'Leverage: Redemption' Season Three Wrap Up

At the end of Leverage: Redemption’s third season, I’m feeling ” whelmed.” It wasn’t a bad season. There were some good moments across the ten episodes where characters and their relationships were strengthened. Or they pulled off fun sight gags, like the opening scene of the season, where Hardison (Aldis Hodge), Parker (Beth Riesgraf), Sophie (Gina Bellman), and Elliott (Christian Kane) walked and talked their way through a series of hallways and doors, picking pockets and sucker-punching guards while they stole a golden bobble from a Russian oligarch. But there were also a lot of storylines and plot points that couldn’t keep my attention. After five seasons of the original show and three of Redemption, it feels like the concept is starting to wear thin.

Aldis Hodge’s conspicuous absence, coupled with Aleyse Shannon (who plays Breanna Casey) and Noah Wiley (as Harry Wilson) dipping in and out of episodes, was detrimental to the season. Leverage’s greatest strength is in its ensemble, and it felt like the ensemble was coming apart. The center did not hold.

The best episodes were the ones that included as much of the gang as possible, and those that got creative with heists and storylines. The stand-out episodes for me were ‘The Scared Stiff Job’ when the gang convinced a con man (Sam Witwer from the US version of Being Human) that he’d been cryogenically frozen for 30 years and was now an indentured servant whose body parts could be harvested. Witwer was an excellent and energetic guest star. And the story involved silly costumes and wacky hijinks.

Similarly, the elaborate costumes and both the literal and metaphorical choreography of Parker and Astrid (Alexandra Park) going up against each other at a Marie Antoinette-themed soiree made ‘The Grand Complication Job’ an engaging and easy-to-enjoy episode

I’ve already talked about how much I enjoyed ‘The Swipe Right Job’ because they finally let Noah Wiley off the leash a bit.

The season finale, which premiered on Prime Video last week, is another example of the showrunners finding a creative way to let the characters breathe. Shot as a faux Noir mystery, much of the action in ‘The Side Job’ is in black and white. Beth Riesgraf led the episode, really leaning into the theme, and had a lot of fun with it. She did a great job affecting the mannerisms and vocal inflections we all associate with Noir as a genre. And Parker did a great job of leading the team as they supported her “solo” mission.

It was also a timely-themed episode about child labor laws and the physical dangers of flaunting them.

It was Beth Riesgraf’s season. In Hardison’s absence, we got to see how Parker and Elliot support each other, being the less cerebral and more physically driven members of the team. Parker and Breanna managed to keep things light over the season as Sophie and Harry’s plot lines tended toward maudlin and introspective. There was a lot of reminiscing about Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) on Sophie’s part and Harry was preoccupied with personal and family drama. Riesgraf and Shannon are very funny, if nothing else Leverage: Redemption is a great opportunity to watch these two hone their comic craft.

Hardison’s storyline, about going off to Eat/Pray/Love his way into deciding whether he wants to stay with the Leverage team was left up in the air. Sophie has had one foot out the door for a while now and it seems like every season ends with a reason for her not to come back. We also got to see more about the other teams that have been forming off-screen with the return of Jeri Ryan and Drew Powell’s characters. It feels like change is coming. Whether it’s a shuffling of characters, a spinoff, or a change of scenery from New Orleans remains to be seen. But Dean Devlin is the Hydra of Executive Producers. If you strike down one of his shows, two more will grow in its place. And they will both star Christian Kane (which is a whole other article.)

In an interview with ScreenRant Devlin sounds open to the idea of taking the show to another platform if Prime, which has been a supportive partner so far, doesn’t want to renew for another season. So season four seems likely to happen, eventually. Who will be in it remains to be seen.

All episodes of Leverage: Redemption are available to stream on Prime Video.