Lioness Season 3 Review: A Lean, Mean Geopolitical Pressure Cooker — Taylor Sheridan’s Spy Thriller Has Never Been Better

I will never apologize for loving and championing a worthy Taylor Sheridan-branded series when it’s a good one. Now in its third season, the Paramount+ star-studded, action-packed Lioness is spectacular, lean, and mean—the franchise’s most explosive and emotionally gripping season yet. No other thriller series on television is this smart, this kick-ass, and this emotionally gripping from start to finish.

What other show can fill the sky with drones like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz? Unleash a pair of jaw-dropping Belgian Malinois with a taste for vengeance? Or crowd the screen with so many shadowy figures that you cannot tell the good guys from the bad? Or set a tone of cerebral tension of a political thriller where every meeting behind closed doors feels like a high-stakes chess match? Lioness is that rare streaming series that keeps getting better with each season.

The last time we saw our favorite secret agent, Joe (Academy Award winner Zoe Saldaña), she was being welcomed home with open arms by her husband, Neal (Yellowstone’s Dave Annable). Her latest mission almost broke apart her family to the point Neal accused Joe of caring more about her career than their children, Kate (Road House’s Hannah Love Lanier) and Charlie (Celestina Harris).

What is Paramount+’s Lioness Season 3 about?

Except now, her latest mission brings the bad guys and the fight to her front door. The season’s first episode is a staggering and spectacular setup in which Joe and her team, including Cruz (Locke & Key‘s Laysla De Oliveira), find themselves operating behind enemy lines to retrieve a double agent. The operation threatens to erase her anonymity to their enemies, both foreign and domestic.

That puts Joe’s bosses on high alert. The head of CIA Clandestine Services (Oscar-winning Nicole Kidman) and the CIA’s deputy director (Emmy nominee Michael Kelly) push her to take a desk job. Even the Secretary of State (Morgan Freeman) tells her that her experience surviving one crisis after another by the skin of her teeth would make her invaluable in an administrative leadership capacity.

The new season of Lioness is bigger in scope, yet somehow more personal and intimate than ever before. Creator Taylor Sheridan continues to helm a lean, mean series, with spectacular action set pieces in the season premiere, titled “The Spider and the Fly,” that have some serious bite. Speaking of which, Belgian Malinois have skyrocketed to the top of my list of dogs I would want protecting my house. After watching the episode, you’ll know what I am talking about.

Paramount+’s Lioness Season 3 Review

That is all in the middle, smack between the premiere’s stunning opening sequence and thrilling closing moments, making it one of Sheridan’s very best episodes of television to date. It sets up an ambitious season that raises the bar for the modern-day, action-packed spy thriller. You can label the Sheridanverse “Dad Television” all you want, but this season is as smart—behaviorally and politically—as geopolitical thrillers get.

In addition, as I have said dozens of times, what makes Sheridan’s writing so compelling is the way he finds flaws within his strong main characters. Their virtues begin to curdle into vices. This is particularly true of Saldaña’s Joe, whose confidence turns into pride, whose protectiveness becomes control, and whose sense of honor evolves into a toxic identity. All other characters dip their toes in danger, power, adrenaline, and dominance.

Lioness has a terrific cast, one of the deepest on television, whether streaming or network. There are Sheridan regulars such as Landman’s James Jordan, the comic relief of the Sheridanverse, and 1883’s LaMonica Garrett, while Ian Bohen joins the cast this season. Among the grunts, Jill Wagner is sensational, having me believing the former Wipeout correspondent as a battle-hardened operator, disappearing into the role seamlessly.

Is Paramount+’s Lioness Season 3 worth watching?

John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan would barely survive either the field or the Situation Room, where Nicole Kidman’s cold, stoic, and frightening Kaitlyn would make the Tom Clancy creation quiver in his shoes. Michael Kelly’s Byron would see straight through Jack’s idealism, a sharp contrast to Kelly’s role on the Prime Video series, and dismantle it in service of his pragmatic political agenda, fueling himself on cynicism for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Then there is Thad Luckinbill’s sensational turn as Kyle McManus, a character so compelling that I am practically begging Sheridan to give him a spinoff of his own. Magnetic, dangerously charismatic, and a total mystery, McManus—love him or hate him, though you really should love him—takes the series into its darkest corners, where the light on the other side is difficult to see. That rare character you’d follow into battle, but never confident enough to let stand behind you.

However, it is Saldaña who continues to electrify in the role, a rare performer who is just as comfortable executing high-octane action scenes as she is evoking an emotionally devastating, crumbling façade, only allowing herself to witness in the mirror, or the ones she is closest to when it really matters, making Lioness a spectacular pressure cooker of espionage, politics, and personal sacrifice, the rare action thriller with brains, bite, and a modern beating heart.

You can stream the third season of Lioness exclusively on Paramount+ starting August 2nd! A new episode will premiere each Sunday up until the season finale on September 20th! The first four episodes of the season were made available for this review.

Lioness Season 3 Review: A Lean, Mean Geopolitical Pressure Cooker — Taylor Sheridan’s Spy Thriller Has Never Been Better