{"id":585066,"date":"2026-08-30T16:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/585066\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T16:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:16:18","slug":"lioness-season-3-episode-5-recap-the-idiot-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/585066\/","title":{"rendered":"Lioness Season 3, Episode 5 Recap: \u201cThe Idiot Army\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/fre\/static\/icons\/clock-regular.4ddebeb.svg\" alt=\"Estimated read time\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>4 min read<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"0\" class=\"body-dropcap css-192e1dt emevuu60\">What does the average person really know about being in the<br data-node-id=\"0.1\"\/>CIA? The answer\u2014not much!\u2014shouldn\u2019t surprise you. As a reader commented on our recap of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73308982\/lioness-season-3-episode-1-recap\/\" target=\"_self\" data-vars-ga-outbound-link=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73308982\/lioness-season-3-episode-1-recap\/\" data-vars-ga-ux-element=\"Hyperlink\" data-vars-ga-call-to-action=\"Lioness\" data-node-id=\"0.3\" class=\"body-link css-jpo0au emevuu60\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Lioness<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73477610\/lioness-season-3-episode-4-recap\/\" target=\"_self\" data-vars-ga-outbound-link=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73477610\/lioness-season-3-episode-4-recap\/\" data-vars-ga-ux-element=\"Hyperlink\" data-vars-ga-call-to-action=\"episode 4\" data-node-id=\"0.5\" class=\"body-link css-jpo0au emevuu60\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">episode 4<\/a> last week, their father-in-law was in the CIA and they never learned anything. \u201cWorked there 40 years and he died without me (or his daughter) know[ing] anything he did,\u201d they wrote. Scary!<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"1\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">That\u2019s no longer the case for Joe (Zoe Salda\u00f1a). The war came knocking on her front door in Lioness season 3, and now her family waits to hear if the CIA actually has her back when shit hits the fan. I couldn\u2019t tell you if screaming \u201cI\u2019m blackjacked!\u201d or running one honeypot setup after another are CIA norms\u2014though I didn\u2019t read about either from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73453734\/real-lioness-program-taylor-sheridan-lioness\/\" target=\"_self\" data-vars-ga-outbound-link=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a73453734\/real-lioness-program-taylor-sheridan-lioness\/\" data-vars-ga-ux-element=\"Hyperlink\" data-vars-ga-call-to-action=\"the real-life Lionesses who complained\" data-node-id=\"1.3\" class=\"body-link css-jpo0au emevuu60\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the real-life Lionesses who complained<\/a> about how Taylor Sheridan\u2019s version of their CIA unit is Hollywood-ified. But if Lioness can fully commit to the plot of \u201cfind our girl\u201d now that Joe is kidnapped, then it shouldn\u2019t be too hard to fulfill the kind of high-energy action that launched a thousand Taken films from here on out.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"2\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Season 3, episode 5 is titled \u201cThe Idiot Army,\u201d and I imagine that\u2019s not because we call ourselves that. But after seeing the operations that the Lioness team pulls off in the first ten minutes, I can\u2019t say what we did was anything more than two quick honeypot schemes. Neither of which, by the way, felt like the quickest options available. The visual of this software engineer caught with his pants down was a nice touch, sure. But there\u2019s no reason why Joe and her team couldn\u2019t have just skipped the threesome farce and interrogated him other than the fact that Lioness probably wanted the sexy opening.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"4\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">So, they slap around this poor failson named Cade who had no idea what he was getting himself into when he started leaking NSA information to foreign agents. Elsewhere, ol\u2019 Two Cups (James Jordan) pulls off nearly the exact same operation. Despite having a wife and four children, he takes home a stripper and has sex with her. The plan? Well, when she calls her Russian handlers to entrap him the next morning, the Lioness team can bust down the doors and apprehend them. Like I said, there wasn\u2019t a simpler solution here? Or did Two Cups just really want to cheat on his wife \u201cin the name of national security?\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"5\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Somehow, all this literal fucking around will eventually lead to Joe\u2019s kidnapping. We\u2019re still in the past here in Lioness season 3\u2019s timeline, even though we have a far more exciting plot ahead of us.