Joe orders a missile dropped on a target together with a 'lioness' when the lioness's tattoo of a cross is discovered. She is unhappy about having made that decision as she tells her boss Kaitlyn Meade. Cruz runs away from her abusive boyfriend after a disagreement between him and his friends. She falls on the door of the Marines office and is later recruited after her unusually high scores, even on the men's scale.
2
"The Beating"
John Hillcoat
Taylor Sheridan
July 23, 2023 (2023-07-23)
3
"Bruise Like a Fist"
Anthony Byrne
Story by : Taylor Sheridan and Thomas Brady Teleplay by : Taylor Sheridan
Lioness was announced in September 2020 as part of a Paramount+ programming slate unveiling.[10]
The series was renewed for a second season in May 2024.[4]
Sheridan penned all eight episodes of the first season and was set to return for the upcoming season as well.[11]
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.[4] 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.[11] On May 17, 2024, it was announced that Thad Luckinbill was promoted as a series regular for the second season.[5] Few days later, Genesis Rodriguez joined the cast in an undisclosed capacity for the second season.[20]
Filming began in Delaware in September 2022[21] and continued in Mallorca in January 2023.[22] In May 2023, it was announced that the series title was changed from LionesstoSpecial Ops: Lioness,[1] although the title card remained unchanged. The title reverted to the original title when the series was renewed for its second season.[2]
In May 2024, production for the second season officially began, relocating from the gritty streets of Baltimore, Maryland, to the expansive landscapes of Texas.[23] Sheridan was reported to be directing the third episode of the new season.[23]
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.[24][25]
Paramount+ unveiled a first-look trailer for the show on 8 June 2023.[26] The eight-part series premiered on 23 July 2023 on Paramount+ with two one-hour episodes, and subsequent episodes released weekly thereafter.[27]
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.[28]
This marked one of the first events to be canceled in response to the strike.[29]
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."[30]OnMetacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[31]
Despite praising the performances of Laysla De Oliveira and Zoe Saldana, Anita Singh of The 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".[32] Brian Lowry of CNN noted that "the series found a receptive audience that has fueled multiple prequels and made the prolific Sheridan's production kingdom one of the tallest peaks on Paramount Mountain".[33]
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.[34] Another writer from Collider, Michael John Petty, said the series "might work best as a one-and-done story".[35] 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".[36]
Jim HemphillofIndieWire 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".[37]
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."[38][39] Also based on the first episode, Variety criticised it as『cliché』and "shameless military propaganda".[24]
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.[2][40][41] 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.[42]Special Ops: Lioness emerged as one of the most-watched global series premieres on Paramount+ in 2023.[2]
^The series was originally announced as Lioness and that was the title used in the first season's title card. The "Special Ops" prefix was added for marketing purposes shortly before the release of season 1,[1] but was dropped as part of the season 2 renewal.[2]
^Park, Jae-hwan (September 12, 2023). "아시아콘텐츠어워즈&글로벌OTT어워즈 후보작 발표.. "더 글로리, 무빙, 만장적계절, 그리고 퍼스트러브하츠코이" [Asian Content Awards & Global OTT Awards Nominees Announced... "The Glory, Moving, All Seasons, and First Love Hatsukoi"] (in Korean). KBS. Retrieved September 12, 2023 – via Naver.
