'Lioness' Season 3 Episode 8 Review: Finale So Bad That It Ruins The Whole Season

The finale of Lioness Season 3 is so bad that it makes the exercise of watching this whole season feel pointless. Directed by Michael Friedman and written by Taylor Sheridan, The Unraveling starts off with the CIA using every surveillance tech at their disposal to find any clue regarding who might have been behind Joe’s abduction. They zeroed in on an individual named Sokolov, and once Byron had confirmed with Errol that he is suspicious, he asked Kaitlyn to send a team after him. Kaitlyn tasked Kyle, Tex, and Randy with tailing Sokolov and seeing where that takes them. As per the conversation between Mullins, Byron, and Kaitlyn in episode 7, Oleksandra is picked up from her home in Oklahoma by Cody and Grady in order to be “moved” to another secure location; but it’s obvious that she’s about to be executed. Mullins, Byron, and Maxim sit down for a truce meeting regarding Yurimov’s release, which then veers into a discussion about the politics of invasion. Kaitlyn wakes up a clearly traumatized Joe and informs her that they are letting go of Yurimov because, firstly, he is useless to them, and secondly, the USA needs to cool down things with Russia, as they believe that they weren’t officially behind anything that’s happened on American soil. As Joe, Bobby, Cruz, Two Cups, and Josephina head to Gitmo to transport Yurimov, Joe makes a fatal decision that, as the title suggests, leads to her unraveling. And it’s implied that things are about to get worse for her because of the devolution of her relationship with her family and the reemergence of an “old friend.”

To be honest, the only highlight of the finale of Lioness Season 3 episode 8 is the conversation between Mullins, Byron, and Maxim, because it actually has something of substance to say about how every country views war and invasion. The invading country always thinks that the country they are invading is the worst. A country that’s viewing this invasion will judge the invaders for being demons, while ignoring the fact that they themselves are invading a country using the same logic of the invaders that they are judging. And if you make a list of all the countries that the USA has invaded, of its own accord or on behalf of the nation that shall go unnamed, no American should be surprised why their nation is the most hated in the world. Now, if that’s where Sheridan would have left things, regardless of what happens towards the end, I might have viewed this entire season positively. But no, he just had to sit Yurimov down with Joe to go on a rant about Iran. To be clear, if that conversation would have furthered the central thesis of the discourse between Mullin, Byron, and Maxim about how our feelings towards certain countries are formed because of the lens through which we are being forced to look at them, that would have been fine. However, Yurimov keeps saying “Iran bad” like a broken record, and then we get that ending, and Sheridan just lost me, because it makes the entire plot of this season a big, fat, red herring. I understand the need to do a “mindblowing” cliffhanger so that folks tune in for the next season, but at what cost are you doing that?

I kind of knew that the team behind Lioness had blown all its budget for the undeniably amazing shootout in episode 7, and the finale is going to be yet another episode where all the characters will be sitting in closed rooms and yapping. After watching the teaser for episode 8, I was aware of the fact that it was going to have a shootout in it, but I was mentally prepared for it to be really short. So, yeah, I wasn’t really surprised when everything ended up panning out exactly how I had anticipated. But just because I was expecting to be disappointed doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel any disappointment because, much like every other piece of art, it always pains me to see resources, time, and talent go to waste. I am sure there are people on Friedman’s team who would have liked to stage the shootout in an interesting way or craft any of the hundred scenes of people talking in rooms in an engaging fashion. However, for some inexplicable reason, they just aren’t allowed to. I mean, look at something like Reacher, which is in its fourth season and is constantly finding ways to use its budget to give us an enriching audio-visual experience. Meanwhile, here you have Sheridan, once associated with stuff like Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River, rebranding himself as the one of the laziest artists in existence. I know there’s no point in complaining about it, because this kind of uninventiness is what fans of his IPs want. But, hopefully, some of my criticism will seep through the cracks, inspire some change, and make shows like Lioness memorable for what they’re putting on the screen instead of all the stupid talking points they can come up with.

Performance-wise, most of what you get from the cast are variations of what you have already seen from them. Zoe does a great job of switching between panic and resolve. Laysla, Jill, James, and Genesis bounce off of each other and Zoe like it’s a walk in the park. Austin and LaMonica get one moment of vulnerability and it’s pretty good. Nicole, Martin, and Morgan continue to be the most underutilized players in this game. I knew that Jack Dimich was going to get several dialogue-heavy scenes after being silent throughout the season. However, I guess it was my mistake to expect it to be the highlight amongst all the dialogue-heavy scenes in the season finale because, as soon as he started yapping, I wanted him to stop. Sandi Todorovic also gets extensive conversation scenes, but either due to the writing or the limitations of his acting skills, his scenes didn’t work at all for me. Elizaveta Neretin is clearly talented as hell, but yeah, what a waste. With all that said, it was quite entertaining to see the one and only Michael Kelly absolutely lose his cool. We rarely get to see him do that, because he always plays the calm and collected operator. And I hope that his screams keep getting used efficiently in this franchise as well as anything else that he appears in. Does that improve the overall quality of the season finale? No, definitely not. Lioness Season 3 had a lot of potential, but it has clearly been squandered to make some shallow political points. Maybe that benefits Sheridan and his ilk in some way, but it doesn’t benefit me as a viewer at all. Will I be tuning in for Season 4? If I have to, yeah; if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t be touching it with a ten-foot pole.