• Source: Lioness (American TV series)

Lioness, also known as Special Ops: Lioness, is an American spy thriller television series created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on July 23, 2023, on Paramount+. In May 2024, the series was renewed for a second season which premiered on October 27, 2024.




Premise


Taylor Sheridan’s spy thriller follows Joe (Zoe Saldaña) who leads undercover CIA operations on the war on terror by enlisting women operatives that are known as Lionesses.




Cast






= Main

=
Zoe Saldaña as Joe, a CIA clandestine intelligence officer in charge of the Lioness program in the field
Laysla De Oliveira as Sergeant First Class Cruz Manuelos, a former Force Recon Marine and operative in the Lioness program, turned Delta Force operator after the events of season 1. She once again is recruited by Joe, to be a shadow to Josephina.
Genesis Rodriguez (season 2) as Captain Josephina Carrillo, a US Army Apache pilot recruited into the Lioness program due to her family connection to the Mexican cartel that kidnapped an American Congresswoman
Dave Annable as Neal McNamara, Joe's husband and a pediatric oncology surgeon
Jill Wagner as Bobby, team leader for the Lioness program's QRF
LaMonica Garrett as Tucker, QRF member
James Jordan as Two Cups, QRF member
Austin Hébert as Randy, QRF member
Jonah Wharton as Tex, QRF member
Stephanie Nur as Aaliyah Amrohi (season 1), the daughter of a suspected terrorist
Hannah Love Lanier as Kate, the teenage daughter of Joe and Neal
Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade, a high-ranking CIA official in the Lioness program and Joe's boss
Morgan Freeman (season 2; guest season 1) as U.S. Secretary of State Edwin Mullins
Thad Luckinbill as Kyle McManus (season 2; recurring season 1), a CIA officer and Joe's colleague
Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield (season 2, recurring season 1), the CIA Deputy Director and Kaitlyn's supervisor




= Recurring

=
Martin Donovan as Errol Meade, Kaitlyn's husband, a high ranking financial investor
Michael Tow as Dr. Hammond, Neal's colleague
Bruce McGill as NSA Advisor Hollar
Max Martini as Tracer, a former Delta Force operator working for the CIA and Bobby’s ex (season 2)
Kirk Acevedo as Gutierrez, a DEA Special Agent (season 2)
Patricia de Leon as Maria (season 2)
Taylor Sheridan as Cody Spears, a former Delta Force operator working for the CIA (season 2)
Greyson Queso Kennedy as Pete Westfield (season 2), son of Byron Westfield




= Guest

=
Jennifer Ehle as Mason, the White House Chief of Staff.
Ray Corasani as Ehsan
Sam Asghari as Kamal
Carla Mansour as Malika
Adam Budron as Sami
Sean Avery as Delta Force operator in bar
Bassem Youssef as Asmar Ali Amrohi, Aaliyah Amrohi's father and target billionaire businessman with ties to terrorist organizations
Richard Haddad as Asif




Episodes






= Series overview

=




= Season 1 (2023)

=




= Season 2 (2024)

=




Production






= Development

=
Lioness was announced in September 2020 as part of a Paramount+ programming slate unveiling.
The series was renewed for a second season in May 2024.
Sheridan penned all eight episodes of the first season and was set to return for the upcoming season as well.




= Casting

=
In February 2022, Zoe Saldaña was cast to star in the series, and joined as an executive producer alongside Nicole Kidman. Laysla De Oliveira joined the cast the following month. In June, Sheridan took over as showrunner of the series from Thomas Brady following the conclusion of the show's writers' room. Casting continued in September, with the additions of Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton and Hannah Love Lanier. In January 2023, Kidman and Michael Kelly joined the cast alongside Morgan Freeman.
On May 9, 2024, it was reported that returning cast members for season two include Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Michael Kelly, and Nicole Kidman, with Morgan Freeman being promoted to a series regular role. Upon the renewal becoming official on that same date, De Oliveira expressed her excitement about returning to her role as Cruz on her Instagram account. On May 17, 2024, it was announced that Thad Luckinbill was promoted as a series regular for the second season. Few days later, Genesis Rodriguez joined the cast in an undisclosed capacity for the second season. On September 13, 2024, Max Martini, Kirk Acevedo, and Patricia de Leon were cast in recurring roles for the second season.
It was later noted that Sheridan played a role named Cody - the KT tape-wrapped former SEAL who assured an iffy Joe.




