Taylor Sheridan’s Special Ops: Lioness is your traditional by-the-book action-espionage series, with one notable exception: female characters are at the front and center of the story as their personal experiences, burdens of social expectations, responsibilities both at the home and front, and success with beating gender norms make for a compelling watch. Given the fact that in most similar spy narratives, the role of women when it comes to on-field duty, infiltration, and information extraction is heavily understated or sidelined, Special Ops: Lioness makes the most of the premise by simply showcasing the added edge provided by female perspective in the conflicts and messes created by men. However, the narrative treatment itself feels a bit dated due to the naivety conveyed through the military glorification and lack of nuance when it comes to presenting the conflict between the opposing forces of the army and terrorists, which definitely isn’t a deal-breaker by any means, just feels a little off.
The first season of Special Ops: Lioness was received with acclaim and strong viewership. As the upcoming season drops later this week, let us take a look at everything you need to remember to get into the groove with ease.
Spoilers Ahead
The Lioness Program
The Lioness Program in the series is inspired by the real-life covert military initiative of the CIA during the Iraq War in 2003, when a group of selected female soldiers were sent to infiltrate terrorist groups and rebels to stop illegal weapon smuggling via female sleeper cell agents. Aside from espionage missions, these secretive agents had to often deal with direct combat situations as well. The TV series takes this initiative a step further with its own version of the Lioness program, which prepares selected female operatives to gain the trust of the opposition by living a dual life, eliminate targets to minimize collateral damage, and extract and manipulate information at the same time. Set in the present day, the series focuses on the chief of the Lioness program, Joe McNamara, a tough as nails leader whose dedication to the forces is as admirable as it is dangerous for her own self. Administrative hierarchy is quickly established, with Kaitlyn Meade, played by Nicole Kidman, as the chief overseer of the program, Byron Westfield as Kaitlyn’s boss, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Edwin Mullins, played by Morgan Freeman, as the Secretary of State, supervising the entire situation. The very first episode introduces the risks involved with the Lioness program, as stationed at the CIA to take on ISIS, Joe ends up sacrificing one of the Lioness operatives, Isabel, after she gets compromised during the mission. The decision was not an easy one to take, but between the choice of the terrorists torturing the agent to death in order to extract information and calling an airstrike to demolish the enemy base along with the agent, Joe chose the latter to spare Isabel a miserable end. Despite the demanding nature of the program, operatives are treated as nothing more than a liability when things go awry—that’s the reality of state-propagated conflicts.
Joe’s Personal Life in Shambles
As the chief of the Lioness Program, Joe has to spend the majority of her time away from her family—her pediatrician husband, Neil, and their teenage daughters, Kate and Charlie. Neil is a supportive and understanding husband, but he too has his plate full with answering their daughters, handling his professional life, and Joe’s absence when it matters the most. Joe hides the truth of her profession from her daughters to keep them from harm’s way, but the continual absence of their mother doesn’t sit well with Kate, who has started to detest Joe. Ultimately, as Kate gets involved in a terrible car accident and is revealed to have been pregnant as well, Joe realizes how much she has failed as a parent, and in the aftermath of this event, she gives her word to her husband Neil that she will quit the agency to opt for a job that allows her to be with her family. By the end, though, it remains a mystery whether Joe is able to keep his promise after all and whether she indeed prioritizes her family.
Cruz’s Tragic Past and First Mission
Much of the narrative focus in the first season of Special Ops: Lioness stays with Cruz Manuelos, the newest recruit to the Lioness program. Cruz is a survivor who has been put into an increasingly tough situation in life from the get-go. After losing both her parents, Cruz had to fend for herself from a young age, and later in her life, she got entangled with an abusive boyfriend who made her life a living hell. Unable to put up with his inhumane treatment of her, Cruz decided to fight back one day, and as she escaped from him, by sheer coincidence, Cruz ended up in an army recruitment office. From that point onwards, Cruz didn’t have to look back in life as she became a highly skilled marine after channeling her inner rage and pent-up feelings into training, besting her male comrades while doing so. Without a past to go back to and relationships to hold on to, Cruz is the perfect candidate for the Lioness mission, or so Joe thought while recruiting her and forcing her through a nightmarish training regimen to meet the demands of her duties as the newest candidate to the program. Isabel’s plight made Joe push her comrades to the limit, but with Cruz, she went over the top to prepare her for every kind of troubling scenario.
