Lioness season three continues to thrill audiences this week, but fans have one big question about the Taylor Sheridan epic on Paramount+.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Lioness season 3, episode 3.
The third instalment of season three hit screens recently and ended on a troubling note as Joe McNamara (played by Zoe Saldaña) was seen being held by a group of men.
Flashforward and flashbacks
In a flash-forward, Joe was chained to a bed and still being held by the Russians. Joe could see a TV screen with footage of the US press secretary confirming that they had captured a Russian agent.
Meanwhile, the episode also featured scenes from six months earlier of Joe’s team trying to keep her daughters safe and facing an ambush, leaving the teens shaken.
Episode three additionally saw Joe and her fellow agents grilling supposed Ukrainian ally Oleksandra Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin). The team was suspicious that Oleksandra gave the Russians intelligence leading to the attack at Joe’s home.
Timeline explained
Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) and Charlie McNamara (Celestina Harris) begged Joe to give up her job following the attack on their home, however, their mother told them she couldn’t because she was a soldier and that they would keep coming.
Season three has two timelines running at the same time, six months apart, with the narrative switching between the two.
Six months earlier
Joe meets with an operative who has intelligence on one of Putin’s top people. They head to Ukraine in a mission that plays out like Star Wars and WWI “smashed together” involving both trench warfare and vicious canines mixed in deadly drone swarms.
When she returns from her operation in Ukraine, two men unexpectedly show up at her home and she kills them when they try to enter the property. An investigation begins about who gave up Joe’s identity as she and her family are now targets. Joe also suspects that the man they brought back from Ukraine isn’t actually the real asset.
Six months later
In the present, Joe is kidnapped while driving to work. She is tortured and interrogated with her tracker removed to stop her from being found. For the moment, she is still being held by the Russians but we don’t yet know why and for what purpose.
Meanwhile, Kate, Charlie and Joe’s husband Dr. Neal McNamara (Dave Annable) are being guarded to stop any further kidnap attempts. The team are desperately trying to locate Joe and get her back.
As season three unfolds, it will presumably become clear why Joe was taken, by whom and the events leading up to the abduction. It’s worth noting that in the season three opener, Joe told her husband she was now doing a nine to five job, hinting there was a major change in her role and came shortly before she was taken. This suggests that there were attempts to minimise the threat to Joe and her family by moving her into a different role - but these safeguards ultimately failed.
Lioness season 3 airs on Mondays on Paramount+.