= Filming

=
Filming began in Delaware in September 2022 and continued in Mallorca in January 2023. In May 2023, it was announced that the series title was changed from Lioness to Special Ops: Lioness, although the title card remained unchanged. The title reverted to the original title when the series was renewed for its second season.
Andrew Lockington composed the soundtrack for the series, having previously worked with Taylor Sheridan in Mayor of Kingstown. Lakeshore Records has released the series' soundtrack.
In May 2024, production for the second season officially began, relocating from the gritty streets of Baltimore, Maryland, to the expansive landscapes of Texas. Sheridan was reported to be directing the third episode of the new season. On August 29, 2024, Kelly announced that filming of the second season had been wrapped.




Inspiration


The series is very loosely based on the premise of "Team Lioness", where in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made to send female soldiers out with patrols, aiming to stop insurgents from using women to smuggle material because male US soldiers found it difficult to search Muslim women. These teams found themselves in direct combat situations, in violation of the Combat Exclusion Policy (changed only a decade later), which hindered the soldiers from getting veteran benefits after service.




Release


Paramount+ unveiled a first-look trailer for the show on 8 June 2023. The eight-part series premiered on 23 July 2023 on Paramount+ with two one-hour episodes, and subsequent episodes released weekly thereafter. The red carpet premiered for the series, initially slated for 18 July 2023 at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in Los Angeles, was canceled due to the impact of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike in the United States.
This marked one of the first events to be canceled in response to the strike.
The second season was released with a two-episode premiere on October 27, 2024.




Reception






= Critical response

=

For the first season, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 56% approval rating and an average rating of 6.1/10, based on 36 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Zoe Saldaña provides the energy of a Lioness, but these Special Ops are largely derivative and unconvincing." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Despite praising the performances of Laysla De Oliveira and Zoe Saldana, Anita Singh of The Daily Telegraph criticized "the one thing that lets the show down is Nicole Kidman as a CIA boss, whose frozen face these days is a total distraction".
Tania Hussain of Collider praised the performance of the cast but criticised the show as "flawed story" and found Taylor Sheridan was struggling to write about women. Another writer from Collider, Michael John Petty, said the series "might work best as a one-and-done story". Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter criticized the script as "seems to be constructed with the assumption that most of the audience will only be half-watching while scrolling Facebook on their phones anyway" but couldn't deny the fact that "there is one aspect of Special Ops: Lioness that shines through clear as day no matter how much or how little of your focus you've directed toward it, and that is its reverence for the U.S. Marine Corps".
Jim Hemphill of IndieWire praised the cinematography work of Paul Cameron as it "breaks all the cinematography rules" and "in Cameron's hands, even a standard dialogue scene between two actors has extra dynamism and energy that come simply from looking for unorthodox angles or alternating focal lengths in a manner that might seem counterintuitive".
Reviewer Mike Hale, writing for The New York Times, wrote that the show "turned out to be a moody, suspenseful, textured genre piece with characters you cared about," and that "Sheridan found a form, the action thriller, that suits him better than the western soap operas and contemporary crime dramas that he has produced up to now." Initially, when only screening the first episode, Hale wrote the show "looks like an awful lot of other counterterrorism thrillers, with a visceral punch to its action and a ticky-tacky, backlot feel." Also based on the first episode, Variety criticised it as "cliché" and "shameless military propaganda".
On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season has a 100% approval rating based on 7 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10.




= Audience viewership

=
The drama achieved a milestone by becoming the streamer's most-watched worldwide series premiere on launch day at the time, drawing nearly 6 million total viewers in its first week across Paramount+ globally and during a linear preview on the Paramount Network. This record was later surpassed by Lawmen: Bass Reeves, another series produced by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+. It garnered 7.5 million viewers worldwide within the first 7 days across Paramount+ and during a broadcast sampling run on CBS. Special Ops: Lioness emerged as one of the most-watched global series premieres on Paramount+ in 2023.




= Accolades

=




See also


2008 documentary Lioness, which is about one of the first members of Team Lioness in Ramadi, Iraq between 2003 and 2004.




Footnotes






References






External links


Official website on Paramount+
Lioness at IMDb

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