Who attacked Joe? ‘Lioness’ Season 3 Episode 1 ending explained
Highly anticipated ‘Lioness’ Season 3 premiered with its first episode and featured an unexpected series of events. At first, it seemed like a regular morning for Joe McNamara (played by Zoe Saldaña) and her family, enjoying breakfast and everyone leaving for work and school. However, things quickly turned intense as she was ambushed right after she left in her car and was shockingly kidnapped by unknown individuals. It happened while she was on call with Caitlyn Meade (played by Nicole Kidman). To know what might have happened, the episode showed a flashback of a mission that Joe and her team went on six months ago.
Before the mission, Joe meets with an unnamed woman at Georgetown University. She learns about the head of Russia’s Special Tasks Department (SSD), Aleksi Yurimov’s whereabouts. The informer told Joe, “He’s Putin’s hammer. If we kill him, Putin’s retaliation will be severe. But if you take him, it’s just the game. You’d be taking Putin’s queen off the chessboard.” Kaitlyn sends Joe and her ‘Lioness’ team to Ukraine to capture Aleksi Yorimov. However, the twist was that they only needed Joe to identify the individual, and her team couldn’t join her throughout the dangers waiting ahead, including drones swarming the area. Only one of her teammates, Cruz Manuelos (played by Laysla De Oliveira), was there with Joe. Joe identified the individual, and he was captured.
After completing the mission, Joe returned to her home in Virginia. Her daughters and husband were asleep inside their home. Joe saw her husband Neal (played by Dave Annable) briefly and told him to go back to sleep. She finally had some time to herself, which she decided to pour herself a drink. Shockingly, she heard a knock on the front door. While keeping it chained and her gun in the other hand, Joe saw two men asking her to step outside. One of them claimed that they were state police, which Joe obviously knew they were not. She refused to step outside and demanded their ID cards and badge numbers. To her surprise, he quickly dropped his English accent, confirming what Joe had suspected all along. “You’re not the police, but you’re two minutes from meeting them,” responded Joe.
As she tried to shut the door, one of the men jammed his foot in the doorway. Quickly, he forced his way inside, which pushed Joe to use her gun. After shooting him dead, she ran outside and chased the second individual. She also shot him dead on their front lawn. Hearing the shots fired, her husband rushed outside and saw two dead bodies and Joe holding the gun. As for Joe, she immediately dialed, most likely, Caitlyn, and said that she needed FBI assistance at her house and that her cover was blown. The upcoming Episode 2 might reveal who the gunned-down individuals were that attacked Joe at her home. As for the kidnappers who grabbed Joe at the beginning of the episode, they were not yet revealed. Witnessing such an action-filled premiere episode, fans are expecting an even more thrilling season ahead. Notably, fans also witnessed Taylor Sheridan returning to acting as he reprised his role as Cody Spears in the first episode.
