What’s next for Joe? ‘Lioness’ Season 3 Episode 7 ending explained
For six episodes, fans of ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ speculated who kidnapped Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) and why. However, Episode 7, ‘Kiss the Girls,’ appears to answer an immediate question: whether Joe survives the kidnapping. She does, and it seems like the easiest resolution. Joe’s captor, Babat, an Iranian mercenary, initially intended to extract her rather than kill her. However, the CIA seizes the plane that should have taken Babat’s crew out of the country. It forced the mercenary to find another way out of Texas, and the local police blocked one of their SUVs’ potential escape routes. It was enough for Joe to escape her captors, and a firefight ensued between the local police and mercenaries. It ended when Bobby and Cruz arrived, and the last mercenary was taken down. Joe survived captivity and was with her people after nearly a week.
That would be the end of the kidnapping in most TV shows or movies. Following Joe’s rescue, the CIA turns its attention to the larger issue, namely the identity of Joe’s abductors. Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman) and her husband, Errol Meade (Martin Donovan), discuss the situation at home and land on a theory that Ukraine would most likely gain the most had the plan succeeded. They think that Oleksandra Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin), the CIA’s flipped double agent, could be playing a longer game than anyone realizes. The pair theorizes that the war-torn Ukraine is trying to pin the blame for the kidnapping on operatives from Russia to elicit some form of retaliatory action from the U.S. against Russia.
Errol warns Kaitlyn that this theory could make it into the official report and could negatively affect U.S. relations with Ukraine if released to the public. The Episode 8 trailer continues the thread, as Edwin Mullins (Morgan Freeman) tells Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly) that he believes that the team has missed a vital clue in determining who is behind Joe’s kidnapping. The CIA agents are seen reviewing CCTV footage and passports of the members of the Martyrs’ Brigades, a Palestinian militant organization, while Errol and Kaitlyn discuss who would benefit most from the U.S. mistakenly retaliating against Iran or Russia. They conclude that it would be two other countries: Israel and Ukraine.
That means Joe is not treating her rescue as the end of the road. As soon as she finishes talking to her family in Episode 7, she tells Bobby (Jill Wagner) and Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira) what she found out about who was involved in her abduction. ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ Season 3 Episode 7 also deviates from the series’ typical method of storytelling since all events take place in the present tense, unlike in other episodes. Season 3 finale, ‘The Unraveling,’ airs September 20 on Paramount+. According to the official logline, “Kyle’s chase sparks deadly fallout as Joe uncovers a wider plot.” Now, whether that wider plot is actually related to Ukraine or Iran, ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ Season 3 has one more episode to reveal that. Notably, the series has not been officially renewed for Season 4 yet.
