Summary<\/p>\n
Lioness\u00a0finally sticks to a single timeline to handle Joe\u2019s kidnapping and the psychological and geopolitical implications of it, while suggesting a much more sophisticated twist has been afoot.<\/p>\n
You can feel the dread, can\u2019t you? Lioness<\/a> has always been pretty taut and high-stakes, obviously, and Season 3 has been no different, but there\u2019s a specific quality to it following last week\u2019s so-close-yet-so-far instalment<\/a>. Joe\u2019s predicament is bracingly serious. If she isn\u2019t found, she\u2019ll be transported to Iran and publicly tortured to death. If she is, but too late for a rescue, she\u2019ll be killed by her own government trying to avoid a geopolitical calamity. If she\u2019s found and the rescue goes wrong, she\u2019s also dead. If any of the perpetrators escape, the crisis hasn\u2019t been averted, and she can\u2019t even consider returning to a normal life. And that\u2019s if a normal life is even on the table after what she has experienced. This is the spectre that Episode 7, \u201cKiss the Girls\u201d, is unfolding under.<\/p>\n Admittedly, not for very long, since Joe is rescued fairly soon into the chapter, but the intensity doesn\u2019t go away. Importantly, neither does the emotion, which Taylor Sheridan<\/a> is careful to highlight in the aftermath. In fact, Joe\u2019s reaction to being rescued is one of the more powerful scenes in the show\u2019s history, because it upends the ooh-rah vibe of her classic \u201cI\u2019m the highest-ranking officer anywhere I go\u201d vibe and makes her truly vulnerable. But broken? Not quite.<\/p>\n We might as well talk about the rescue scene, since it\u2019s rare you get such an unambiguous fist-pump moment in contemporary TV. This, I suppose, is the advantage of dragging this out for so long \u2013 almost the entire season \u2013 and making audiences wait. After raiding the jet denied the Iranian transport team their primary exfil route, Babat\u2019s on the back foot, having to transport Joe to the border through quiet Texan backroads, which are fairly easy to monitor, especially when you\u2019re rolling in convoy. We get both sides of the equation: the QRF and local police preparing to make a move on the vehicles, and Joe inside, being told to stay silent under pain of death and, naturally, completely refusing to do so.<\/p>\n The whole thing\u2019s pretty perfect, really. Joe gets herself out of the car, but can\u2019t get away completely without assistance, which comes from the QRF chopper swooping in for an assist. But it isn\u2019t as if Joe gets away unscathed. She\u2019s psychologically ruined, collapsing into Cruz\u2019s arms in floods of tears. It\u2019s the best of both worlds; \u201cbest\u201d doing a lot of heavy lifting there, given the context, but you know what I mean.<\/p>\n Without Joe in custody, Lioness Season 3 loses its most pronounced source of tension. But it doesn\u2019t suffer for that since there are plenty of enormous implications swirling around the whole matter, not the least of which being who\u2019s responsible for this whole operation in the first place. Vengeful Iranian maniacs, Belarusian goons, Ukrainian double-agents, compromised college professors working for the Chinese state, and bought-and-paid-for U.S. diplomats taking bribes from the Russian SVR \u2013 how does it all fit together?<\/p>\n This becomes Kaitlyn and Byron\u2019s responsibility. You can tell things are desperate, since Kaitlyn and her husband are even willing to discuss work together, which leads them to a working theory \u2013 Ukraine was the only nation that stood to benefit from the operation\u2019s success, but wouldn\u2019t suffer if it failed. A lot of salient information came from inside the walls \u2013 porous though they might be \u2013 of U.S. intelligence, and it just so happens that a Ukrainian double-agent was recently flipped and safely set up in witness protection, where we know she was totally unmonitored for at least six months.<\/p>\n The pieces fit. Russia and China aren\u2019t ideologically inclined, but the big nations that are, including Iran, don\u2019t have the resources and infrastructure to pull off an operation of this scale and precision. Even without concrete proof, Oleksandra seems the likeliest suspect in having orchestrated an extremely complex long con to create geopolitical pressure around the U.S. and Russia that would, by proxy, benefit the Ukrainian war effort. Just in case you didn\u2019t think that Oleksandra was one of the best things about this season, the idea that she might have been pulling the strings this entire time elevates her into pretty serious villain territory. It\u2019s a great arc.<\/p>\n And the consequences are clear. Episode 7 is the only time that Lioness Season 3 hasn\u2019t done the whole dual timeline structure, since it\u2019s all set in the present, so we\u2019re left to linger in the implications of the kidnapping on Joe\u2019s personal life. Needless to say, it isn\u2019t going well. Neal and the kids are already struggling with not knowing anything concrete but knowing for a fact that something is amiss; Kaitlyn\u2019s promise that she\u2019ll be home that afternoon is very much an \u201cI\u2019ll believe it when I see it\u201d affair. And the scepticism is justified. Even when she\u2019s parked right outside, Joe would rather return to the office than the house. The fight isn\u2019t over; her sense of sanctuary has been demolished, and she\u2019ll probably never be the same again<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This finale can\u2019t come soon enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary Lioness\u00a0finally sticks to a single timeline to handle Joe\u2019s kidnapping and the psychological and geopolitical implications of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[147532,24516,96,178226,391,56,54,55,253923],"class_list":["post-769275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-action-adventure","tag-drama","tag-entertainment","tag-mystery-thriller","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-war-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}