Special Ops: Lioness ended its third season with a bang and a surprise twist that more than a few fans saw coming. Still, it was a fun ride this season, even if it looks like it was all set-up for Season 4. By the end of the episode, Taylor Sheridan’s military thriller had brought us full circle, back to Season 1 with a familiar face returning as next season’s villain. Spoilers ahead .

Meet The New Boss, Wife Of The Old Boss

The big twist, and one that was alluded to many times during this season, is that Aaliyah Amrohi is the powerful player behind Joe’s abduction. She wants revenge on the team responsible for killing her father, so she tried to have Joe kidnapped and brought to her. This would lure the rest of her team, including Cruz, in a rescue attempt, whereupon she could exact her revenge.

It’s all a little over-the-top and contrived, but this is hardly the most grounded action-espionage thriller out there, so I’m not too bothered. I thought it was pretty clear a few episodes back that this was going to tie back to Season 1 and payback for the hit on Asmar Ali Amrohi, her father.

It makes sense to come full circle, especially if Season 4 is the final season, but I have to admit I have a few bones to pick with this show.

Season 2 Dropped The Ball

First off, Season 2 felt like a bit of a cop-out, ditching the first season’s formula and speeding up the cartel plot for reasons I still can’t quite fathom. I think Season 3’s dual-timeline narrative and Joe’s abduction would have been more impactful if Season 2 had stuck to Season 1’s formula, but with Josie as the Lioness, infiltrating the cartel rather than Cruz infiltrating Amrohi’s organization. That seemed to be the direction Season 2 was headed, and then they just tossed it, resolved the cartel conflict in the blink of an eye, and moved on to an attack on Iran (and a crazy gunfight). Last season had a kidnapped congresswoman, her rescue, the attack on the warehouse filled with kids, the suicide bombing at the border, the helicopter crash, and all of it just sort of felt slapped together. A bunch of intense, good moments turned into a Frankenstein’s monster of a plot.

If the first two seasons had been distinct Lioness missions and the third had then swerved into this abduction story, that change of pace would have been felt a lot harder. Nevertheless, this was a fun change of pace for the show and overall I enjoyed Season 3 a lot more than Season 2.

My second bone to pick is with Sheridan’s occasional heavy-handedness. The worst moment, by far, was Secretary of State Edwin Mullins’ monologue to Byron Westfield. Sure, it dispensed blame to all parties – Republican, Democrat, the media etc. – but we didn’t need a fifteen minute soapbox about politics and the media or a lesson in leadership that used George W. Bush’s response to 9/11 as an example. Season 3 was never quite as egregious, but I found myself cringing every time Kaitlyn and her husband, Errol, would have a conversation about economics and politics. Errol is so smug. He has all the answers. He’s Mr. Soapbox, wiser and smarter than anyone else. A little goes a long way with a character like that, but Sheridan lays it on thick.

They Did Oleksandra Dirty

Not only was it rather rash and hurried of Westfield and Kaitlyn to just straight-up murder Ukrainian double-agent, Oleksandra (seriously, couldn’t they have waited for a week or two to make sure before just killing her and dumping her in a ditch?) it felt like a missed opportunity for the show. Oleksandra was an interesting character and Elizaveta Neretin did a great job in the role. She would have made a great Lioness, perhaps a new way for the team to gain access to Aaliyah in the coming season. Killing her off feels like a mistake.

One thing this season did quite well was keep up the mystery of who was behind Joe’s kidnapping. Lots of good red herrings. They capture a Russian HVT and then Russians show up at her door. It seems like a Russian operation at first. All signs point that way. Later, it seems plausible (if a little far-fetched) that it was all a false flag operation with the Ukrainians behind it in some harebrained scheme to get the US to attack Russia directly. (Mr. Soapbox posits this theory and Oleksandra dies because of it, though it immediately struck me as far too convoluted).

In any case, we wonder if there’s a mole. If the mole is somebody we know, perhaps a character we’ve grown to really like. The season did a good job keeping us guessing and keeping us on our toes, and it wasn’t until the Iranians showed up that I started to think this had to do with Season 1, though even then it could also have been reprisal for the attack in Season 2.

I’m still trying to decide if the return of Aaliyah is a fun twist or too neat, too Hollywood. We’ve already done the Middle East and the cartels, maybe a Lioness operation into Russia or Belarus would have been more interesting. Maybe making this personal will work just fine, but I worry that it’s taking things away from the kind of gritty realism (okay, realism-adjacent?) that makes this show tick.

Hey Joe, Where You Goin’ With That Gun In Your Hand?

Finally, we come to Joe’s comeuppance. After being abducted and disappearing from her family for over a week, she’s supposed to go home. Her SUV pulls up in front of the house and she can’t go in. It’s not that she can’t face her husband, Neal, or her kids. Joe is just too driven, too hellbent on fixing everything, too sure that her family will be there waiting for her when she’s done – despite knowing full-well that she will never, ever be done.

So it was no surprise when she does eventually, grudgingly, return home to find a For Sale sign up in the yard. Neal and the girls are gone. The house is empty. It’s not that the furniture is all gone, but the drawers are empty. The closets. It is the deafening silence that she encounters after all this trauma and fear and pain that finally, truly breaks her. The note on the table. The finality of her family’s departure. It reminded me a bit of The Last Of Us Part II (the video game) and Ellie’s trajectory.

You can’t blame Neal. He probably should have taken the girls a long time ago. The very moment two armed men showed up at their house in the middle of the night. But I also do feel bad for Joe. She’s poured all of herself into this job. She’s a true believer, a patriot, a skilled and savvy operator, and a tough but mostly fair leader. She makes some bad calls after her rescue, but understandable ones given what she’s just been through.

The real question now is how they move seamlessly into Season 4 and this new villain without just repeating the abduction plot. “Third time’s a charm” sounds fine from Aaliyah’s perspective, but as viewers it might get a tad bit repetitive. We shall see. Read all about Lioness Season 4 below :

What did you think of Lioness Season 3 and the finale? Let me know on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook .

Major characters and cast of Lioness Season 3

The central returning ensemble includes:

  • Zoe Saldaña as Joe McNamara — CIA operative who leads the Lioness team.
  • Laysla De Oliveira as Cruz Manuelos — Marine recruited into the program.
  • Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade — Joe’s CIA supervisor.
  • Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield — senior CIA official and Kaitlyn’s boss.
  • Morgan Freeman as Edwin Mullins — U.S. secretary of state.
  • Dave Annable as Neal McNamara — Joe’s husband, a pediatric oncology surgeon.
  • Genesis Rodriguez as Josephina “Josie” Carrillo — Army helicopter pilot recruited into the program.
  • Thad Luckinbill as Kyle McManus — CIA operative and Joe’s colleague.
  • Jill Wagner as Bobby — a leader within Joe’s field team.
  • LaMonica Garrett as Tucker — field-team member.
  • James Jordan as Two Cups — field-team member.
  • Austin Hébert as Randy — field-team member.
  • Jonah Wharton as Tex — field-team member.

Notable Season 3 additions:

  • Ian Bohen as Grady — Delta Force operator and K9 handler.
  • Elizaveta Neretin as Oleksandra Balakin — international operative involved in the season’s espionage plot.
  • Lev Gorn as Maxim Petrov — Russian ambassador.
  • Jack Dimich as Aleksi Yurimov — head of Russia’s Special Services Department.