Lioness Episode 6 Finally Introduces the Villain

5 min readEspionage is a tough business. At some point, you’re likely going to have to look the other way while a fellow spy does some horrific act in the name of country. It happens a lot in Lioness, which is part of what makes the Taylor Sheridan CIA drama stand apart from Reacher, The Night Agent, and many other task force shows. The first two seasons sent female operatives deep undercover abroad, where they were forced to question their mission, who they were fighting for, and what they might become when they return.But season 3, which has largely followed the Lioness team as they attempt to rescue their team leader Joe (Zoe Saldaña) after she was kidnapped, isn’t operating in the gray as much as before. Not only have most undercover ops been reduced to swift, honeypot schemes, but most of what the Lioness team does is now pitched as the fight for freedom—as long as it’s American freedom.Take a scene early in season 3, episode 6, for instance, when Joe explains how the news operates to her mouth-agape husband Neil (Dave Annable). “The news is the propaganda arm of whoever has the greatest influence over the organization reporting it,” she says, and she’s not wrong. Just look at the fire new CBS head Bari Weiss was forced to try and put out this week after the news station randomly brought up 9/11 as it covered the latest from Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.While we should hope that our news sources are reporting objective and unbiased happenings around the world, it’s clearly not always the case. Still, while Joe is right to acknowledge this fact, Lioness mostly drops Joe’s beliefs there and moves on. Why? Because she’s currently working for the “propaganda arm of whoever has the greatest influence” right now—her CIA unit that operates completely outside of the law.Ryan GreenNeil hasn’t left this spot in front of the TV for two episodes now.When she speaks about the Russian agents who do the same work that she does, just for another country, she says that “the only thing they deserve is to be forgotten.” They are “people who value their worldview over your safety and your freedom,” she tells her daughter, as if she is doing anything different.I’d love to see Lioness explore this more in the back half of the season. One of the best moments of season 1 was when Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) was forced to reckon with the fact that everything she did on her mission was less for the good of humanity and more to fix oil prices. And The Agency, another spy series on Paramount, might have had the best morally gray spy series on TV during its debut season. But Lioness Season 3, in contrast, is just a simple rescue mission. Figure out who kidnapped Joe and then save her.Ryan GreenWhat are Lioness’s politics, exactly?Since that likely won’t happen until the finale, we cut back to the past first to wrap up our plot on the first attack on Joe’s life six months prior. While meeting with a senator accused of selling secrets to the Russians, Joe and Kaitlyn read over how they uncovered various payments from Russia that were funneled through think tanks and shell companies that eventually made their way into his campaign funds.U.S. Secretary of State Morgan Freeman reminds the senator that they call that “treason” around D.C. So, they force him to resign or face jail time. Then, when everyone leaves the table, Joe—ever the optimist—presents him with a third option: “You could kill yourself.”The senator drives away sweaty and suicidal as he listens to the radio go on about how our schools are filled with Russian and Chinese counterintelligence thinkers who aim to imprint communist beliefs onto our youngest minds. I’ve heard this belief once per episode so far, and it’s a bit troubling how much it seems to be on Taylor Sheridan’s mind this season—especially as he also lambasts the news for its nonobjective reporting early this episode. Sheridan’s politics remain a puzzle as always.Whatever the reason, this plot ends with our senator taking up Joe’s suggestion. He unbuckles his seatbelt, pushes down on the gas until the car reaches more than 100 miles per hour, and then drives headfirst into oncoming traffic. “Piece of shit got off easy,” Joe says. Sure, but that was literally your idea.Anyway, Joe believes that she’s safe to go home now that they’ve caught all the officials leaking information to Russia. “Everybody that wanted to hurt me” is gone, she says, “and they’re not coming back.”Ryan GreenLoving the amount of Morgan Freeman in season 3 so far.She couldn’t be more wrong. When we return to the present—which Lioness refers to this time as “six weeks after blackjack on Raven,” reminding viewers of the hilarious code words used in the premiere—Joe remains kidnapped by Russian agents... or so we thought.In Tulsa, Oklahoma, our Russian defector, who is actually Ukrainian, is living out her new life in Witness Protection when CIA officer Kyle (Thad Luckinbill) finally breaks through the case. She tells Kyle that Joe’s kidnapping might be completely unattached to their dealings with Russia. In fact, it may even stem from her business with Iran in season 2. Remember, when an issue on the Mexico-United States border somehow involved both China and Iran? Well, it’s unconfirmed so far—even after Ryan’s team eventually finds the plane set to take Joe out of the country.Ryan GreenWhere are they taking Joe?Elsewhere, two CIA agents are told to move on from a potential safe house that looks abandoned, even though they insist that it’s possible Joe is inside. They’re right, and it’s here that Joe’s captor is finally revealed. His name is Babat, and he states that he is here to take Joe to her death. He threatens her with even more torture, rape, stoning, and terrible things that will force her to beg for him to kill her. Then, he says, he will set her on fire so that “her eyes will explode from the heat.” Babat is a very sadistic man, it seems. But we get the picture—this man hates Joe’s guts.“Babat?” Joe responds. “Sounds the word my daughter made up when she took her first shit in the toilet.” Damn, roasted.So, Babat cuts off her pinky toe with a knife, and she screams in his face like she does when Neytiri is struck by an arrow in Avatar: Fire and Ash. With no way out of the country now that the CIA found their exit strategy, Babat needs a new escape plan. I just hope the Lioness team can find that missing toe fast enough.