A Look at ‘Tiger King,’ the Popular Netflix Documentary

“Tiger King” has quickly become one of the most popular documentaries on Netflix. People have tiger fever. It is a captivating story that involves marriage, drugs, guns and tigers. Add that to a flamboyant man who thinks the world is his to conquer, what can go wrong? 

“Tiger King” is about a man, Joe Exotic, his zoo, the tigers, and a blistering rivalry between Exotic and a woman in Florida named Carole Baskin.

Before he opened his roadside zoo in Oklahoma, Exotic traveled the country to schools, malls, and other events, showing off tiger cubs, performing shows, and offering tiger cub petting and photoshoots. Baskin caught wind of this and decided to contact malls and schools, informing them that the shows Exotic performs are inhumane. This eventually got Exotic banned from many places, sparking his hatred for Baskin. 

After Exotic opened his zoo, which housed tigers, lions, monkeys, and alligators, his hatred grew, as Baskin would comment publicly against his zoo.

Baskin runs “Big Cat Rescue” in Florida, where she keeps big cats like lions and tigers. But she also has a few secrets of her own. 

While there are many allegations against Exotic, Baskin has a big rumor hanging over her head, that she killed Don Lewis, her husband! This is mentioned many times during this documentary, by Exotic, but also by the authorities and others. 

While some people think Baskin is innocent, most believe that she killed her husband, the only flaw in this accusation is that no one can find his body. Exotic thinks she fed him to a lion, but more feasibly, she buried him on the land somewhere. Still, authorities can’t come up with a body.

Baskin’s story is that her husband left her and went to Costa Rica because the laws surrounding big cat owning and handling were a lot more lenient down there. While Don could fly, before his disappearance he had his pilot’s licence revoked, and he was only trained on single prop airplanes. That type of plane couldn’t make it to Costa Rica without stopping to fuel many times, but he was never seen at a fuel station. 

How does a man just vanish off the face of the earth. I do believe he was killed, my only issue is where is his body? A question we may never know, however, with this documentary’s popularity, it may spark new interest in the case, and may turn up more answers.