Ever heard of Wikiracing? The game consists of navigating from one Wikipedia page to another by clicking on internal hyperlinks. The goal? Reach a designated page faster than your opponent. Say, for example, how quickly can you get from the page about sea turtles to one about The Gettysburg Address?
I bring up Wikiracing because it has a lot in common with how I imagine Taylor Sheridan writes Lioness—his Paramount+ drama about an elite, all-female unit of the CIA. Last season began with the Mexican cartel kidnapping a Texas congresswoman and ended with an attack on the border orchestrated by Iran. The country aimed to distract the U.S. from its separate plot to acquire Chinese scientists to work for the Middle East’s nuclear weapons program. That I was able to follow any of it was a godsend. And with how much the world has changed since season 2 aired in late 2024, I can only image what insane global conflicts he’s connected his zig-zagged dots to for season 3.
The trailers for this season hint at a digital war, which is new territory for Sheridan. Outside of Landman’s conversations over FaceTime, or the one episode in season 2 where the oil workers scoffed at the futility of the AI machines at an Oil and Gas Expo, Sheridan doesn’t really bother himself with plots around the dangers of technology.
Shows like The Madison and Yellowstone abhor modernity, naturally. “The city” as a concept is evil enough, let alone anything made of metal that isn’t a gun, some spurs, or a fishing rod. It’s an element made to rust, and, as matter of fact, it works even better when it’s old and worn-in. So, I expect that Lioness senior case officer Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) will view drone warfare and the all-seeing eye of the surveillance state as advancements with far more cons than pros—even if the CIA believes otherwise.
There’s no point sitting around and wondering what will happen in Lioness, because there’s barely any time to react to anything anyway. The gist for season 3—following a montage of news bulletins alerting Joe about “an explosion at an explosives plant” and war in every country on Earth—is that there’s been another kidnapping. One morning, Joe leaves her house and is ripped from her car. She screams, “I’m blackjacked! I’m blackjacked!” as the men take her away.
We’ll have to wait on that one, though, because Lioness immediately cuts back to six months earlier, before I assume some sort of data breach in the CIA leaks everyone’s identities. Joe and her team head to the front lines of Donetsk, Ukraine, where Taylor Sheridan’s character Sergeant Major Cody Spears reappears to outline their mission. They’re out to capture a senior Russian officer, who only Joe can identify. “Until we have the target, you are the mission,” he tells her.
So, Sheridan and the crew down C4 energy drinks, load up their guns, and join a battlefield of killer drones, crotch-ripping dogs, and indiscriminate gunfire. “This place, it’s like World War I and Star Wars slammed into each other,” CIA officer Kyle McManus (Thad Luckinbill) adds. God help us if Sheridan’s character starts to feel the Force, but it’s a nice taste of how his live-action Call of Duty film with Peter Berg might move in a few years. Warfare looks like video games more than ever before.
The team switches from traversing trenches to invading a bunker to tracking the Russian officer down an underground tunnel. Sheridan orders “dogs!” at least half a dozen times, and the canines tear their enemies to shreds before the squad rains lead on them to finish the job. The mission to capture this Russian officer, for whatever it’s worth to the U.S. government, is a thrilling success. And the pacing—even for Lioness—is the right kind of insane.
Anyway, we were talking about Joe’s cover getting blown before this, right? Well, when Joe returns home that night, two unnamed men knock on her door claiming to be state police. After they attempt to break in, Joe shoots them both before calling in the attack. Eventually in season 3, I’m sure we’ll land back at her kidnapping. Remember, we started at her car hijacking and then somehow ended at the frontlines of the Russo-Ukrainian war? It’s breakneck Lioness Wikiraces at its finest—and just the way we like it.
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