Taylor Sheridan's 'The Lioness' Delivered the Cringiest Finale of the Year

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 6, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | September 6, 2023 |

Taylor Sheridan’s drunken heavy-handedness works to an extent when he writes about ranch life or the Old West — as long as he stays away from Indigenous people — but the seams fray when he gets into cops and racial politics. Mayor of Kingstown is The Wire if The Wire had been written for CBS by a pair of roided-out testicles. When Sheridan tries his hand at geopolitics and doesn’t have Denis Villeneuve to clean up his mess, he either gets Sicario 2 or a series that is somehow far worse: Special Ops: Lioness. The series is exactly what one might expect from a guy who watched two episodes of Sleeper Cell 15 years ago, fell asleep 10 minutes into Syriana, and woke up thinking, “What if I made Hurt Locker more like a beer commercial?”

That’s how Paramount+ ended up with Lioness, a series that seems to have been written hastily, as though by a man who takes advice from no one and is trying to pay off a $350 million mortgage on a ranch he couldn’t afford to buy. Remember that scene in Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom where Don Keefer says to a commercial airline pilot, “Sir, I wanted you to be the first on this plane to know that our armed forces killed Osama bin Laden for you tonight?”

The finale to Lioness is worse.

Here’s the season in a nutshell: Joe (Zoe Saldana) runs an undercover CIA unit that trains female soldiers to cozy up to the girlfriends/wives/mistresses of terrorists so that the CIA can take the terrorists out. Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) is recruited by the unit to befriend Aaliyah (Stephanie Nur), whose father is Iranian oil titan Asmar Amrohi —the Ace of Spades of terrorists — and who is also engaged to a real asshole named Ehsan.

Obviously, because Taylor Sheridan assumed that the series needed a steamy lesbian affair, Cruz and Aaliyah fall in love. The finale takes place during the wedding weekend. Cruz is tasked with killing the oil titan and getting herself out of the heavily secured compound to be rescued by Joe’s operation, the members of whom are waiting on a yacht close by.

It’s important to note here that, while Ehsan — who is set to inherit his future-father-in-law’s business — doesn’t know that Cruz works for the CIA, he suspects that she and Aaliyah are involved. However, he allows Cruz to stay anyway for fear that otherwise, Aaliyah won’t “open her legs” for him on their wedding night — this is the level of writing we are dealing with. On the night before the wedding, Cruz and Aaliyah fool around, but Cruz’s heart isn’t in it because she knows that she’s going to have to kill Aaliyah’s father.

That opportunity arrives when Cruz goes downstairs in her underwear (obviously) to fetch some water but finds Asmar Amrohi — the charming terrorist father of the bride — also appearing in the kitchen (unguarded) in his pajamas. Cruz and Amrohi engage in pleasant small talk until Ehsan, who has been running facial recognition software on Cruz, suddenly appears and yells, “She’s a Marine!” Cruz grabs a knife and stabs Ehsan several times before slashing Amrohi’s throat.

Cruz hits her beacon, indicating that she’s ready to be rescued, and she runs out of the compound — in her underwear because Taylor Sheridan — while she’s being shot at with machine guns by the compound guards. Joe’s people arrive in time to save her; they all swim to the boat and sail off into the night.

On the yacht, a panting, upset Cruz confirms to Nicole Kidman’s character — who oversees the Lioness program — that Amrohi is dead. She relays that to the NSA Advisor played by Michael Kelly, who relays it to the Secretary of State character played by Morgan Freeman. The Chief of Staff, played by Jennifer Ehle, says to Michael Kelly’s character, “Congratulations, Deputy Director. You have set Middle East relations back 40 years.” And then Morgan Freeman adds that he’s made it impossible for the U.S. to wean off of fossil fuels and gives Michael Kelly the finger.

“Don’t give me shit because we did our f**king job,” Michael Kelly responds, and if you’re excited to see the names of Nicole Kidman, Michael Kelly, Morgan Freeman, and Jennifer Ehle, let me just stop you right here because they’re in Lioness for a combined 15-20 minutes over the course of the entire season.

This is where it gets painfully overwrought because Cruz, upset that she endangered the life of the woman she loves and had to kill her father, punches Joe in the face and says that she quits. “You ever lay a fucking hand on me,” Zoe Saldana says in her best Eastwood voice, “we’re gonna figure this out until the sun comes up. Clear?”

“Look at what you made me,” Cruz screams at Joe.

“What you did,” Joe shoots back, “was eliminate one of the worst perpetrators of violence in the past 20 years.”

“Says you!”

“Says f**king history! And you just changed it.”

This is when my face turned inside out from cringing so hard.

“All I changed was oil prices,” Cruz scowls. “I’ll tell you what we just did,” she adds. “Some day, Aaliyah’s gonna have kids, and those kids are going to hear about how their grandfather died, and all we did is make the next generation of terrorists.”

BOOM! You’ve been Taylor Sheridan’d! Or, as TK summed up the entire finale, “FUCKIN’ WHITE PEOPLE!”