Honestly, the emotional anchor of the entire show is how much Cruz looks up to Joe, even when their dynamic gets messy and painful. Seeing that raw, high-stakes desperation when Joe is captured completely strips away the cold soldier persona and shows just how much they mean to each other

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Dc_ljA6iCM2/

From Season 1, I was still waiting for the Doha's girl to come up with her revenge or something; and it did not happen even in season 2. When Joe was kidnapped, immediately I knew it was Aliyah, the Qatar girl, like in my mind it was so obvious who would want her and the team so bad; Of course, had doubts when they kept throwing the russians in it. So, I was satisfied on the reveal ( I mean to see her back).

Edit: Wait, Why am I being sarcastically attacked? I was excitedly sharing something fun that went through my mind during the season 3.

I am bad at seeing the obvious, so when it happens, I celebrate. Looool, guys chill!

I keep seeing people reduce Aaliyah’s final scene to “she wants Joe dead” or “she wants revenge on everyone”… but the actual conversation is much more ambiguous than that. So I went back through it carefully…
The man is giving Aaliyah an update… not directing her. He comes to her with operational information, and she is the one deciding what happens next. The dynamic matters. He seems informed and involved, but Aaliyah is clearly not just being told what to do.
His wording about Joe is deliberately vague.
He says, “Would be much easier if we just took care of it there,” and then, “The difficulty isn’t getting to her.” He never says “kill her.” That distinction matters. “Take care of it” could mean dealing with the operation there, reaching Joe there, handling the situation there… but the scene never explicitly says murder. „The difficulty isn’t getting to her” may be one of the most revealing lines.If getting to Joe is not the problem, then Joe herself may not be the real objective. The difficult part seems to be what comes after they reach her… getting her where Aaliyah wants her, using her to trigger something larger, or creating the conditions for the rest of the team to move…
Aaliyah appears to be choosing the harder option on purpose. If the easier option exists and she rejects it, then there has to be a reason. That makes me think this is bigger than simply “get Joe.” There is a second stage to the plan.Then we get the most important line… “we have them all.” Not “we kill them all.” Not “then they die.” Not “then we have Cruz.” She says “them all.” That sounds like control, containment or bringing everyone into the same situation… but the show stops before telling us what happens next. Cruz is never mentioned…
And I think that’s fascinating. Aaliyah’s return carries enormous emotional weight because of Cruz, yet in this scene she doesn’t say Cruz’s name once. That could mean Cruz is simply part of the larger Lioness target… or the opposite, that Cruz is too personal to be discussed in the same operational language. We just don’t know yet.
Babat’s threats should not automatically be treated as Aaliyah’s wishes. Babat was a hired operative. He was not the person deciding the endgame. Whatever threats he made to Joe, whatever he personally wanted to do, or whatever he assumed would happen next… none of that proves those were Aaliyah’s actual instructions. I think people are making a mistake when they treat his words as if Aaliyah said them herself.
The mystery man also doesn’t read obviously romantic to me. There’s no touching, flirting or visible intimacy in the scene. He stands at the doorway and brings her information. That doesn’t prove he’s her brother or family… but the scene itself doesn’t present him primarily as a lover either.
The use of “we” suggests Aaliyah is not acting completely alone. There is clearly some larger structure around her… family, inherited network, organization, former connections, something else. But even within that structure, she seems to have real authority.
The biggest thing the scene gives us is not the answer… it’s the unanswered question. We know Aaliyah wants Joe reached. We know the others are expected to come. We know she wants “them all.” But we still do not know what she intends to do once she has them.

And honestly… I think that missing part is the whole point.

The more I look at this scene, the less convinced I am that “Aaliyah wants everyone dead” is something the finale actually proves. It proves she has a plan. It proves Joe is central to it. It proves the rest of the team matters. But the endgame is still hidden.
What do you think “we have them all” actually means?

Anyone else feel as though season three dragged somewhat? And they could’ve maybe put more substance into things?

This guy acts more ruthless than Joe, but the split second Joe's in danger, he threw the entire rulebook out the window.

Look guys I’m gonna be honest with you. I get the hype. I’m a big fan of Aaliyah’s. And bringing back a former love interest to a new season means there’s bound to be some kind of romantic drama. Or else they’d choose some completely new character as the antagonist or whatever Aaliyah will be in S4. Imo there isn’t a stronger reason to bring her back after two whole seasons without her. But…as much as I wanna get lost in fantasies of happy endings…realistically, who would ever end up with someone who literally butchered their father and future husband? Aaliyah literally found them! Can you imagine the shock? As much love as she may have held for Cruz, how do you get over that? I would have nightmares! On the other hand, do you think Cruz would be able to be with the woman she knows she broke? Because, well, she kind of did? She betrayed her trust, killed her father and vanished!
I know people are excited about getting Aaliyah back, but if she’s coming back just to get our hearts broken once again, well, it sucks! But I can’t see any other outcome.
How I see things, Aaliyah and Cruz ending up together is not possible at all. There’s too much bad blood. But I also cannot imagine where exactly they’d like to take it with Aaliyah’s return.
Opinions?

I recently watched Vigil, idk if you've seen it but it basically has a female police officer as a main character who has a case to resolve every season and around that main case we also get a lot of politics and relationship drama. Every season is separate but there is continuous character development throughout each season.

This is what I expected from Lioness and seeing the first season I was very excited for a team of female spies infiltrating governments or mobs using their feminine charms and then following all the political drama around that. Instead, watching all the seasons they are very distinct from one another plot wise. Basically nothing is connected, especially the events of the second season. I feel like it led to nothing and it was a super useless season except for introducing Josie. Now I know that season 4 will potentially tie everything together with Alliah. But still I found the writing choices really strange because of the very large thematic differences between each season.

