It’s the present! It’s the past! This was the format of Lioness Season 3, its most exciting yet. But after 8 episodes, It’s the present! It’s the past! also became the resolution of this season. You crazy for this one, Sheridan-O-Verse!

Let us explain. 

When the Taylor Sheridan action drama returned to Paramount+, CIA case officer Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña) was in a good place with her family, husband Neal (Dave Annable) and daughters Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) and Charlie (Celestina Harris). It had basically never been like this. Notions of stability and being present for her family were forever in conflict with the globetrotting and clandestine demands of Joe’s job as principal of the Lioness program. But seeing this, the happy family around their kitchen island, was essentially a psy-op on the audience. Because when Joe left for work that day, she was immediately and violently abducted by unknown A-holes.

This startling start to the season set up a hold-on-tight situation, as episodes hurtled between Joe’s ongoing captivity in the present, where her team and bosses used every resource to find and rescue her, and six months in the past, where the Lioness team’s operations continued to unfold.

We all know Sheridan loves a flashback. Shit, Yellowstone spawned entire season flashbacks. But with this installment of Lioness, he brought the form to the hilt. We didn’t know who or what to trust! Other than to believe that Joe would finally make it out, and back home to the ones she loves. 

So who abducted Joe on Lioness? Did Joe survive her kidnapping? And what about her family? This Ending Explained from Decider has all the intel you need. 

***Turn the chopper around if you don’t wanna know what happens in Lioness Season 3!***

Lioness Season 3 Plot Summary: 

Once Joe was taken, the CIA went into action. Higher-ups Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman) and Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly) put Joe’s team – including Bobby (Jill Wagner), Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), Two Cups (James Jordan), and Tucker (LaMonica Garrett) – on tracking her subcutaneous locator. Which was a dead end, because Joe was abducted by professionals, and their first action was to cut the device from her body. Throughout the season’s present, Lioness continued to reveal pieces of her ordeal. Like Joe in a shroud, listening to Russian speakers around her, or Joe enduring maddening sessions of water torture.

In the Lioness past, it was a different – but possibly related – story. Kyle McManus (Thad Luckinbill) made contact with a Ukrainian double agent, Oleksanda Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin), and the CIA accepted the spy’s offer to expose Russian spy Aleksi Yurimov (Jack Dimich). Joe, Kyle, and the QRF team were inserted into Donetsk, Ukraine, an active war zone, where they crossed the front lines with Delta Force operator Cody Spears. (Taylor Sheridan loves to cast himself in his own shows.) And once Yurimov was captured, Joe returned to Virginia and her family home. Only to be attacked on her doorstep by two gunmen, who she killed in front of her husband. It’s not like Neal doesn’t know what Joe does for a living, but this gave the phrase “too close to home” new meaning.

Oleksandra was a valuable asset for the CIA, because the double-secret agent’s internal knowledge of Russian operations revealed a network of compromised Americans – politicians, journalists, corporation presidents, and everyday people – who had become informants. The team ran immersive undercover ops to round up these people, and their handlers. And all the while, the agency was trying to determine how the attack at Joe’s home fit into what they were doing. Was it Russia, retaliating for the Yurimov grab? Or maybe it was orchestrated by some another state actor with a bone to pick over the Lioness program.Making enemies is part of a CIA officer’s everyday reality.       

In the present, Joe’s reality was going from bad to worse. She was held in a makeshift torture chamber by Renat (Dimitry Rozental), presumed to be a Russian spy. And then she was moved again, not to some far-flung country but to a suburban home outside Houston. “Go get our fucking girl,” Meade ordered the team. And they were ready. But their intelligence networks and data mining abilities could only get them close. Nothing actionable. Renat handed Joe off to another mysterious operative, Babat (Kamyar Jahan), and he promptly hacked off her pinky toe. Ouch!

Lioness Season 3 Ending Explained: Does Joe Survive? 

Past met present in Episode 7 of Lioness Season 3 when Babat and his men made a mistake that revealed Joe’s position. A furious gun battle, Joe herself fighting for her very life, and she finally fled their clutches into the waiting arms of Cruz and Bobby. The boss was back! Honestly, her colleagues weren’t the only ones relieved. This rescue sequence – and the season-long journey of Joe’s abduction and captivity – made us feel closer to these characters than ever before.   

But Joe, down a toe, doesn’t go home. She is compelled to continue the fight, to stay in the field, to find out exactly who took her and why, and take them out. She tells herself it’s to protect her family. But it’s also the soldier in her. Essentially, the Joe McNamara duality. And Neal is left to bear the brunt of her decision as a solo parent. Again.

Ultimately on this season of Lioness, neither Joe nor the CIA discover who took her, or what the motive was. Meade and Westfield convinced themselves it was Ukraine, for reasons of global geopolitical agitation. And their decision to pursue this theory results in Oleksandra being marked for death. Joe and the team travel to Guantanamo Bay prison, for a run-in with Yurimov and Alex (Sandi Todorovic), another operative caught up in the Russian asset sweep. But that only creates foreboding. “Never underestimate how many hate you,” Yurimov tells Joe, his fellow spy-soldier. And Alex reveals what he knows of Joe’s abduction. He tells the CIA it was a job sold on the open black market, to anyone willing to risk grabbing an American spy at home.  

It’s the present! It’s the past! Season 3 of Lioness concludes with two shocks to the system. Joe returns home, but it’s empty, with a For Sale sign out front and a note from Neal. She is left weeping in her girls’ bedroom, her family gone – will they let her back into their lives this time? – and her abduction unresolved.

As Joe feels the pain of where her decisions led, the action shifts to a penthouse in Doha, Qatar, where a face from the Lioness past returns. “Try again,” Aaliyah Amrohi (Stephanie Nur) tells her people. “Maybe third time’s the charm. We have to get her out. If we get her out, the others will come to save her. And then we have them all.” The woman whose terrorist financier father was targeted by the CIA in Lioness Season 1 – and the woman who Cruz Manuelos seduced as part of Cruz’s first Lioness assignment – was running a revenge play on Joe this entire time.

Will there be a Lioness Season 4?   

We don’t know yet! And considering the cliffhanger ending of Season 3, we can’t wait to find out. Decider will be sure to provide any updates as they become available. With Lioness, past, present, or future, we’re always on board.  

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.