Previewing Special Ops: Lioness 

[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]

Paramount+ keeps the Taylor Sheridan train going Sunday with the two-episode premiere of Special Ops: Lioness. This one has been on my radar for a while because it’s based on a story concept hatched by Jill Wagner and her husband, David Lemanowicz, who carry executive producer and co-executive producer titles. She shares the origin story here.

The premise follows Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), a young woman in rural Oklahoma who pulls herself out of a domestic abuse situation and channels all that once futile energy into a fury that gets the attention of her superiors when she enlists as a Marine. Acing all the intellectual and physical challenges they throw her way, she moves through the ranks until she’s hand-picked by CIA agent Joe (Zoe Saldaña), who needs a brand-new covert operative for her Lioness Program when a Syrian  operation goes sideways.

Suddenly Cruz is whisked off to the Middle East and dropped into a new military team to take on a new identity and a new operation. When she surprisingly walks back one of her core tenets right out of the gate at their meet and greet, it bites her in the ass on her first day in the field. It’s too soon to say whether that malleability to betray herself in an effort to fit in is an asset to being undercover or not.

The second episode wasn’t available for screening, but the first hour gives us a general bead on the characters we’ll follow. Joe is our POV framing the larger narrative, and I’m here for the two leads being not just women, but diverse women, one of whom is Canadian (YAS) and one of whom is 45 (DOUBLE YAS). MORE OF THIS, PLEASE.

Married with two kids, Joe and her husband, Neil (Dave Annable), have an understanding about her absences, but her kids split the difference between one who’s happy to see mom and one who’s annoyed that she’s disrupting their idyllic suburban mirage. We spend a few moments with her superiors, Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman) and Westfield (Michael Kelly – who I really gets more to do because he was so great in Jack Ryan) to get a sense of who’s the good cop and who’s the bad cop up the chain.

The Marines who partner with Joe are a rough and tumble mix, with Wagner among them as Bobby, joined by Thad Luckinbill as Kyle, James Jordan as Two Cups, Jonah Wharton as Tex, and Austin Hébert as Randy The rest of the cast includes LaMonica Garrett, Stephanie Nur, Hannah Love Lanier, and Morgan Freeman.

While Saldaña is the more recognizable lead, De Oliveira carries her own weight with a character who for now is a bit of a cipher, which is what will likely make her very good at disappearing into who she needs to become according to the situation at hand. I only know her from Locke and Key, where she was shapeshifter Dutch, the menacing big bad out to wreak havoc on the titular Lockes. 

In addition to Sheridan, Wagner, Saldaña, and Kidman, the Spain-filmed series is also executive produced by David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari, David Hutkin, Geyer Kosinski, Michael Malone, and John Hillcoat, who directs the first episode based on Sheridan’s script.

Special Ops: Lioness premieres with the first two episodes at 3:01 am ET Sunday, July 23rd, on Paramount+, with the remaining six episodes drop each Sunday. Here’s a sneak peek of the season.

Photos courtesy of Lynsey Addario/Paramount+