The Yellowstone universe may be in upheaval right now, following tension between creator Taylor Sheridan and star Kevin Costner, and the news that the series would end after the final episodes of Season 5 are delivered. That hasn’t kept Sheridan from moving onward and upward, and his newest series Special Ops: Lioness takes viewers off of the ranch and into the CIA for a military spy thriller. Critics were able to screen the first episode, which is available to stream now with a Paramount+ subscription, so let’s see if they think this one’s worth checking out.
Taylor Sheridan continued his streak of landing A-list talent for his series, as Special Ops: Lioness’ cast boasts Academy Award winners Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman. Zoe Saldaña, however, is the star, playing Joe, the leader of the CIA’s Lioness program, which tasks new recruit Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliviera) with befriending the daughter of one of the agency’s targets.
Alex Maidy of JoBlo rates the series a “Great” 8 out of 10, saying the pivot away from small-town politics and crime is a refreshing one for Taylor Sheridan. After the first episode, Maidy says Special Ops: Lioness has the potential to be the best show from Sheridan since Yellowstone. The critic continues:
While I have been a fan of Taylor Sheridan for a long time, Special Ops: Lioness may be the best start to a series he has delivered since Yellowstone. With a fascinating concept and two very capable actors in lead roles, Special Ops: Lioness premieres with an episode that literally blows things up at the start and never lets go for a full hour. There have been a lot of military-centric series over the years, but few have been as rousing to me as this one. Zoe Saldana and Laysla De Oliveira live up to the title of this series as fierce warriors. Few series have hooked me after one episode the way Special Ops: Lioness has and I cannot wait to see more.
David Hookstead of OutKick calls Special Ops: Lioness “outstanding,” yet “unbelievably dark.” The critic promises that if you love Yellowstone or Taylor Sheridan’s other series, you’re going to be obsessed with this one. Hookstead continues:
Now, I’m not going to spoil anything here. What I will say is that the show is similar to Sheridan’s previous work when it comes to living in the gray. Nothing is cut and dry. There might be good guys and bad guys, but nobody is perfectly clean. Tough choices – just like in real life in war – have to be made. This is made crystal clear in the opening scenes of the premiere. War is dirty. It’s downright disgusting at times. Impossible calls have to be made and the outcome of those calls stick with people forever. Special Ops: Lioness doesn’t shy away from this reality. In fact, Sheridan embraces it and leans into it.
Joel Keller of Decider says “Skip It.” The show’s not terrible, the critic says, but it’s not different enough from many other — and better — shows in the same vein that have been made in the past 15 years. Keller continues:
There’s nothing in the first episode that indicates that Special Ops: Lioness is anything other than a standard-grade spy drama where ‘Murican heroes fight Muslim bad guys. It’s a formula we’ve seen a million times to the point of exhaustion. The first episode had so much ground to cover, from introducing us to Joe and the team, to telling us Cruz’ backstory to putting the two women in position to end up working together, that we only get tiny glimpses into their characters that don’t tell us enough about where this story might go.
Critics in the past have taken issue with Taylor Sheridan’s writing of and for women, and Alison Herman of Variety says despite creating a series with female protagonists, he has not grown any more nuanced in his depiction of them. Herman says that in the first episode:
We’ve also gotten a glimpse of Joe’s home life, which includes two daughters and a husband who serves as their primary parent while his wife is off at war. Sheridan doesn’t just give the leads of Lioness masculine names like ‘Joe’ and ‘Cruz’; he also gives them stereotypically masculine conflicts like feeling estranged from their children due to a stressful job. Even Cruz’s abuse segues into a storyline in which her physical strength is equated with her worth.
Clint Worthington of RogerEbert.com has the same issue with Special Ops: Lioness, specifically noting that Joe’s central conflict is about balancing work with being a wife and mother. Worthington says despite its way-overqualified cast, Taylor Sheridan’s newest series feels “more like a 45-minute USMC recruitment ad than an honest-to-God military thriller.” More from the review:
From its opening minutes, with Andrew Lockington’s drum-heavy score and the desaturated, brown cinematography, Lioness reeks of the kind of War on Terror stories that haunted us in the late aughts. The wailing Arabic vocals, Brown people in turbans viewed with suspicion, ISIS combatants firing AKs off the backs of pickup trucks: It’s all here as if Peter Berg stepped out of a time machine from 15 years ago and picked the camera back up as if nothing happened. An A-10 Warthog comes in to lay waste to a line of ISIS soldiers, and its victory lap feels so celebratory you’d half expect the Team America theme to play over it. Oo-rah.
Whether or not you’ll enjoy the latest offering from Taylor Sheridan seems to hinge a lot on if you like his previous work — or, perhaps, if you take issue with his writing, since it seems some of the criticisms are the same he’s received in the past.
The first two episodes are available to stream now, with new episodes dropping each Sunday, so see how to watch Special Ops: Lioness from anywhere. You can also check out some more great dramas available on Paramount+.
