Lioness Season 2 started off with a bang and I'm officially hooked, if season one was not enough, this season also open with awesome action scenes but with just enough drama to keep you wanting more. It was a wild ride and I wanted more in the first two episodes. From the beginning we are thrown into the deep end with a high stakes mission that will be the theme of the entire season, although through the third episode it kinda shift focus but I will probably talk about it once I get to that episode. The show wastes no time in building up the tension as it starts off with a night time raid that goes very wrong. Instead, we see a team of tactical operatives storming a residence, only to kidnap Congresswoman Hernandez and then kill her husband and her kid. This turn south operation is the thing that is the catalyst for everything that happens from then on, and it’s clear that the risk and importance are higher than ever for our Lioness team, different than season one this starts already with a victim giving the Lioness an immediate purpose.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13111078/
- Platform: Amazon
When Joe hears about Hernandez being kidnapped, she is thrown back into action, and the show does a great job of showcasing how Joe’s work life constantly interrupts her family time, almost like hitting play and pause every five minutes. You can feel this palpable tension on her, the struggle she has as a mother and a CIA operative, at least on season two her family is more familiar with her line of work and things are not supper secret as before. She is struggling so hard to keep her professional and personal life separated and you really feel for Joe. But it's the scenes with her family that are climatic especially when she has to say goodbye to her husband and kids before heading off on a dangerous mission. You can tell from her face the weight of her responsibilities, which gives the action packed plot an extra layer of emotional depth, Zoe Zaldaña does such a great job at looking fierce and vulnerable making her acting great all along this TV series.
The rescue mission to get Congresswoman Hernandez is one of those action scenes I was referring too that keeps you on the edge with Joe and her team, including some new guys like Cody, have to go into Mexico and extract Hernandez from the clutches of a cartel, kinda give you Sicario (2015) vibes. It’s intense action sequences with a great sense of danger, unpredictability watching them going into the unknown, but the show doesn’t spare any punches in showing you the brutal reality of these operations, and it really makes you understand the risks these people take every day, this actually happens in real life, might not be every day but where do you think they come up with this stories?.
What I particularly liked about these episodes was how they got into the morality of the Lioness program, the double edge of what can be done and should not but still possible with the right authority in place. And we see Joe trying to deal with the moral implications of her work, as she is told to execute her job 'without pity' makes it fascinating to watch Joe navigate these murky waters on the lines between right and wrong even gray areas of law and jurisdiction. It feels like the lines are getting more or less blurred.
In the second episode, "I Love My Country," Joe and her team goes to Iraq where they are called to secure a new operative, the soon to be new Lioness. This is a whole new mission set of challenges and it really brings to light the global scale of the Lioness program, they need someone with ties to the Cartel, this this case with a cover up story and turns out this person is within the US Army itself. I also felt that the Iraq scenes were quite tense, but it was just a bit obvious at the opening when they face all of the sudden armed men right after Joe ask what happens if they get attacked, come on. Still this is not a war documentary so I guess they have to make it entertaining and why then we have this HUGE Apache intervension that comes rescue Joe and her team, blasting the enemy from the sky.
Through these episodes and basically the entire series we see Joe's personal life continue to fall apart from the pressure of her work and I always wonder if at some point her husband going to get tired of it although he does look like he is constantly simping on her to be honest. You can just tell the emotional toll a mission like that would take on Joe, and there’s this moment where he calls home right after a shooting and who wouldn't considering you could have almost died and left behind an entire family that is expecting you. She’s trying so hard to keep it together for her kids, it's these quiet, personal moments that really help lift up the show's emotional punch and make Joe such a relatable complicated, moody character.
After a risky but successful mission with the entire show form bending rules, been out of jurisdiction even when they are they good guy, its time, Joe’s ominous declaration that “Now we play offense,” we know there’s going to be a lot of forward motion in the season to come. There is no doubt that Joe and her team will go to extremes to get to the truth, if they need to make personal sacrifices in the process with casualties but so far none of the core team has died making me feel its kinda out of reality but still its a show but how far will the writers keep them alive, can't dance with the devil and just get out of it without a scratch. All in all, the show has been really good at giving us multiple, separate story lines and conflicts that I can’t wait to see develop themselves over the rest of the season.
With the first two episodes of Lioness Season 2, the show is off to a strong start, to me so far its an 8/10 for sure, competing even with the recent success of The Penguin but on two separate atmospheres one been a more dark and underground gangster battle with this been a high profile top secret constant mission that never ends, there is always a new mission with a new target. I’m already excited for the rest of the season, Lioness Season 2 is a must watch if you’re a fan of intense, character driven espionage shows, to put an example if you are a fan of SIX (2017) or SEAL TEAM, then you are going to love Lioness, not exactly the same but similar vibes.
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