Lioness Season 2 Review

Plot: Joe attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA’s spear in the war on terror.

Review: Let’s face it; that plot summary as provided by Rotten Tomatoes is about as generic and yawn-inducing as they come. Fortunately for us, the show in question is anything but. Dropping the “Spec Ops” prefix for a leaner title, Lioness’ second season also provides a (mostly) streamlined, and much improved, foray into the shadowy world of highly trained special operators and the government bureaucrats to whom they answer. Hewing much closer to reality than many similar action-forward shows and movies, Lioness continues writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s vision of marrying grounded violence with topical discussions and believable human drama. At only eight episodes, the same amount as the first season, Lioness S2 is right in the sweet spot of being neither too much nor too little.

Fellow The Action Elite reviewer David J. Moore gave season 1 of Lioness a 4.5 star rating (and that review was also where I first learned about the show), and many of his observations remain valid for season 2, hence my same rating. In broad strokes, this second follows the same basic formula as the first: there is a big bad out there doing villainous things, a new Lioness operative is brought on board to infiltrate the big bad’s inner circle, complications arise (as they do) as the plan unfolds, and lots of action and political maneuvering ensue. But it is clear that lessons were learned from S1 – the second season fine-tunes nearly every aspect of what made the show great to begin with, offering up a superior slice of military fiction.

It doesn’t hurt that the excellent cast all return and are generally given meatier material to work with. Taylor Sheridan projects have always managed to rope in serious talent, whether marquee names or not, and S2 continues that fine tradition.

Zoe Saldana returns as the show’s focal point, CIA spook (and all-around badass) Joe McNamara, and it’s her multifaceted performance that helps anchor the proceedings. Yes, this is ultimately a military action/drama, with a heavy focus on grounded tactical combat, but Lioness also delves into governmental maneuvering, interagency conflicts, and the

challenges of marriage and parenting. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Saldana capably navigates each of these disparate aspects, bringing her A-game to each and every scene, be they loud and hectic or quietly intimate.

But while Zoe’s character may be the main focus of Lioness, it is the supporting cast that helps elevate the show into something truly special. Nicole Kidman, Michael Kelly, and Morgan Freeman bring their usual gravitas and poise to their bureaucratic roles, while Jill Wagner, Jonah Wharton, LaMonica Garrett, Thad Luckinbill, and Laysla De Oliveira shine as Joe’s fellow combat operatives. S2’s new Lioness candidate, Genesis Rodriguez, more than holds her own as well, and is given a slightly different arc than her S1 counterpart. Hell, even Lioness’ creator Taylor Sheridan himself shows up for a few episodes as another military badass, though his cameo does start to feel like a bit of an ego stroke by the end credits.

Meanwhile, on the home front, Dave Annable and Hannah Love Lanier are given more to do than in S1 and therefore shine even brighter as Joe’s husband and oldest daughter, respectively. Whereas Joe’s personal life in the first season didn’t quite gel as well as it could have, it is handled much better here, and the slower parts of the show are more enjoyable as a result.

If there’s anywhere that the season falls a little flat, it’s with the villains. To be fair, S1’s big bad was largely removed from the equation until the last episode, but the threat he represented was well established and managed to permeate the entire proceedings. On the flipside, the villain given the most screen time in S2 isn’t actually the main bad guy at all, and the one that ostensibly IS the main villain is essentially a blink-and-you’ll-miss it sidenote. But then, right at the end, the show pivots to another set of villains, who also barely have any time to register (and are essentially killed off-screen), leaving the antagonist side of things quite underdeveloped. True, not every military show has (or needs to have) a boss level, and sometimes the villains are simply a generic “them”, but for a show that gets nearly everything else right, it seems a strange fumble.

Where the show does NOT fumble, however, is with the action. Season 1 was no slouch when it came to combat, giving many of the firefights the same frenetic feel as the border ambush in Sheridan’s excellent Sicario. Season 2 takes that same formula, remixes it just a bit… and then dials everything up to 11. You want close quarters shootouts? You got it. Long range kills? Yep. Firefights in vehicles? Damn skippy. Tanks and helicopters getting in on the action? Yuuuuuuuuuup. Nearly every single episode has some kind of throw-down, big or small, and they all deliver the goods. Bottom line – some of the sequences set a very high bar, and it’ll be interesting to see if S3, or other prestige mil-sim shows in general, can meet or exceed that level of quality.

My only other point of contention with Lioness S2 is with the ending. After a large firefight near the end of the last episode (which feels like a small-scale version of the claustrophobic shootouts in Black Hawk Down), we get only a few minutes to witness the aftermath, and then an even shorter amount of time with Joe returning home. And then the credits roll and that’s a wrap. Tsk tsk. Considering how tightly plotted most of Season 2 is, the rush near the end diminishes the show’s impact ever so slightly. But this is a minor nitpick in what is undeniably one hell of a ride.

I don’t know how Taylor Sheridan finds the time to not only write all the shows he’s got in various stages of production, let alone direct and star in some of the episodes, but I’m glad that he exhibits no signs of letting the Yellowstone franchise keep him away from projects with a heavier focus on military action. Especially projects which are a little more grounded in reality. I will gladly die on the John Wick hill any day of the week, but sometimes it’s nice to have a grittier, more true-to-life take on firefights and fisticuffs. If you’re already a fan of the first series, or have a soft spot in your heart for films like Zero Dark Thirty or Sicario, then watching Lioness S2 is a no-brainer. I purchased the DVD set from Amazon (two discs, not much in the way of fluff) for $20, and it was money well spent.