<\/p>\n<p><img draggable=\"true\" alt=\"l r michael kelly as byron westfield and nicole kidman as kaitlyn in lioness, episode 5, season 3, streaming on paramount, 2026 photo credit ryan greenparamount\" title=\"l r michael kelly as byron westfield and nicole kidman as kaitlyn in lioness, episode 5, season 3, streaming on paramount, 2026 photo credit ryan greenparamount\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"3000\" height=\"2000\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent;width:100%;height:auto;\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6f7a3ad1-61e5-4f78-b898-b340cff761b0.jpg\" class=\"css-0 e1ddfba50\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ryan Green<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"7\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Instead, we spend the first half of episode 5 in interrogations as our characters threaten our new honeypotted detainees with prison time, torture, rape, and every horrible thing imaginable while they smirk in their faces.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"8\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">There are so many numbers flying around this episode. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna be charged with 18 U.S. Code 1831 and 18 U.S.C. 793-794,\u201d Kaitlyn tells one of the suspects they apprehended. \u201cI don\u2019t know what those mean,\u201d he responds. Neither do we! Same goes for when an FBI head questions why the CIA violated \u201cthe National Security Act of 1947 and Executive Act 12333.\u201d Joe later states that since they\u2019re acting in the interest of national security they don\u2019t need to read them their \u201cMiranda rights, fourth, fifth, or fourteenth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"9\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Morgan Freeman\u2019s secretary of state character is the only person in this episode who feels like he\u2019s on our side. \u201cCan we pause the dick-measuring here?\u201d Freeman says. If only the numbers were that simple.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"10\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">So, Joe explains that some professor at an unnamed university coerced and blackmailed their suspects into leaking information to Russia and China. He\u2019s a communist sympathizer with a $270,000 annual salary and a beach house, so he doesn\u2019t sound very communist to them. But when they show up to one of his classes later, he\u2019s spouting so much boilerplate communist ideology that a baby could understand what was going on. \u201cI guess you\u2019ll be surrendering your money and your property to the U.S. government after all,\u201d Joe jokes. Guys like these, she says, are the real idiot army.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"11\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Back during their meeting with the secretary of state, Kaitlyn also invokes \u201cT.S. clearance\u201d and states that the information she is about to provide is \u201cYankee White Only.\u201d (It\u2019s insane how much my brain is working overtime this episode.) Apparently, the CIA possesses knowledge of several Russian sources in the U.S. working as executives of TV networks, senior editors at The Washington Post, court judges, members of the House of Representatives, and two senators.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"12\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">This is the real meat here\u2014and where we likely should\u2019ve started this whole plot. Joe suggests flipping them back to our side instead of arresting them, and one of the Cabinet members flat out says: \u201cExplain that.\u201d I\u2019m surprised. I thought she would try to honeypot them, but this episode isn\u2019t anywhere near done its lengthy exposition dumps. Because we can\u2019t forget that, back in the present, Joe is still being held hostage by Russian agents. That\u2019s what all this is leading toward, after all, despite a stream of  espionage distractions filled with codebook arrests and a clear lack of basic human freedoms. Before we learn why any of this is important, however, it seems this split timeline might continue all the way until the finale.<\/p>\n<p data-journey-content=\"true\" data-node-id=\"13\" class=\"css-1ood0zq emevuu60\">Maybe one more honeypot sting will do the trick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4 min read What does the average person really know about being in theCIA? The answer\u2014not much!\u2014shouldn\u2019t surprise&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2115,288069,2117,156,207184,2462,111,139,69,161788,288068,251090,158515,437],"class_list":["post-585066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-0c511351-abea-4d97-a47c-4289bf719e62","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-entertainment","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-read_time-5","tag-shorttitle-u003ciu003cemlionessu003c-emu003c-i-is-all-about-honeypotting-now-but-why","tag-sponsored-false","tag-subsection-tv","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}