Cruz’s first mission turns out to involve extracting information from an Iranian business magnet, Asmar Ali Amrohi, who is a not-so-secret patron of terrorist activities throughout the Middle East. To reach Asmar, Cruz is assigned to gain the trust of his daughter, Aaliyah, forging a new identity, and Cruz’s mixed heritage provides her advantage. After initial hiccups due to deliberate lack of information, Cruz eventually hits it off with Aaliyah soon enough by pretending to be Zara, an exchange student from the States. As Cruz needs to accompany Aaliyah and her socialite friends too often, things don’t go smoothly, and she continues to get into jeopardy, beginning with a pervert spiking her drink to take advantage of her, but Joe and the rest of her Lioness unit are by her side as they teach the man a lesson by beating the lights out of him, all while maintaining their secrecy. Cruz tiptoes through a series of similar situations where her cover almost gets blown but she manages to hold her own. Aaliyah is getting married to a rich investor, Ehsan, who probably has ties with terrorist cells as well, and wants to make the last few days of her freedom memorable. Aaliyah falls for Cruz, and this complicates things big time, although it was quite expected from the beginning. Having an emotionally traumatized person assigned a job that demands earning someone’s trust was never the safest option, and feeling loved for the first time, Cruz is caught up between her responsibilities and personal feelings. The fact that Joe remains busy at the time with a situation back in the States involving a cartel, which nearly derails the entire Lioness program, makes things worse for Cruz. Kaitlyn, who is aware of Joe’s personal and professional life woes, helps her to pull things through when the situation calls for it, helping Lioness to stay afloat.
Conflict of Interests
Joe manages to drag Cruz’s mind back to business by forcibly reminding her what she is fighting for and drawing the lines through binaries. But as Cruz arrives at Aaliyah’s wedding venue in Spain, where Asmar is going to be present as well, Mullins and his advisors begin to share their discomfort as they fear the presence of the operative could complicate things. Asmar has ties to control the oil trade in the Middle East, making him a high-value target for all major superpowers of the world, and all of a sudden Mullins demands to extract Cruz out of her current location. With the mission already underway, the demand is pointless, which is promptly revealed to the Secretary of State by Byron, who is not willing to toy with his operatives just because the high seat demanded it. However, Byron relays the information to Kaitlyn, who reveals that it is too late to call off the operation, and the only way out for Cruz is completing her mission by gaining intel from Asmar.
However, Aaliyah’s fiancé, Ehsan, grows skeptical of Cruz’s past after she calls out his sickening patriarchal mentality, and he is able to learn that she is a former US Marine. At night, reeling from the pain of her eventual separation from Aaliyah, Cruz meets with Asmar for the first time and has a nice little chat when Ehsan arrives at the spot to expose Cruz’s true identity. She has no choice but to brutally murder both of them and call for extraction. Joe and her Lioness unit successfully rescue Cruz, taking her to safety by engaging with Asmar’s guards—but in doing so, they have displeased Mullins and the rest of the higher-ups as the States’ control over Middle East oil goes down the gutter after Asmar’s death with the States involvement. Cruz lashes out at Joe as she hates herself for what the mission has turned her into and decides to quit the Lioness program. It remains unknown whether Joe does the same as well, as she returns to her family at long last.
What To Expect From Season 2?
While the second season trailer of Special Ops: Lioness doesn’t reveal much, we do learn that Joe didn’t quit her job at force as the chief of the Lioness Program and that Cruz’s story has probably ended with the first season. The second season will introduce another new recruit to the Lioness initiative, Captain Josephina Carrillo, whose mettle will be tested as the team tackles a new threat this time around. From the looks of it, Kaitlyn Meade seems to have a bigger role to play in the upcoming season, with Byron and Mullins returning to sort out their differences in approach.
