Right now is a great time for Zoe Saldaña fans. Soon, everyone will be able to seeSaldaña in the big-budget James Cameron spectacle, Avatar: Fire and Ash, but one of her most thrilling performances is one Paramount+ subscription away in the Taylor Sheridan spy series Lioness. With two seasons completed and a third on its way, Lioness is consistently trending as a top show on the streamer, and now is a great time to see the series that is aggressively growing its fanbase.
What Is ‘Lioness’ About?
Lioness is a modern-day spy series that follows the dangerous covert missions of the CIA operation known as the Lioness program. Led by senior case officer Joe McNamara (Saldaña), the Lioness program recruits female operatives to infiltrate dangerous organizations under typically false identities. By establishing relationships with the wives or daughters of valuable targets, the Lioness team can extract information and, when approved, assassinate the target. The first season focuses on Joe recruiting a new Lioness, Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), after her last operative was compromised in the field. While balancing her responsibilities in the field, Joe must answer for the team’s successes and failures to her supervisor, Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman), and the CIA Deputy Director of Operations, Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly).
‘Lioness’ Covers Familiar Ground From A Fresh Perspective
Lioness bears many of the genre tropes that spy fiction aficionados are familiar with, but the show also explores the familiar in ways modern audiences can connect to. Joe’s home life is a strained one, with long stretches away resulting in a distant relationship with her husband Neal (Dave Annable), a pediatric surgeon, and a borderline combative one with her oldest daughter Kate (Hannah Love Lanier). Joe’s job takes the viewers to exotic locations filled with powerful people, but her civilian existence tucked into an unassuming suburban neighborhood imbues her with a relatability not typically seen in the standard espionage drama. Joe keeps her family compartmentalized away from the other part of her life, where death is a common occurrence, but they are a part of her nonetheless.
The first season breaks conventional spy narratives by splitting the focus away from solely the field agent to show howthe stress of the job impacts multiple chains of command. Joe is our entry point to this world of surveillance and covert operations, but she’s only one rung on a ladder of many. While Joe gives us the insight of a seasoned vet pushing through regrets about decisions she’s made, and the subsequent lives lost because of them, we also see the perspective of a new recruit through the eyes of Cruz. In Cruz, we are given a naturally skilled soldier who believes in her role as a guardian until the methods of a Lioness threaten to disillusion her. Then at the top is Kaitlyn, played with an icy precision by Kidman, who navigates the ever-changing political climate that can unexpectedly change the directive of a mission based on the feedback of unfavorable polls.
Tempering the melodramatic tendencies that Lioness can sometimes indulge in is a growing supporting cast of dynamic characters. Although we didn’t spend much time with Morgan Freeman as Secretary of State Edwin Mullins in the first batch of episodes, he was welcome as an expanded presence for the sophomore season. Likewise, seeing more of the arrogant CIA colleague Kyle McManus (Thad Luckinbill) adds levity while giving Joe someone to play against in the field. Having someone who resembles an equal breaks up the power dynamic that can box Joe in as a character when everyone around her is a subordinate or a superior. Like any good show, Lioness continues to adjust and fine-tune the cast’s chemistry, and so far, it’s been for the better.
Zoe Saldaña Shines as a Complicated Lead
Saldaña is no stranger to action roles in franchises such as Avatar or Guardians of the Galaxy, but the complexities of Joe give the Oscar-winning actress a chance to dig into a challenging psychological study. Joe swallows her emotions without properly acknowledging them, attempting to exorcise her guilt over losing an asset by pushing Cruz through excessive tests, hoping to mitigate dangers that can’t be avoided in the field. The cost to Joe’s personal life is immeasurable, becoming a stranger to her family, who must lie to her children about what she actually does during her long stretches away. The life of a spy requires playing outside the lines of conventional legal channels, and the lives lost pursuing whatever is perceived as justice are accepted as collateral damage. Those aspects of the job isolate Joe, because every secret must die with her.
Joe is a competent officer whom everyone within the series holds in high regard, but some of her best moments are when she feels self-doubt, and her facade of control cracks. She avoids the truth that she loves being in the field, because it also costs her time with a family she loves. There’s never any shortage of action scenes per episode to keep the pace moving, and they’re always welcome, but it’s those quiet moments where Joe lowers her guard that separate Lioness from the many excellent spy shows on television.
In ‘Lioness’, Ethical Lines Are Drawn in Pencil, Not Pen
The second season of Lioness opened up the team to a more chaotic storyline involving the use of a fresh recruit, Josephina Carillo (Genesis Rodriguez), to infiltrate a cartel with dubious foreign connections. Things the Lioness team discovers on what begins as a straightforward mission challenge the characters’ allegiances to their duty, and force them to make tough decisions between what is morally sound and what is good for their mission. Exploring the questionable alliances the CIA must make to maintain what passes for peace should lead Lioness down interesting directions for future seasons, if that’s a road they choose to go down.
As a series, Lioness continues to do a solid job of balancing a new challenge for the team each season while providing incremental character growth in an organic and satisfying way. The trap for any espionage series is to start repeating itself with the same mission statement or villains that look and sound suspiciously like the ones before, but so far, Lioness has avoided any such pitfalls.
- Release Date
-
July 23, 2023
- Directors
-
Anthony Byrne, Paul Cameron
