[This story contains major spoilers from the season three finale of Lioness, “The Unraveling.”]

Read more Sombr Says Nepo Baby Claims Are “Incredibly Insane”

The season three finale of Lioness initially made viewers think that the good guys had won to cap another season of the Taylor Sheridan Paramount+ series about a deadly female CIA-operative unit led by commander Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) and her high-ranking CIA boss, Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman).

The first two seasons of Lioness focused on the missions of Joe’s team, known as a Quick Reaction Force (or QRF). QRF is a branch of the CIA whose jobs are more straightforward than probably any other operatives within the agency: they rescue compromised American government officials or assets and eliminate (a.k.a kill) anyone who threatens the democracy of the country they have sworn to protect. They generally don’t capture and bring in prisoners.

But with season three, Sheridan (who returned this season as Cody Spears) gave Lioness a different bent on the daily lives of Joe and her team by featuring a dual-timeline showing Joe and team going to Ukraine six months prior to capture a valuable Russian asset operating behind enemy lines, a seemingly too-good-to-be true gift offered to them by a Ukrainian Russian double agent operating in the U.S. named Oleksandra Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin).

Soon after the abduction in Ukraine, two believed-to-be Russian spies pretending to be local policemen in Fairfax, Virginia, showed up at Joe’s house late at night to forcibly kidnap her while her husband, Neal (Dave Annable), and two daughters, Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) and Charlie (Celestina Harris), were asleep upstairs. They were unsuccessful, however, as Joe shot them dead in front of her home (witnessed by Neal). But six months later, while driving to work, Joe was ambushed again by Russian rogue operatives who were more successful.

The main focus of the remaining episodes revolved around finding Joe and getting her back, and also finding out who really kidnapped her and why. Time was ticking, and Kaitlyn knew that if the kidnappers kept Joe for too long, they may torture her until she breaks and spills U.S. secrets. Kaitlyn knew that, in the worst-case scenario, finding Joe too late may mean taking out the spies who abducted her and possibly having to neutralize her soldier and friend along with them.

Viewers were taken on a violent and grueling ride-along, as Joe’s captors transported her and tortured her along the way as they tried to get out of the country. But in the end, she eventually fled her captors and returned home, and the past and present timelines seemed to meet.

But then came the shocking one-two twist at the end of the finale.

The first is that Joe walks into an empty home with a note left in the kitchen (the contents not revealed to the audience), empty drawers in her family’s bedrooms and a “For Sale” sign outside the house. She’s left weeping in her daughter’s bedroom.

For Michael Kelly, who plays CIA Deputy Director of Operations Byron Westfield, that ending shows how the entire season was about family and home. “When something like this happens close to home, you see these characters react a little bit differently. You see emotions like you haven’t seen before, because it’s personal. You came for us, and it’s not something the CIA typically deals with,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Everything that happened along the way made Joe more vulnerable, as she had to confront the fears she has long had for herself and her family. While guarded and tucked away in a safe house after the first abduction attempt, she then found herself needing to explain to her daughters what she does for a living and why she won’t quit her job even after it hit so close to home. “Evil doesn’t quit,” she tells them of the country’s enemies.

Zoe Saldaña recently told THR that preparing for Joe’s season three storyline was more taxing than the previous seasons, both physically and mentally. She dug deep to show Joe’s anger and fears, but which one is Joe filled up with the most?

“I think both,” Saldaña says. “Part of the reason why Joe struggles so much is that fear keeps seeping in. She has to find ways to just muster the courage, to be fearless, because if she becomes afraid, then that means she’s going to second guess any decision she may make on a whim. These decisions have to be made last minute, or people die, and if you’re afraid, you second guess yourself so you’re not operating on your skillsets and your instincts, and she knows that.

