On a deceptively quiet Sunday in Sugar Land, the affluent Houston suburb hums along with its usual manicured calm: matching homes, trimmed lawns and neighbors who appear blissfully unaware of what is unfolding behind one of those polished façades. No frantic Nextdoor alert will warn residents that a covert operative is being tortured inside a bland McMansion. No curtain-twitching homeowner will spot Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña), shrouded and handcuffed to a chair in a bare upstairs room, surrounded by armed Russians. America’s sprawl has its advantages, and anonymity is one of them. Six days after she was knocked out on Raven and secretly moved from Baltimore to Texas, Joe is forced to confront a grim truth: rescue may not come in time. In Episode 6 of Lioness Season 3 on Paramount+, her predicament reaches its most desperate point yet.
Before the season’s present-past structure crashes into its final stretch — with only three episodes remaining — the story rewinds six months, where the outlook is far more favorable. The team’s sweep of Russian assets is paying off in a big way. Compromised Americans and their handlers are in custody, while much of the Russian embassy in Washington is being expelled. The resulting “espionage scandal” has erupted into national headlines. At Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse in D.C., Secretary of State Mullins (Morgan Freeman) is almost gleeful as he corners Senator Olson (Joe Nemmers), whose role in the operation has been exposed. Mullins offers him a choice: resign immediately or face a public treason prosecution. After Mullins exits, Joe presents an even darker third option. “You could kill yourself.” To her, Olson is not merely a corrupt politician; he belongs in the same moral category as the people who came after her family.
Olson takes the CIA case officer’s chilling suggestion to heart. Within minutes, panic overtakes him. Sweating, unraveling and unable to face what is coming, the senator steers his Mercedes directly into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer. Tucker (LaMonica Garrett) and Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), watching from the follow vehicle, can only register the aftermath. “The coward’s way out,” Tucker tells Joe, who shows no sign of pity.
The fallout from the operation lifts the mood at the safe house. For the first time in a while, Joe seems lighter, laughing and sparring playfully with Neal (Dave Annable). “That’s not the soldier in me, that’s the Dominican in me,” she jokes, giving Kate and Charlie a rare glimpse of their parents at ease. Joe even reassures the girls that the family will be able to go home because the people who wanted her dead will not be returning. But comfort quickly turns into instruction. “They don’t deserve your fear, and they forfeited their right to your compassion,” she tells them. Much like her earlier “kill for this life” speech, Joe continues to school her daughters in the brutal code of the Lioness universe — and, by extension, the Sheridan-O-Verse — where problems are settled violently, and the hardened people who do the settling are framed as righteous for bearing the burden.
“Jackpot on plane, four bandits down.” Back in the present, six days after Joe’s abduction, Oleksandra’s (Elizaveta Neretin) intelligence has helped Kyle (Thad Luckinbill) and the Delta Force crew track the jet to Texas. The listed flight plan points to the Caribbean, but the aircraft is carrying 40,000 pounds of fuel — enough avgas to reach Russia, or possibly the Middle East. The pilot refuses to answer Kyle’s questions. Outside the plane, when the crew surrounds Grady and pulls weapons, they are swiftly eliminated. The discovery tells the team they are closing in on Joe, prompting them to fan out across the Houston area and check known Russian SVR safe houses. In Sugar Land, Renat (Dimitry Rozental) and his armed men watch from darkened windows as Randy (Austin Hébert) and Tex (Jonah Wharton) conduct a slow observational drive-by. Sensing the net tightening, Joe’s captor makes an urgent call. “You need a new out. They’re circling. Now come get your problem before we throw her in the street.”
Who did Renat call? He and his men are Russian speakers, and given the action in the Lioness past, Russia always seemed the likely culprit for Joe’s predicament. Tied to her chair, still in the shroud, she hears a new voice in the room. “I am here to take you to your death,” a bearded man named Babat (Kamyar Jahan) tells her, and gives commands to his men in Farsi. Joe, for her part, remains unbroken, and insults this guy once the shroud comes off. But she can only scream when he unfolds a blade and hacks off a toe without hesitation. In just a few moments, Babat has elevated the awful stakes of her capture, and as Renat – the guy we were led to believe was in charge – steals off into the Texas night, Joe’s new crew of captors haul her into a truck for transport. Their promises of even more torture, of being stoned by children, and of a terrible death by fire illustrate how close yet far away the team really is.
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QRF for Lioness Season 3 Episode 6 (“Sugar Land”):
- This episode features another great scene with Elizaveta Neretin as Oleksandra Balakin. We haven’t heard anything definite about a Lioness Season 4, but in our version, Oleksa joins Joe and the team full-time.
- FBO FBO FBO FBO – what the hell is an FBO? Taylor Sheridan loves to have his characters spout undefined acronyms, and this one stands for “fixed-base operator,” essentially a privately owned and operated airstrip. People saying FBO are all over this ep of Lioness, just like they were in Landman.
- “Brother, I am getting fucking flanked out here.” As Grady, when Ian Bohen says this during the gunfight at the jet, we flashed back to when Bohen said essentially the same line as Evan in Wind River. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, the 2017 film is like a Sheridan-O-Verse incubator – Bohen’s in there, as is James “Two Cups” Jordan, as is Kelsey Asbille, as are Jeremy Renner and Hugh Dillon from Mayor of Kingstown.