The third season of Lioness is much the same as the other two, just with a different enemy. The Taylor Sheridan action drama returns to Paramount+ with plenty of shooting, swearing and excitement, but it continues to lack the depth of Sheridan’s other shows. There’s not much to hold onto after the weekly burst of adrenaline wears off.
Audiences who simply want to be entertained by action will still find plenty to love about Lioness Season 3, in which the CIA’s focus shifts from Mexico to Russia. There are massive combat sequences that take up huge chunks of time, as well as all kinds of new technological weapons for Joe and her team to deal with; one shot of a gigantic fleet of Russian drones is almost Terminator-esque. The series looks positively fantastic, aside from some scenes that suffer the common fault of being too dark for the audience to clearly see what’s happening. And Sheridan himself returns in his on-screen role as Cody Spears to help lead the charge.
It’s all exciting to watch as pure entertainment, but between all the flying bullets, there’s still not enough to hold onto. Zoe Saldana remains the center of the series as Joe, and her performance is the one that truly pops off the screen, as she always has done. The supporting characters—even though most of them are well-established at this point—continue to feel like they’re playing to certain types. There are the tough women who act more like the guys, of course, as well as the comic relief (that’s James Jordan, ably serving the same function he does in Sheridan’s Landman), and the officers whose job it is to provide big-picture context and exposition.
It’s always great to see Nicole Kidman and Michael Kelly, but the recent releases of Scarpetta and Jack Ryan: Ghost War respectively are reminders that they’ve done much more elsewhere. The performances are solid across the whole main cast, but they can’t make the viewer care about the characters beyond Joe and her family.
With that in mind, viewers’ enjoyment of Lioness Season 3 will depend on what they come to the show for. Do they want to watch Zoe Saldaña being a badass and an incredible amount of no-holds-barred action sequences? If they’re simply looking for an adrenaline rush, this season has it—and this show has always had it. Sheridan and crew have clearly spared no expense in their combat scenes, which includes not being shy about the violence that happens in CIA and military operations. There is, for one example, a scene in the season premiere involving a dog that animal lovers may want to look away from.
But in terms of character and emotion, other Sheridan series do it better. Mayor of Kingstown is an example of a show that can be positively brutal, yet it’s also emotionally engaging. Lioness is so tough and uncompromising that it’s cold, save the charming scenes between Joe and her family (Dave Annable steals every scene he turns up in). Audiences know by now how high the stakes are, and how harsh the world Joe lives in is. Lioness keeps reminding them of that, and doesn’t flesh out enough around those ideas. Its appeal is in the combat, in the suspense, in the “us against the rest of the world” concept.
Lioness Season 3 does know exactly what it is, even if it’s not quite for everyone. The season provides the same high level of action that the first two did, and there are enough plot twists to propel the story forward to the next major battle. The actors are reliable, even if their characters feel incomplete. It’s an entertaining watch until the new seasons of Sheridan’s other series—but that’s as far as it’s grown.
Lioness premieres Sunday, August 2 on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Paramount+.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