“She also knows that Kaitlyn is constantly assessing her,” she continues. “That’s part of their friendship. They do have a very special bond. You don’t have to show it. We’ve seen versions of the type of bond between Kaitlyn and Joe, but through a masculine, male gaze. We’ve never particularly seen women have such a stoic, disciplined relationship that is based on trust and respect and love for country. She knows that Kaitlyn is the end all be all, and she’s constantly assessing her, like she’s assessing anybody in the room. Her goal is to always assure Kaitlyn that she is the most trusted lioness that she has.”

Read more Robert Eggers Tackling ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Adaptation as Focus Wins Bidding War (Exclusive)

For Nicole Kidman, she agrees there is great deal of love and respect between her Kaitlyn and Joe, but many times, it seems she can’t show that care or concern.

“She’s all about protecting her country,” Kidman explains to THR. “She’s primarily stepped into, and is wired with, the military brain where she’s able to go, ‘This is what we deal with, and this is the strategy.’ She’s brilliant at that compartmentalizing. Also, the way in which she protects them is by being incredibly strategic, tough and unemotional, because if she gets caught up in emotions and feelings, she will not be able to do her job, and her job is to protect them and protect her country.

“Underneath that, though, even though she doesn’t show it, she has empathy in the sense of, if you can’t do this job, then I want you to go. Follow what you need to do. But I’ve got to have the people in these jobs that are capable of doing them, because otherwise thousands of people die. Hundreds of thousands of people die. We’re dealing with huge, huge issues and problems that if I don’t have a team that is capable, then I have to move you on. So, but with Joe, she’s close to her family. She knows her children, she knows her husband; so she gets pulled, fractured at different times. She has to pull away and detach.

Looking back now, the writing was on the wall for Joe’s family leaving, even though husband Neal and the kids still love her deeply, Dave Annable tells THR.

“This is that fear coming to fruition,” he says. “I wouldn’t even know that it would have been a fear, that he would expect a couple of dead bodies on his front lawn because his wife has been found out. Reading that was extremely intense and exciting. To get to then see it, it worked. You really felt Neal’s confusion and fear, and I think that sent him in a different trajectory on this third season.

“I think Neal lost control of everything” he continues. “Now, this is completely out of his control. His kids’ lives are at risk, and that’s a whole different conversation with his wife now that the stakes have been raised so high. This is now a personal battle between Neal and his wife and those choices and consequences. It’s really a beautiful story to share and tell.”

The second big reveal of the finale then shows that, sometimes, it’s the people who are collateral damage, or those who fall prey to the QRF’s vicious and violent ways of doing their job, who may come back to haunt you. Though Joe and team don’t know her kidnappers, it’s revealed to the audience that season one’s Aaliyah Amrohi (Stephanie Nur), now in Doha, Qatar, was behind the kidnapping — and she’s not giving up because she wants revenge on Cruz.

For a refresher, Aaliyah is the daughter of terrorist financier who was a target of Joe’s team. Joe recruited Laysla De Oliveira character, Cruz, in season one to befriend Aaliyah so that she could get close and assassinate her father. Cruz and Aaliyah fall in love, however, and have an affair; Cruz then killed the new husband and father in front of Aaliyah, and escaped to QRF rescue. Joe and Cruz get into a big fight because Cruz didn’t want to continue the mission, as she was in love the target’s daughter.

Now, as Lioness heads into a possible fourth season following that cliffhanger, Saldaña says she loves who Joe is, even with all her highs and lows, and her mistakes with family and career.

“Here’s the thing about striving for perfection: it’s an ideology” Saldaña says about Joe. “You wake up every day and tell yourself, ‘I’m just pursuing this goal, to be perfect.’ What prevents you from doing that is your humanity. As humans, we’re incredibly flawed. We’re going to overlook something. And the difference is, with the humans who realize they failed who never try again to strive for this ideology. Compared to the human beings who, like Joe and Kaitlyn, recognize it and rise higher the next time.”

Read more Sony Lands Michelle Yeoh Action Movie ‘The Surgeon’

She adds, “Joe is definitely that person.”

***

Lioness is now streaming all of season three on Paramount+.