[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
One of the overriding themes of Paramount+ series Lioness is duty to country vs. duty to family, and that’s a struggle series protagonist Joe (Zoe Saldaña) has been keenly aware of during the first two seasons. When the series returns to Paramount+ this Sunday for its third season, that question is again front and center with much higher personal stakes.
In the premiere, Joe and her team find themselves much further afield than they’re used to, assigned to a quick-hitter, but no less complicated asset retrieval that’s well outside their typical theater. When the mission follows them home, it doesn’t just rearrange the pieces on the board–it resets the whole game. As we begins, there’s a sense of idyll as Joe has settled back in at home, seemingly fully reconciled with her family after the precarious decision she made at the end of Season 2.
While Joe is physically safe at home in the suburbs of DC, there’s still the constant din of all the hell-in-a-handbasket scenarios playing out around the world, which runs as a background newsreel voiceover while she readies for her day. Then the clock rolls back to a random offer of a valuable asset, which sends the team across the world in a scenario one of them describes as World War I meeting Star Wars, with old school and new world tactics raining down hell on combatants and civilians alike.
The team face the challenge together, although they butt heads with the outfit led by series creator and once again, the season’s only writer, Taylor Sheridan. This time around, they’re all more fractious and territorial, which sets everyone on edge. Despite that, they get in, get on with it, and get out. But they’re not clear–a frightening truth that threatens one of their own.
The device of the season is a past and present timeline, which I’m generally not a fan of, but here it explores a different dynamic as we watch everyone coalesce when the stakes are extremely personal, and we see how they are when they’re home and outside the parameters of a specific mission in the field.
I’m glad the whole ensemble cast is back–aside from Saldaña, that means Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Kelly, Laysla De Oliveira, Dave Annable, series co-creator and former Hallmarkie Jill Wagner, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Genesis Rodriguez, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton, Thad Luckinbill, and Hannah Love Lanier–plus new cast member, Teen Wolf‘s Ian Bohen.
That’s no small feat when you consider the deep bench of in-demand talent here, many of whom are already committed to other projects. It speaks to how they feel about Sheridan, this show, and each other as a group that they moved schedules around (I presume) to get the band back together.
I like that the show continues to build on its history but still sets each season in a wholly distinct situation. Instead of a weekly procedural, it feels like a seasonal procedural, and that’s not a dig. This year, coming on the heels of The Madison, Sheridan’s other female-heavy series, it’s interesting to fall back into this world again, where women are, again, absolutely the backbone to the whole thing.
Lioness Season 3 drops its premiere Sunday, August 2nd, at 3:01 am on Paramount+. If you missed any of the first two seasons, they’re streaming now on Paramount+. Here’s a sneak peek of the new season and a social video of the cast and crew being decidedly unserious.
Photos courtesy of Ryan Green and Lauren “Lo” Smith for Paramount+; videos courtesy of Paramount Plus.
