If there was ever any doubt that Special Ops: Lioness was going to be a bloody, brutal show, episode two should quell those concerns. "The Beating" was full of degradation, bar brawls, and even a rather graphic hair-ripping incident on a high school soccer field. As if all the physical violence wasn't enough, we also got a glimpse into Joe's (Zoe Saldaña) husband Neil's (Dave Annable) life as what I assume is a pediatric oncologist, an absolutely horrific (but vitally important) job, of which we got the see the absolute worst part. So, yeah, "The Beating" was a pretty rough episode.
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But it was also an important one, serving to drive the Lioness story forward as Cruz bonds with her squad mates, Joe deals with some family stuff, and somewhere in Paris, a terrorist's daughter does a little shopping. Here's everything we saw in this episode, plus a few questions and predictions we have about what's to come.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Special Ops: Lioness season 1, episode 2
Joe sets some awful goals
Greg Lewis/Paramount+
We open the episode in Washington, D.C., where Joe (Saldaña) is having a swanky business lunch with Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman), who appears to be her handler. Joe tells her that the mark's daughter is in Paris but says that she and Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) have been texting, and Cruz is shacked up in some CIA apartment in DC. Kaitlyn has obvious concerns—just as I have concerns about them having CIA conversations in the middle of a restaurant in D.C. The walls have ears! Joe tells her that she'll get Cruz set up in a house in Fort Bragg, but first, she wants to "put her through the grinder." Kaitlyn seems doubtful, but Joe says she needs to be sure Cruz has what it takes to do the gig. It sounds like something bad is coming, but we won't find out just how bad until a little bit later in the episode.
Neil dishes out some tough news
All we really knew about Neil (Annable) from the first episode of Lioness is that he's handsome, a good dad, and seems to care about Joe. This episode, we learn he's even more of a saint as we get a glimpse at his job as a pediatric oncologist. He's forced to give a terminal diagnosis to a six-year-old girl (cue the sobs), and when her parents, desperate for any sort of salvation, look to him for some positive news or advice, he offers very little. He gets decked in return.
When next we see Neil, he's picking up older daughter Kate (Hannah Love Lanier of the Road House remake) from her school, where she's been suspended for tearing a massive clump of hair out of some girl's head. She alludes to the fact that the girl threw some racist hate at her, something she doesn't think her dad can understand, but he's still pissed. He's had an awful day already, and she's only making it worse. He ends up spilling everything to Joe by the pool with a bottle of wine, and Joe ends up trying to make a little bit of peace, sort of, with Kate, who keeps asking her if they're getting a divorce. Joe and Kate's relationship is strained at best, and as we learn later in the episode, Joe's whole family seems to think (or at least know they're supposed to think) that she's a translator rather than whatever her job title actually is, which could explain why they're always so mad at her for being out on the road.
Cruz's bruises
Greg Lewis/Paramount+
Here's where things get really awful in this episode, and remember: We're talking about a show where we already had to see a six-year-old get diagnosed with a brain tumor.
We enter on Cruz working out rabidly in her apartment. It's dark, and she's doing pushups and sit-ups in what seems to be an attempt to sleep. It doesn't work, so she goes for a jog, where she's ambushed by men in two vans. They hogtie and blindfold her, and next thing she knows, she's being sprayed with a fire hose while writhing on some cement floor. It's violating and excruciating, and it only gets worse. There's loud metal, full-blast AC, and then a bout of waterboarding, Guantanamo-style. She throws up, fights back, and then gets knocked out cold. When she comes to, Joe is there, telling her that yes, this was a training exercise and that she has to learn to survive whatever comes her way—at least until Joe and the rest of the team can come to bail her out of whatever hell the terrorists might have to dish out.
Cruz tells Joe that she'll never break, and Joe says that, actually, everyone breaks. There's always someone bigger and stronger, Joe says, and then runs through the awful details of Cruz's life, from her ex-BF, who's dead now (hallelujah!), to a guess about why she stopped dancing. (A sexual assault, maybe? It's unclear, but it seems to hit close to home.) She leaves Cruz, telling her it's time for round two, which we quickly learn involves a cattle prod and some even more torturous questioning about her dead brother.
Either way, it's clear that both Cruz and Joe's superiors have had enough. The latter pulls the plug on the operation, and Cruz tries to take her captors down. Joe tells the sergeant off, saying, "She's on a suicide mission, and you know it. I was just trying to give her a shot."
Cruz takes her place with the team
We already got to see Cruz bond with the team in the Middle East, but now Joe drops her off to share a house with them at Fort Bragg. They seem instantly sympathetic to whatever she's been through, with one very nice guy giving her his bedroom with an en suite bathroom, as well as a spot to sit on the couch in the morning. They blend up her breakfast after she loses a tooth in the shower, and when they learn that she's been subjected to an unsanctioned "Seer Squad" (?), they take off to beat down the rogue unit at a bar. The fight there involves beer bottles thrown with deadly accuracy, an extended go-around with a taser, and Cruz giving a choke hold so violent she nearly kills a guy.
The fight ends, however, with Cruz getting a call from her mark, Stephanie Nur). After Cruz explains away her bruises by saying she was in a car accident, the mark asks if she wants to meet in Chesapeake for a little R&R. She tells her that she's bringing boys and that she'll need a tiny bathing suit, because "Some things are best left to the imagination, but your body isn't one of them." The episode ends with Cruz dropping an F-bomb and then saying, "I need to go shopping."
Questions and predictions
Greg Lewis/Paramount+
Paramount+ dropped the first two episodes of Lioness at once in an attempt to give us some context about the series and get us wanting more. It's working, too: We're hooked. Here are some questions we have about what's to come.
- Is Cruz's mark wise already? I don't know what it was about the conversation she and Cruz had on the phone, but I sort of felt like the whole "tiny bathing suit" thing is a test. Good thing Joe checked for tattoos.
- What has Joe been through? After the premiere, I wanted to know how Joe got her job. After this episode, I want to know what sort of torture she's been subjected to, especially after she tried to break Cruz. Joe's insistent that everyone will break, leading me to think that she's broken under duress in the past and that perhaps that's why she's so passionate about keeping everyone in her charge safe now.
- Prediction: Kate gets wise: I wasn't sure that Joe and Neil's kids were going to get much of a storyline after watching the premiere, but after this episode, I'm thinking we're going to get to see at least a little more of Kate. After she spots her mom pulling a sidearm out of a safe, she questions why a translator would need to be armed—and seemingly pretty well-versed in how to use that weapon. Kate plays it off, saying that everyone on her team protects each other, but I know that if I were a bratty teenager looking for another reason to hate my mom, I wouldn't take that statement as gospel. I think Kate's going to dig around some more and find out something that a) she shouldn't know and b) could get her in danger.
New episodes of Special Ops: Lioness premiere Sundays on Paramount+.
