Lioness Season 3 TV Review: Taylor Sheridan’s spy series delivers its best season yet

Plot: Hidden networks, foreign operatives, and personal betrayals collide. Joe walks the line between duty and home as unseen forces circle her world. Patterns appear where they shouldn’t, names vanish, and paths rearrange. Guided by Kaitlyn and Westfield, Joe confronts enemies operating in the shadows, leaving her to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life.

Review: Three years ago, I reviewed Taylor Sheridan’s military series, Lioness, based on the first episode alone. I liked the concept of the series, then titled Special Ops: Lioness, which followed a fictionalized military unit that employs female soldiers for special missions. Led by Zoe Saldana with Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman in supporting roles, the series had a nice start before the rest of the season stagnated a bit. With season two, Lioness uppedJack Ryan‘s Michael Kelly to the main cast and added The Night Agent‘s Genesis Rodriguez. With a more action-oriented sophomore run, Lioness found its stride and became one of the stronger offerings from Sheridan’s library of Paramount+ projects. For the new third season, Lioness brings the intensity back home, with more of the series set in the United States, Ukraine, and beyond, with a storyline that hits close to home for the main characters. Once again, the series has upped its game, and this new season of Lioness is better than the first two seasons combined.

The first season introduced Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldana), the CIA case officer overseeing the Lioness program, which trains women as undercover operatives to infiltrate enemy targets. We follow as Joe trains Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a Force Recon Marine, as a Lioness. With her Quick Response Force led by Bobby (Jill Wagner), Joe and Cruz take down a bad guy by the end of the season before Cruz leaves. Season two followed Joe as she trained Josephina Carrillo (Genesis Rodriguez) to become a Lioness because of her connection to a cartel leader. By the end of season two, both Cruz and Carrillo work with Joe and the QRF, with an intense ending that saw the team prepared to commit suicide before being rescued. When Joe returned home, her estranged husband Neal (Dave Annable) welcomed her. Despite her skills in training new operatives, the finale of season two showed Joe was beginning to question her place in the Lioness program.

The new season of Lioness opens with three episodes of non-stop intensity as the action hits close to the QRF. I won’t say who or how, but rather than seeing the CIA and military operatives taking down bad guys overseas, the fight comes to the United States, which alters the rules entirely. Without divulging any spoilers, I can tell you that the premiere episode hits the ground running and does not let up for a full hour. The subsequent episodes do the same, as we see the events leading up to the shocking opening episode. This includes an action sequence set in Ukraine involving dog soldiers and drone warfare that shows the true face of 21st-century combat. It also puts the entire cast through the wringer, including Joe, Cruz, Bobby, Carrillo, and more, including Tucker (LaMonica Garrett) and Two Cups (James Jordan). Randy (Austin Hebert), and Tex (Jonah Wharton) all work together to stop this season’s antagonist. We also get a lot of time with Kyle McManus (Thad Luckinbill) as well as appearances from Taylor Sheridan and Yellowstone alum Ian Bohen.

The shift Stateside for multiple episodes greatly benefits Lioness, as Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Kelly get to do more than just sit in a conference room discussing the action. While Freeman’s Edwin Mullins spends his time in meetings, Michael Kelly’s Byron Westfield gets some meaty interactions with his international colleagues, while Kidman’s Kaitlyn Meade gets to operate in a more mobile capacity. The action feels closer to the world of Tom Clancy this season, with themes and elements feeling plucked from the Jack Ryan creator’s Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell novels. Zoe Saldana’s Joe gets put through some torturous sequences with the visuals not shy from intense nudity and physical violence. The entire cast feels like they have come together as an ensemble, with Laysla De Oliveira and Genesis Rodriguez definitely feeling like they belong in this world rather than being the newly introduced characters they were for most of the prior seasons.

Taylor Sheridan once again wrote all eight episodes of this season of Lioness, proving that the guy must not sleep as he continues to script Landman and other projects at the same time. Unlike his series set in the Yellowstone universe or other soapy melodramas and westerns, Lioness stands alone with an intricate, detailed look at military and covert operations that feels timely, with the new season heavily centered on the Russian war with Ukraine, and it introduces an enigmatic new character played by Elizaveta Neretin. Season two helmer Michael Friedman directed the opening three episodes of this season, continuing his long partnership with Sheridan that goes back to Landman, Yellowstone, and the upcoming Frisco King. The action-heavy focus of Lioness benefits from the writer-director’s past experience working together. Sheridan’s scripts still feature the relationship and family melodrama that his series are known for, but the military and espionage elements of this show feel as authentic and well-researched as those in shows like The Terminal List and Jack Ryan.

Lioness feels the least like Taylor Sheridan’s other shows and is certainly the most violent. Zoe Saldana remains excellent as Joe gets a broader range of experiences this season, while the supporting cast steps up, including Nicole Kidman, Michael Kelly, Jill Wagner, Genesis Rodriguez, and Laysla De Oliveira. Lioness has shifted from a niche series about a specific type of female operative into a female-led series that explores a lot more than it set out to. The various machinations of big-government decisions, down to the individual soldier on the battlefield, are explored in an entertaining and brutal fashion that makes Lioness hard to watch in the best way possible. I enjoy the camaraderie that this ensemble has forged over these three seasons, and seeing them dispatched on new missions each year could easily keep this series on the air for a long time, but Taylor Sheridan has created a structure that allows new characters to join and others to depart, which also ups the ante that anyone could die at any time, just like in reality. Lioness continues to improve with each season, and this one is the best yet.

Lioness premieres on August 2nd on Paramount+.