Lioness Review: Season 2 of Zoe Salda?a Spy Thriller Is One of the Year’s Best Shows
Paramount+’s Lioness may have shed its “Special Ops”: prefix for Season 2, but it made significant gains everywhere else.
Simply said, the Zoe Salda?a-led spy thriller’s sophomore run is fantastic, and stands as one of the year’s best TV shows. The only thing keeping it from an “A+” grade is that at times it gets so into the weeds of intelligence gathering and hair-trigger geopolitical issues, it can be a bit hard to follow. But if that is your jam (as it is mine), a rip-roaring thrill ride awaits.
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Hailing from the prolific Taylor Sheridan (of the Yellowstone franchise but also, of note, 2015’s Sicario) and inspired by an actual U.S. Military program, Lioness follows CIA station chief Joe McNamara (played by MCU vet and executive producer Zoe Salda?a) as she attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA’s spear in the war on terror.
The series also again stars executive producers Nicole Kidman and Jill Wagner, plus Morgan Freeman, Michael Kelly, Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, Laysla De Oliveira (Season 1’s titular operative, Cruz Ma?uelos), James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton, Thad Luckinbill and Hannah Love Lanier. Among those new for Season 2 is Genesis Rodriguez (The Umbrella Academy) as Captain Josephina “Josie” Carillo, a fierce helicopter pilot.
What sets Season 2 in motion (the premiere drops this Sunday, Oct. 27; I’ve seen the first four episodes) is the kidnapping of a U.S. congresswoman because of, let’s say, her stance on border issues. During an election year. (Yeah, we’re doing that.) But because this crisis and its aftermath unfolds so close to the U.S., as opposed to last season’s Middle-East-based drama, Joe and her team need to tread ever-so-carefully when executing their new Lioness op. Any and all eyes up the U.S. government food chain are locked squarely on them, which results in more scenes featuring Freeman (as Secretary of State Mullins), Kidman (as Joe’s superior, Kaitlyn) and Kelly (as CIA Deputy Director Westfield).
The season opener alone is gangbusters, starting with the brutal abduction of the congresswoman and building to a white-knuckle firefight that in each and every way out-SEAL Team‘s Paramount+’s own SEAL Team; Sheridan clearly was handed a much bigger checkbook.
Salda?a was very good in Season 1; here she is a force of f–king nature, as her own character would put it. In Season 1 you were asked to accept that Joe is large and in charge; here she commands scenes in a bracing, electrifying manner. Whether you think Kidman is being cast in too many TV roles these days, there is no arguing that her Kaitlyn Meade is a super-savvy, stone cold spook, and she fills the roll well. Her increased screentime also means more of Martin Donovan as Kaitlyn’s enigmatic financial investor husband, who clearly knows more about any geopolitical situation than most anyone else in any given room. The guy fascinates.
Luckinbill was upped to series regular for Season 2, and his CIA officer Kyle in turn is promoted to a full-on foil for Joe. Whether you agree with the audibles Kyle calls while out in the field, Luckinbill has you quietly rooting for the guy. Rodriguez, whose pilot is added to Joe’s team due to her particular set of skills, enjoys one of the most rousing character introductions in recent TV memory, and she does compelling, engaging work in the episodes that follow. Wagner, Garrett, Jordan, Hebert and Wharton, as Joe’s reliable QRF team, once again generously share scene-steaming moments, though Wagner’s tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed Bobby continues to be a standout.
Joe’s home life is again explored, in between (and amid) moments of professional crisis, but with a smidgen more transparency than that which kept her at arm’s length from husband Neal (Annable) and their two daughters in Season 1. (Joe and Neal are also decidedly hornier in Season 2, to a degree that I had no choice but to type that sentence.) All told, four episodes in, the home scenes feel more organic and better-deployed, and thus are more welcome, whereas in Season 1 they sometimes interrupted momentum.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Lioness abso-f–king-lutely roars in its second season. If this kind of show is your jam, do not miss it.
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