You can probably guess what you’re getting from a show titled Special Ops: Lioness. The slightly clunky billing – “Special Ops”was appended to the title late in production – lets you know that this is a series about fraught modern warfare. A world of life-or-death stakes and stolid professionalism. Sure enough, the series begins in the Syrian desert, in media res. An espionage operation has gone awry: thanks to a tell-tale tattoo, an asset – a woman – has been compromised. There’s a cacophony of gunfire; as ISIS move in, CIA operative Joe (Zoe Saldaña) is forced to make a terrible decision.
It’s an explosive way to begin a series, for sure. From there, the episode (released on Paramount+) takes a breather. We get a glimpse of Joe’s home life. Her job spearheading the CIA’s “Lioness” initiative, which embeds women undercover with the wives and families of suspected terrorists, to keep tabs on the target and eventually allow the CIA to kill them. It’s ruthless work, and takes a ruthless personality – though Joe, we sense, has a heart underneath the layers of flint. As the failures of the Syrian mission are picked apart, Joe is handed a new prospect to work with, a hard-edged marine named Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira). We meet Cruz in a flashback, as she’s escaping from an abusive relationship. She takes refuge in an office of the US marines; before long, she’s become one of them.
