Taylor Sheridan's 'Lioness' Finale Fixes Season 2's Biggest Problem

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Lioness Season 3, Episode 8.Lioness Season 3 has been a major step up for Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ action thriller. The action is still brutal, Zoe Saldaña still carries an absurd amount of emotional weight as Joe McNamara, and the season’s central mystery kept me invested all the way through the finale. Then Season 3, Episode 8, “The Unraveling,” dropped its final reveal and rewrote everything I thought I knew about the season.

The plot twist also does something I didn’t realize Lioness needed until I saw it. Season 3 tells a much tighter story than Season 2, and we can trace the season finale to the beginning of Joe’s story. This gives Joe’s current nightmare a deeply personal connection. Season 4 hasn’t been confirmed, but if Sheridan wants to continue from Season 3’s ending, he has a fantastic place from which to start.

Season 3 Finally Gives ‘Lioness’ One Story to Follow

My biggest issue with Lioness Season 2 was never that Sheridan was taking big swings. That’s practically the show’s entire personality. The problem was that the season kept introducing new conflicts until the original story became difficult to keep track of. Season 2 opened with a Texas congresswoman’s kidnapping, then told a story about China invading Taiwan. By Episode 4, Joe’s team raided a warehouse and found hundreds of trafficked children, and a suicide bomber who killed the characters in the next episode. Later, the team flew to Iraq for a strike meant to send a message to Iran and China.

Each part of Lioness had a purpose and was hard-hitting. But it never felt like one coherent story. Halfway through the season, I had to wonder whether the show reached its real mission too late. I rewatched certain episodes to understand what was going on. While the Rotten Tomatoes Score of 90% over Season 3’s 86% proves critics like the season, I think it’s a messier one.

Season 3 keeps asking one question: Who kidnapped Joe? The show cuts between Joe in captivity and the days leading up to it. I braced for confusion. It never came, though. Thankfully, both timelines stay focused on the same mystery.

Every suspect changed what the CIA did. Russia looked guilty after Joe captured Yurimov, and the U.S. eventually gave him back for free. Ukraine looked guilty after Errol’s think tank pointed at it, and the CIA killed Oleksandra, its own protected asset. Then, Iran looked guilty when the Gitmo informant explained how middlemen “shopped” the job on the black market. While Season 2 kept changing the mission for its characters, Season 3 let their choices change the plot.

Season 3 Just Gave ‘Lioness’ Its Best Season 4 Setup Yet

Zoe Saldaña as Joe McNamara and Laysla De Oliveira as Cruz Manuelos in Lioness

The Lioness Season 3 finale is probably one of the most satisfying season finales I have seen in recent years. The answer to who kidnapped Joe is Aaliyah Amrohi, the bride from the Season 1 finale. Cruz infiltrated Aaliyah’s life in Season 1, and the operation ended with Aaliyah losing both her father, oil financier Asmar Ali Amrohi, and her fiancé, Ehsan, the night before the wedding. The final scene ends with her in Doha, Qatar, telling her associate to try again because “maybe third time’s the charm.” That means she paid for both attempts on Joe.

This gives Season 3 a villain with a face and a grudge, and that grudge started in Season 1. Back then, Cruz wasn’t on board with the mission, and she told Joe that all they did was “make the next generation of terrorists.” Aaliyah is proof of that. Yurimov’s speech on the jet fits her story, too. While capturing a soldier is part of war, taking someone from their home in front of their children is a crime.

This memorable ending also shapes Season 4. Aaliyah could have ordered a hit on Joe in Virginia, but she wants Joe alive as bait, so “the others will come to save her.” That is a wonderfully cruel way to bring the story back to Season 1 because Cruz’s relationship with Joe has completely changed since then. Laysla De Oliveira, who plays Cruz, told MovieWeb that Season 1 was “the most artistically fulfilling season” for her, and she’d love a new season to echo its structure.

We don’t know if Season 4 will happen, but if the show is renewed, Lioness is finally going to tell a story that I can’t wait to watch.