Nat Geo Renews ‘Trafficked With Mariana Van Zeller’ For Season Three

National Geographic has greenlit a third season of “Trafficked With Mariana Van Zeller” ahead of the winter premiere of the docuseries’ second season launch on Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021, at 9 p.m. ET. Episodes will also be streaming the next day on Hulu, and filming for the third season will begin this fall. The logline: The 10-part second season of offers viewers a mission-driven adventure to places rarely seen, providing an intimate peek behind the curtain to provide a 360-degree view of these poorly understood trafficking networks. Topics this season include van Zeller unveiling the inner workings of romance scams; following a meth superhighway, from a massive cartel-run lab in Sinaloa across the border and into the lives of American users; setting off on a wild journey through California’s black market for weed, which has mushroomed since marijuana legalization four years ago; following a smuggling route of cars stolen from the U.S. to shipping containers bound for West Africa, where the demand is skyrocketing; going inside the secretive world of outlaw motorcycle gangs, also known as 1% clubs, where her interest is piqued by a string of biker-related violence; and investigating the dark corners of black market plastic surgery, where greed and social media are driving patients toward deadly motel-room operations.

“Filming a whole season of ‘Trafficked’ during a global pandemic was extremely challenging, but there’s been an explosion of black markets over the past year, and I think we all quickly realized that this series has become more relevant than ever,” said van Zeller. “With this second season, we’ve managed to dive even deeper and gain even more access into underworld networks around the world.”

“Trafficked With Mariana Van Zeller” is produced for National Geographic by Muck Media. From Muck Media, executive producers are Mariana van Zeller, Darren Foster and Jeff Plunkett. From National Geographic, Bengt Anderson is executive producer, Matt Renner is vice president of Production, and Alan Eyres is senior vice president of Production and Development.