Lioness Season 3 Review: The Most Intense Mission Yet

What makes “Lioness,” “Lioness”…?

The third season of Taylor Sheridan’s Zoe Saldaña-led espionage drama invites that question by fully foregoing its original premise, while delivering its highest-stakes mission yet.

Hailing from the prolific Sheridan (of TV’s “Yellowstone” franchise but also, of note, 2015’s “Sicario”) and inspired by an actual U.S. Military program, “Lioness” follows CIA senior case officer Joe McNamara (played by Academy Award winner and executive producer Saldaña) as she struggles to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA’s spear in the war on terror.

Season 1 leaned into the Lioness program’s unique conceit, at least as interpreted by the TV series: sending female operatives undercover in the orbit of high-value targets, “going where no man can” and all that. But whereas nearly all of that freshman run was spent watching Laysla De Oliveira’s U.S. Marine Cruz Manuelos cozy up to the daughter of a terrorist financier, Season 2 spent only a few episodes on U.S. Army helicopter pilot Josephina Carrillo (Genesis Rodriguez) returning home under false pretenses to “turn” her estranged father, a money launderer for a cartel.

For Season 3, there is no new Lioness to initiate. Instead, Cruz and Josie, along with the rest of Joe’s bad-ass QRF team, are tasked with identifying and neutralizing a ruthless threat that has struck far too close to home for their collective liking.

Jo’s team has two missions, actually, given that the 10-episode season — once again written in full by Sheridan, who also reprises his role as wry Delta Force vet Cody Spears — opens by walloping you with a harrowing sequence that launches one manhunt, before cutting to the “Six Months Earlier” timeline teased above. The shock delivered by that cold open is only rivaled by how the first episode ends.

In addition to Saldaña, De Oliveira and Rodriguez, returning faces include executive producer Nicole Kidman (as Jo’s icy supervisor Kaitlyn Meade), Morgan Freeman (Secretary of State Edwin Mullins), Michael Kelly (CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield) and Dave Annable (Jo’s husband Neal), plus executive producer Jill Wagner, Thad Luckinbill, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton and Hannah Love Lanier (as Jo and Neal’s older daughter Kate).

Martin Donovan also is back as Kaitlyn’s husband Errol, a fantastically enigmatic financial investor who reliably and oh-so-gently drops mind-blowing truth bombs about geoeconomics between sips of morning coffee on the patio. He’s been a scene stealer since Season 1.

New to the mix for Season 3 are Ian Bohen (“Yellowstone”) as Grady, a Delta Force operator/K9 handler who is skilled in battlefield tactics — content warning: doggos in peril! — and Ukrainian actress Elizaveta Neretin (“Mayor of Kingstown”) as an international operative. Of the two, Neretin is showcased best in the three episodes made available for review.

In its first season, “Lioness” was a serviceable and frankly sexy proof of concept; Season 2 evolved into something far more kinetic, off-setting its sadly truncated Lioness arc with an action-packed, finale set piece that rivaled many a motion picture. Season 3 has plenty of guns a-blazing and doors being kicked — including, timely enough, an extraction sequence set in war-torn Ukraine — but it also slows its roll in well-chosen places to carefully and smartly unpack the delicacy of the operations being conducted in the two timelines.

It is here where “Lioness” continues to excel, above and beyond its high-octane action scenes. While I cannot personally vouch for the accuracy of the spycraft tactics and strategy laid out by the CIA characters, the fact is Sheridan’s scripts and cast sell you on every syllable being said. To cite one example, Deputy Director Westfield in Episode 2 initiates a hushed restaurant confrontation that will chill you as much as it does the Russkies sitting opposite his CIA shot-caller. Episode 3 then serves up a lesson in the forever-tenuous United States-Russia-China coexistence that is so perfectly, if painfully, illustrative, you’ll hear a lightbulb flick on over your head.

Such dialogue is so confident in its specificity, there’s never the sense you’re getting some “Tradecraft for Dummies” version. Sheridan counts on you to follow along, and the viewer in turn is rewarded with a wholly immersive story.

For all its strengths, “Lioness” absolutely can fall prey to its own formula at times. I’m pretty sure each season premiere has (vividly) shown Joe and Neal in the throes of passion, to suggest how steadfast their oft-tested marriage is. (Relatedly, any given viewer can probably recite the couple’s frequent “Your job, or our family?” argument from memory.) The QRF team members continue to share an amusing jocularity in their banter, but actual character development for anyone beyond Wagner’s Bobby remains nearly non-existent.

Of the Season 3 performances, Saldaña once again shines — not because of Jo’s explosive ferocity, which was well-displayed in Season 2, but because of the greater but quiet consideration she must give every move made in Season 3. Kidman and Kelly continue to exude a dangerous, “Whatever it takes” energy in every scene they get; Luckinbill has more to do this time, and dicier notes to play, as Kyle pulls out all the stops to ID an enemy; and Annable is given his most complex material to date in what at times has risked being a Forsaken Husband role. No, his and Saldaña’s characters go to some of their darkest places yet, in a season that may very well get you wondering if it will be the final one.

“Lioness” Season 3 premieres Sunday on Paramount+.