{"id":632831,"date":"2026-09-22T21:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632831\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T21:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T21:30:16","slug":"zoe-saldana-nicole-kidman-on-gut-punch-lioness-season-3-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/632831\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman on Gut-Punch ‘Lioness’ Season 3 Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains major spoilers from the season three finale of Lioness<\/a>, \u201cThe Unraveling.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe season three finale of Lioness initially made viewers think that the good guys had won to cap another season of the Taylor Sheridan<\/a> Paramount+ series about a deadly female CIA-operative unit led by commander Joe McNamara (Zoe Salda\u00f1a) and her high-ranking CIA boss, Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first two seasons of Lioness focused on the missions of Joe\u2019s team, known as a Quick Reaction Force (or QRF). QRF is a branch of the CIA whose jobs are more straightforward than probably any other operatives within the agency: they rescue compromised American government officials or assets and eliminate (a.k.a kill) anyone who threatens the democracy of the country they have sworn to protect. They generally don\u2019t capture and bring in prisoners.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut with season three, Sheridan (who returned this season as Cody Spears) gave Lioness a different bent on the daily lives of Joe and her team by featuring a dual-timeline showing Joe and team going to Ukraine six months prior to capture a valuable Russian asset operating behind enemy lines, a seemingly too-good-to-be true gift offered to them by a Ukrainian Russian double agent operating in the U.S. named Oleksandra Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin). <\/p>\n

\n\tSoon after the abduction in Ukraine, two believed-to-be Russian spies pretending to be local policemen in Fairfax, Virginia, showed up at Joe\u2019s house late at night to forcibly kidnap her while her husband, Neal (Dave Annable), and two daughters, Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) and Charlie (Celestina Harris), were asleep upstairs. They were unsuccessful, however, as Joe shot them dead in front of her home (witnessed by Neal). But six months later, while driving to work, Joe was ambushed again by Russian rogue operatives who were more successful.<\/p>\n

The main focus of the remaining episodes revolved around finding Joe and getting her back, and also finding out who really kidnapped her and why. Time was ticking, and Kaitlyn knew that if the kidnappers kept Joe for too long, they may torture her until she breaks and spills U.S. secrets. Kaitlyn knew that, in the worst-case scenario, finding Joe too late may mean taking out the spies who abducted her and possibly having to neutralize her soldier and friend along with them.<\/p>\n

\n\tViewers were taken on a violent and grueling ride-along, as Joe\u2019s captors transported her and tortured her along the way as they tried to get out of the country. But in the end, she eventually fled her captors and returned home, and the past and present timelines seemed to meet. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut then came the shocking one-two twist at the end of the finale. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe first is that Joe walks into an empty home with a note left in the kitchen (the contents not revealed to the audience), empty drawers in her family\u2019s bedrooms and a \u201cFor Sale\u201d sign outside the house. She\u2019s left weeping in her daughter\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Michael Kelly<\/a>, who plays CIA Deputy Director of Operations Byron Westfield, that ending shows how the entire season was about family and home. \u201cWhen something like this happens close to home, you see these characters react a little bit differently. You see emotions like you haven\u2019t seen before, because it\u2019s personal. You came for us, and it\u2019s not something the CIA typically deals with,\u201d he tells The Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything that happened along the way made Joe more vulnerable, as she had to confront the fears she has long had for herself and her family. While guarded and tucked away in a safe house after the first abduction attempt, she then found herself needing to explain to her daughters what she does for a living and why she won\u2019t quit her job even after it hit so close to home. \u201cEvil doesn\u2019t quit,\u201d she tells them of the country\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n

