It’s another pleasant valley Sunday in the well-heeled Houston suburb of Sugar Land, where the rows of houses are all the same and no one seems to care. There will be no posts on the local Nextdoor about a secret agent torture session happening in an otherwise cookie-cutter mcmansion. No busybodies will look over their fence to see Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) in a shroud, handcuffed to a chair in an unfurnished bedroom, surrounded by Russian gunmen. America is a big place, and nobody knows their neighbors. Six days after the blackjack on Raven, after she was surreptitiously transported from Baltimore to Texas, Joe will finally admit to herself she’s running out of time to be saved. In Episode 6 of Lioness Season 3 on Paramount+, her situation has never been more dire.
But as we tread ever closer to the hard deck of this season’s present-past format – only three episodes left! – let’s dip back to six months before. The situation there is much more promising, because the team’s Russian asset dragnet is producing results. They have a bunch of compromised Americans in custody, as well as their handlers, and most of the Russian embassy in Washington is being booted out of the country. The “espionage scandal” is national news, and at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in DC, Secretary of State Mullins (Morgan Freeman) is positively giddy, because he’s telling a sitting senator fingered in the op he can either resign immediately – or face public prosecution for treason. Joe offers Senator Olson (Joe Nemmers) a third option, once Mullins leaves the table. “You could kill yourself.” From her perspective, the politician might as well have been one of the attackers at her home.
Olson takes the CIA case officer’s coldblooded advice. Minutes later, the senator’s freaking out, agitated and sweaty, unable to face the consequences, and instead drives his Mercedes into an oncoming tractor-trailer. Tucker (LaMonica Garrett) and Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) watch from their tail vehicle. “The coward’s way out.” Tuck informs Joe, who is without sympathy.
The combined actions of the team’s operation brightens spirits at the safe house. Joe laughs and play-fights with Neal (Dave Annable) – “That’s not the soldier in me, that’s the Dominican in me” – and Kate and Charlie are heartened to see their parents smiling and getting along. Joe even tells the girls the fam will get to go home, because those who wished her dead are never coming back. Which leads to another, harder conversation. “They don’t deserve your fear, and they forfeited their right to your compassion.” Like the “kill for this life” speech, Joe continues to indoctrinate her daughters into the realities of the Lioness world – and by extension, the Sheridan-O-Verse – where everything is solved the hard way, and the hardened people who do this work are more noble for it.
“Jackpot on plane, four bandits down.” We’re back in the present, six days after Joe was grabbed, and with further intel from Oleksandra (Elizaveta Neretin), Kyle (Thad Luckinbill) and the Delta Force dudes have located the jet in Texas. A flight plan for the Caribbean? They why’s it loaded with 40,000 pounds of fuel? That’s enough avgas for a trip to Russia, or even the Middle East. The pilot won’t answer Kyle’s questions, and outside the aircraft, when its crew flanks Grady and draws their weapons, they are promptly put down. Now they know they’re closer than ever to Joe, and the team fans out to check known Russian SVR safe houses in the Houston area. Like in Sugar Land, where Renat (Dimitry Rozental) and his armed accomplices watch from darkened windows as Randy (Austin Hébert) and Tex (Jonah Wharton) do an observational drive-by. Joe’s captor gets on the horn. “You need a new out. They’re circling. Now come get your problem before we throw her in the street.”
Who did Renat call? He and his men are Russian speakers, and given the action in the Lioness past, Russia always seemed the likely culprit for Joe’s predicament. Tied to her chair, still in the shroud, she hears a new voice in the room. “I am here to take you to your death,” a bearded man named Babat (Kamyar Jahan) tells her, and gives commands to his men in Farsi. Joe, for her part, remains unbroken, and insults this guy once the shroud comes off. But she can only scream when he unfolds a blade and hacks off a toe without hesitation. In just a few moments, Babat has elevated the awful stakes of her capture, and as Renat – the guy we were led to believe was in charge – steals off into the Texas night, Joe’s new crew of captors haul her into a truck for transport. Their promises of even more torture, of being stoned by children, and of a terrible death by fire illustrate how close yet far away the team really is.
QRF for Lioness Season 3 Episode 6 (“Sugar Land”):
- This episode features another great scene with Elizaveta Neretin as Oleksandra Balakin. We haven’t heard anything definite about a Lioness Season 4, but in our version, Oleksa joins Joe and the team full-time.
- FBO FBO FBO FBO – what the hell is an FBO? Taylor Sheridan loves to have his characters spout undefined acronyms, and this one stands for “fixed-base operator,” essentially a privately owned and operated airstrip. People saying FBO are all over this ep of Lioness, just like they were in Landman.
- “Brother, I am getting fucking flanked out here.” As Grady, when Ian Bohen says this during the gunfight at the jet, we flashed back to when Bohen said essentially the same line as Evan in Wind River. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, the 2017 film is like a Sheridan-O-Verse incubator – Bohen’s in there, as is James “Two Cups” Jordan, as is Kelsey Asbille, as are Jeremy Renner and Hugh Dillon from Mayor of Kingstown.