who helps Matt Damon complete his journey to save the world.

(Warning: explicit language)

He's a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador

Moura is also an advocate against child labor and modern slavery, earning him a Goodwill Ambassador appointment in 2015.

“I believe that modern slavery is the most outrageous assault on the rights of an individual,” Moura said in an International Labour Organization release about his new position. “It is something that touches me deeply because I grew up in rural Brazil and could see first-hand how poverty forced people to work in harsh, exploitative conditions. That's why I've been working for years now with parliamentarians and activists to push for legislation to tackle forced labour.”

His death scene will be as realistic as they come

Fans should prepare for a gristly — and historically accurate season finale. "It was very emotional because we actually shot [the death scene] at the same place where the real Pablo was killed, the same building," he told NME.