\n\tZoe Salda\u00f1a recently told THR that preparing for Joe\u2019s season three storyline was more taxing than the previous seasons, both physically and mentally. She dug deep to show Joe\u2019s anger and fears, but which one is Joe filled up with the most?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think both,\u201d Salda\u00f1a says. \u201cPart of the reason why Joe struggles so much is that fear keeps seeping in. She has to find ways to just muster the courage, to be fearless, because if she becomes afraid, then that means she\u2019s going to second guess any decision she may make on a whim. These decisions have to be made last minute, or people die, and if you\u2019re afraid, you second guess yourself so you\u2019re not operating on your skillsets and your instincts, and she knows that.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe also knows that Kaitlyn is constantly assessing her,\u201d she continues. \u201cThat\u2019s part of their friendship. They do have a very special bond. You don\u2019t have to show it. We\u2019ve seen versions of the type of bond between Kaitlyn and Joe, but through a masculine, male gaze. We\u2019ve never particularly seen women have such a stoic, disciplined relationship that is based on trust and respect and love for country. She knows that Kaitlyn is the end all be all, and she\u2019s constantly assessing her, like she\u2019s assessing anybody in the room. Her goal is to always assure Kaitlyn that she is the most trusted lioness that she has.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMichael Kelly as Byron Westfield and Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn in Lioness.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRyan Green\/Paramount+<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Nicole Kidman, she agrees there is great deal of love and respect between her Kaitlyn and Joe, but many times, it seems she can\u2019t show that care or concern. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe\u2019s all about protecting her country,\u201d Kidman explains to THR. \u201cShe\u2019s primarily stepped into, and is wired with, the military brain where she\u2019s able to go, \u2018This is what we deal with, and this is the strategy.\u2019 She\u2019s brilliant at that compartmentalizing. Also, the way in which she protects them is by being incredibly strategic, tough and unemotional, because if she gets caught up in emotions and feelings, she will not be able to do her job, and her job is to protect them and protect her country.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUnderneath that, though, even though she doesn\u2019t show it, she has empathy in the sense of, if you can\u2019t do this job, then I want you to go. Follow what you need to do. But I\u2019ve got to have the people in these jobs that are capable of doing them, because otherwise thousands of people die. Hundreds of thousands of people die. We\u2019re dealing with huge, huge issues and problems that if I don\u2019t have a team that is capable, then I have to move you on. So, but with Joe, she\u2019s close to her family. She knows her children, she knows her husband; so she gets pulled, fractured at different times. She has to pull away and detach.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back now, the writing was on the wall for Joe\u2019s family leaving, even though husband Neal and the kids still love her deeply, Dave Annable tells THR.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is that fear coming to fruition,\u201d he says. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t even know that it would have been a fear, that he would expect a couple of dead bodies on his front lawn because his wife has been found out. Reading that was extremely intense and exciting. To get to then see it, it worked. You really felt Neal\u2019s confusion and fear, and I think that sent him in a different trajectory on this third season.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think Neal lost control of everything\u201d he continues. \u201cNow, this is completely out of his control. His kids\u2019 lives are at risk, and that\u2019s a whole different conversation with his wife now that the stakes have been raised so high. This is now a personal battle between Neal and his wife and those choices and consequences. It\u2019s really a beautiful story to share and tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second big reveal of the finale then shows that, sometimes, it\u2019s the people who are collateral damage, or those who fall prey to the QRF\u2019s vicious and violent ways of doing their job, who may come back to haunt you. Though Joe and team don\u2019t know her kidnappers, it\u2019s revealed to the audience that season one\u2019s Aaliyah Amrohi (Stephanie Nur), now in Doha, Qatar, was behind the kidnapping \u2014 and she\u2019s not giving up because she wants revenge on Cruz.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a refresher, Aaliyah is the daughter of terrorist financier who was a target of Joe\u2019s team. Joe recruited Laysla De Oliveira character, Cruz, in season one to befriend Aaliyah so that she could get close and assassinate her father. Cruz and Aaliyah fall in love, however, and have an affair; Cruz then killed the new husband and father in front of Aaliyah, and escaped to QRF rescue. Joe and Cruz get into a big fight because Cruz didn\u2019t want to continue the mission, as she was in love the target\u2019s daughter. <\/p>\n

\n\tNow, as Lioness heads into a possible fourth season following that cliffhanger, Salda\u00f1a says she loves who Joe is, even with all her highs and lows, and her mistakes with family and career.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHere\u2019s the thing about striving for perfection: it\u2019s an ideology\u201d Salda\u00f1a says about Joe. \u201cYou wake up every day and tell yourself, \u2018I\u2019m just pursuing this goal, to be perfect.\u2019 What prevents you from doing that is your humanity. As humans, we\u2019re incredibly flawed. We\u2019re going to overlook something. And the difference is, with the humans who realize they failed who never try again to strive for this ideology. Compared to the human beings who, like Joe and Kaitlyn, recognize it and rise higher the next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe adds, \u201cJoe is definitely that person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tLioness is now streaming all of season three on Paramount+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains major spoilers from the season three finale of Lioness, \u201cThe Unraveling.\u201d] The season three finale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,73166,200132,5479,56229,282,51549],"class_list":["post-632831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lioness","tag-michael-kelly","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-taylor-sheridan","tag-tv","tag-zoe-saldana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}