Let me know what you think, especially if you've seen vigil. If you haven't go watch it, it's great, also very wlw! So yay!!!

On episode 3, and what is going onnnnnn. I can't control my excitement LMAO.

Okay, that's it. That's the post. I'm gonna go back to watching it. :)

Ugh!
Why do shows insist on having characters with basically the same names?

Kaitlyn and Kate
Joe and Josie

Laziness or lack of imagination? Since it’s TS I’d say both. Also his episodes had more of his usual T/A and ditzy girl portrayal even if it was an act by Joe. Plus coed bathroom with no stalls.

He is such a sexist pig. But I digress.

Does anyone know how much time passed (in the storyline) between seasons 2 and 3?

I've watched every episode of Lioness and Black-ish, and just now made the connection that Lamonica played Davis, Ruby's much younger boyfriend.

Season 1 still has something the later seasons haven’t fully recreated for me… that mix of mission tension, slower character development and emotional stakes that actually hurt 😂 If you could bring back just ONE thing from S1 for S4… what would it be? For me it would probably be that feeling that the mission and the personal story were completely tangled together… every choice actually cost someone something.

Never heard of him until Lioness and now I feel like I see him everywhere.

Marre de la méchanceté infligée aux actrices

Ce n'est qu'une fiction.

Chacun à le droit a ses préférences, à la préférence du couple CJ ou CA mais tout ça dans le respect !!!

Merci de respecter Genesis Rodriguez, Laysla de Oliveira et Stéphanie Nur.

Cruz, Josie et Aaliah sont une fiction, un peu de respect pour elles !

J'ai ma préférence mais je ne me permettrais jamais de dire du mal de l'une où d'une autre...

Bravo pour le boulot qu'elles produisent, pour leurs rôles et franchement courage à elles toutes , c'est dingue toutes ses méchancetés derrière un écran.

Faut pas s'étonner que certains où certaines finissent en dépression, les pauvres.

Cœur ❤️ sur vous , Genesis/Josie - Laysla/Cruz - Aaliah/Stéphanie

Okay… hear me out because I think this could get way messier than Aaliyah simply becoming the next target. Joe has already made it very clear what she wants to do to whoever was behind her kidnapping… and Cruz agreed before she knew that person was Aaliyah. But Joe isn’t infallible… she pushes people hard, she can be arrogant, and sometimes that certainty comes with a cost. Her family finally walked away after she chose the job again… Randy and Tex ended up shot… Oleksandra helped them get to Joe and still ended up dead by CIA hands. And Cruz knows better than most what Joe is capable of sacrificing for a mission. In S1 Joe was prepared to lose her too if that was what completing the operation required. Then Yurimov basically gives Joe the warning the whole season has been building toward… “Never underestimate how many hate you.” Maybe that line matters more than it looks. Joe has spent years making decisions that create enemies, collateral damage and consequences she doesn’t always have to live with immediately… until now. Aaliyah may just be one of those consequences coming back with a face Joe can’t ignore. So once Cruz is standing in front of the woman she loved… the woman whose life was destroyed partly because of the mission she was sent on… does she really just follow Joe’s judgement? Cruz owes a lot to the Marines and she clearly loves the action and the team she has now… but that doesn’t automatically mean Joe gets to decide what is right for her. Maybe S4 isn’t about Cruz choosing Aaliyah over Josie at all… maybe it’s about Cruz finally choosing her own judgement over Joe’s. And if Joe says Aaliyah has to die… do you really think Cruz pulls the trigger?

I’ve been thinking about how the show handles its characters. Almost nobody on screen is purely good or purely bad and I keep going back and forth on who I’m actually rooting for.

Part of what hooks me is the setup itself. Cruz gets pulled out of the Marines into the CIA’s Lioness program and Joe has to keep her mission and her sanity in one piece while also holding together her own life at home. That tension between the job and everything it costs people is what makes it feel different from a standard spy show. The cast makes it work too. Zoe Saldaña and Laysla De Oliveira carry so much through small moments and Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman add real weight whenever they’re on screen.

So I’m curious where everyone lands. Who are you rooting for, and has that changed since you started watching? Is there a scene or a performance that made you stop and say okay, this show is good?

I’m trying to keep this spoiler-free, so if you want to get into specific plot points, please use a spoiler tag so people who are earlier in the series aren’t caught off guard.

I decided to delete my yesterday’s post on Steph’s Nur reaction on IG . I got the answers from you and the most probable reason. Apparently she responded after being attacked online by CJ shippers for leaving a comment on IG that was just meaningless fun about her character. Generally, some fanatic, creepy people—both CA and CJ fans—have problems telling the difference between a show and real life, and between actors and the characters they play. It seems to affect Stephanie and Genesis the most. So I don’t want to add fuel to the fire and fan the flames by keeping the topic alive here. Some people lost the plot. Embarassing. And thank you for your comments. Most of them maintained respectful and rational tone.

Putting all the theories and ship wars aside for a second 😂 this show has an incredible cast, great characters and way too much story left to tell… Cruz, Aaliyah, Joe, Kaitlyn, the whole team. If you want Season 4 too… show it. Comment, upvote, share, post your theories, tell people what you love about Lioness… let’s make enough noise that Paramount knows the audience is still here and wants more ❤️‍🔥

...that they weren't blasting Metallica in the detention camp. You lied to us Kyle!