I’m Running Out of Ways to Tell You How Insane ‘Lioness’ Is
Lioness traveled to new extremes last week. Looking for drugs, the secret CIA team hit a Mexican warehouse...but they found hundreds of children inside instead. Season 2 is non-stop chaos. Lioness is already dealing with a list of crimes, ranging from kidnapping a congresswoman to upsetting NATO’s world order with Chinese spies hiding in Mexico. Now that they’ve accidentally uncovered what is probably the largest child-trafficking ring in history, how will the Lioness team move on?
Well, Joe (Zoe Saldaña) is absolutely fuming. She screams at everyone when her team arrives back on base, including the mess officers who were making lunch when they barged in. “My intel said that warehouse was a transshipment station,” new recruit Gutierrez (Kirk Acevedo) explains in an effort that will win the award for Raspiest Voice on TV. Joe yells back, “IT IS A FUCKING TRANSSHIPMENT STATION!” in ALL CAPS. It’s rare you ever hear someone at full blast like this, but Saldaña really gives Lioness her all. “Those are children,” she tells Kyle (Thad Luckinbill), “and in two weeks they’re someone’s fucking sex toy.” Lovely content every week here on Lioness.
Naturally, Josephina Carrillo (Genesis Rodriguez) wants out of this mess. She “can’t wait to testify” against the team. The new Lioness agent struggles to grasp how she can look her loved ones in the eye and then break their whole world apart. “Could you do that?” she asks Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira). Easily. Fans of the first season will remember that Cruz certainly can do that. She tries to convince Carrillo that any person is evil if they profit off the suffering of others—even her father. “We can choose not to fight, but choosing not to fight is how warehouses fill up with children,” she says.
Still, Cruz doesn’t see why Josephina’s father should die. He isn’t their target. Why can’t the Department of Justice offer her father witness protection to flip sides? Joe is skeptical. “Everyone in his life is a spy,” she warns. “Cartels don’t use surveillance equipment. They use people, and their people are everywhere.” Joe makes the Los Tigres Mexican Cartel sound like they’re the John Wick assassin guild. After some coercion, Joe agrees to try a less violent approach. She holds a lot of respect for Cruz. “She’s better at this than I was,” she tells Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman). “She’s like me, except she doesn’t have a husband and two daughters.” If Cruz can help Carrillo flip her father without bloodshed, it’ll certainly make the mission easier.
Enter stage left: Pablo Carrillo. If you’re feeling lost, this is a great time to pause and remember what the hell is going on here. In the season 2 premiere, the Los Tigres cartel kidnapped a congresswoman. Joe and series creator Taylor Sheridan (playing a Delta Force operator named Cody) then led a rescue mission to save said congresswoman. The CIA believes that the random crime was meant to provoke the U.S. into attacking Mexico so that their aggression would anger NATO and allow China to invade Taiwan. Furthermore, the CIA insists that the Los Tigres cartel is harbouring a Chinese spy.
Whoever the Chinese threat is, they are the Lioness team’s real target. So the U.S. needs Josephina to connect her father to her uncle, the Los Tigres leader. From there, they should have enough access to uncover the identity of the Chinese agent and take them out. Got all that? I’m incredibly surprised that I do, especially since there’s a whole child-trafficking subplot now.
Anyway, it’s time for the Carrillo family to gather around the dinner table and witness Josephina’s father turn this reunion with his daughter into some bizarre sermon. He spouts his opinions about the world, starting off with his dissatisfaction that the military enlists women. Pablo’s own daughter was an Apache pilot, and he even makes note of how she should have earned a medal because of how few women even serve in that capacity. For some reason, he still doesn’t like it. When Cruz mentions that she served in the Marines, he remarks that our armed services have fallen ever since the U.S. allowed women and gender-nonconforming individuals to serve.
“The first sign an empire is failing is when its people question the institutions the empire was built on,” he says. I feel like I’m on the Death Star. “They destroy the wrong symbols, attack themselves like a cancer, attack the people who protect the empire, and then the wolves come,” he continues. “The emperor will be slaughtered. And a new empire will rise from its ashes. Then the cycle begins again.” The room remains silent. Great dinner-table talk, dad! “Eat the soup first,” he says, quickly changing the conversation. “It’s very refreshing.” This man is unhinged. I can’t see him flipping sides.
Meanwhile, Gutierrez leads a rogue assault on the traffickers with the rest of Joe’s team. I thought Joe was heading home to spend time with her family, but she’s part of the hit squad as well. She’s tracking a young girl from the warehouse. Plus, the CIA doesn’t know a thing about this mission. They would never have approved it.
I don’t know how many combatants Joe’s team expected to find here, but they face heavy gunfire under the cover of darkness. Armed drones tear up Gutierrez’s team and some DEA agents. Joe makes it to the girl, but not before a man with a bomb strapped to his chest detonates the explosives and potentially kills everyone. What is happening here?! Joe survives, but that’s all the information we have until next week. Pure insanity.
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