Special Ops: Lioness

Lioness, also known as Special Ops: Lioness, is an American spy thriller television series created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on July 23, 2023, on Paramount+.

In May 2024, the series was renewed for a second season.

Premise
Force Recon Marine Cruz Manuelos is recruited into the CIA's Lioness program and tasked with befriending the daughter of a terrorist financer.

Main

 * Zoe Saldaña as Joe, a CIA officer in charge of the Lioness program in the field
 * Laysla De Oliveira as Sergeant Cruz Manuelos, a Force Recon Marine and rookie operative in the Lioness program
 * Dave Annable as Neal, Joe's husband and a pediatric oncology surgeon
 * Jill Wagner as Bobby, team leader for the Lioness program's QRF
 * LaMonica Garrett as Tucker, QRF member
 * James Jordan as Two Cups, QRF member
 * Austin Hébert as Randy, QRF member
 * Jonah Wharton as Tex, QRF member
 * Stephanie Nur as Aaliyah Amrohi, the daughter of a suspected terrorist
 * Hannah Love Lanier as Kate, the teenage daughter of Joe and Neal
 * Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade, a high-ranking CIA official in the Lioness program and Joe's boss
 * Morgan Freeman as U.S. Secretary of State Edwin Mullins (season 2; recurring season 1)
 * Thad Luckinbill as Kyle (season 2; recurring season 1), a CIA officer and Joe's colleague

Recurring

 * Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield, the CIA Deputy Director and Kaitlyn's supervisor
 * Martin Donovan as Errol Meade, Kaitlyn's husband, a high ranking financial investor
 * Michael Tow as Dr. Hammond, Neal's colleague

Guest

 * Jennifer Ehle as Mason
 * Ray Corasani as Ehsan
 * Sam Asghari as Kamal
 * Carla Mansour as Malika
 * Adam Budron as Sami
 * Bruce McGill as NSA Advisor Hollar
 * Sean Avery as Delta Force operator in bar
 * Bassem Youssef as Asmar Ali Amrohi, father of Aaliyah Amrohi and target billionaire businessman with ties to terrorist organizations
 * Richard Haddad as Asif

Development
Lioness was announced in September 2020 as part of a Paramount+ programming slate unveiling.

The series was renewed for a second season in May 2024. Sheridan penned all eight episodes of the first season and was set to return for the upcoming season as well.

Casting
In February 2022, Zoe Saldaña was cast to star in the series, and joined as an executive producer alongside Nicole Kidman. Laysla De Oliveira joined the cast the following month. In June, Sheridan took over as showrunner of the series from Thomas Brady following the conclusion of the show's writers' room. Casting continued in September, with the additions of Dave Annable, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton and Hannah Love Lanier. In January 2023, Kidman and Michael Kelly joined the cast alongside Morgan Freeman.

On May 9, 2024, it was reported that returning cast members for season two include Zoe Saldaña, Laysla De Oliveira, Michael Kelly, and Nicole Kidman, with Morgan Freeman being promoted to a series regular role. Upon the renewal becoming official on that same date, De Oliveira expressed her excitement about returning to her role as Cruz on her Instagram account. On May 17, 2024, it was announced that Thad Luckinbill was promoted as a series regular for the second season. Few days later, Genesis Rodriguez joined the cast in an undisclosed capacity for the second season.

Filming
Filming began in Delaware in September 2022 and continued in Mallorca in January 2023. In May 2023, it was announced that the series title was changed from Lioness to Special Ops: Lioness, although the title card remained unchanged. The title reverted to the original title when the series was renewed for its second season.

Andrew Lockington composed the soundtrack for the series, having previously worked with Taylor Sheridan in Mayor of Kingstown. Lakeshore Records has released the series' soundtrack.

In May 2024, production for the second season officially began, relocating from the gritty streets of Baltimore, Maryland, to the expansive landscapes of Texas. Sheridan was reported to be directing the third episode of the new season.

Inspiration
The series is very loosely based on the premise of "Team Lioness", where in Iraq in 2003 the decision was made to send female soldiers out with patrols, aiming to stop insurgents from using women to smuggle material because male US soldiers found it difficult to search Muslim women. These teams found themselves in direct combat situations, in violation of the Combat Exclusion Policy (changed only a decade later), which hindered the soldiers from getting veteran benefits after service.

Release
Paramount+ unveiled a first-look trailer for the show on 8 June 2023. The eight-part series premiered on 23 July 2023 on Paramount+ with two one-hour episodes, and subsequent episodes released weekly thereafter.

The red carpet premiered for the series, initially slated for 18 July 2023 at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in Los Angeles, was canceled due to the impact of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike in the United States. This marked one of the first events to be canceled in response to the strike.

Critical response
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 56% approval rating and an average rating of 6.1/10, based on 36 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Zoe Saldaña provides the energy of a Lioness, but these Special Ops are largely derivative and unconvincing." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Despite praising the performances of Laysla De Oliveira and Zoe Saldana, Anita Singh of The Telegraph criticized "the one thing that lets the show down is Nicole Kidman as a CIA boss, whose frozen face these days is a total distraction". Brian Lowry of CNN noted that "the series found a receptive audience that has fueled multiple prequels and made the prolific Sheridan's production kingdom one of the tallest peaks on Paramount Mountain".

Tania Hussain of Collider praised the performance of the cast but criticised the show as "flawed story" and found Taylor Sheridan was struggling to write about women. Another writer from Collider, Michael John Petty, said the series "might work best as a one-and-done story". Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter  criticized the script as "seems to be constructed with the assumption that most of the audience will only be half-watching while scrolling Facebook on their phones anyway" but couldn't deny the fact that "there is one aspect of Special Ops: Lioness that shines through clear as day no matter how much or how little of your focus you've directed toward it, and that is its reverence for the U.S. Marine Corps".

Jim Hemphill of IndieWire praised the cinematography work of Paul Cameron as it "breaks all the cinematography rules" and "in Cameron's hands, even a standard dialogue scene between two actors has extra dynamism and energy that come simply from looking for unorthodox angles or alternating focal lengths in a manner that might seem counterintuitive".

Reviewer Mike Hale, writing for The New York Times, wrote that the show "turned out to be a moody, suspenseful, textured genre piece with characters you cared about," and that "Sheridan found a form, the action thriller, that suits him better than the western soap operas and contemporary crime dramas that he has produced up to now." Initially, when only screening the first episode, Hale wrote the show "looks like an awful lot of other counterterrorism thrillers, with a visceral punch to its action and a ticky-tacky, backlot feel." Also based on the first episode, Variety criticised it as "cliché" and "shameless military propaganda".

Audience viewership
The drama achieved a milestone by becoming the streamer's most-watched worldwide series premiere on launch day at the time, drawing nearly 6 million total viewers in its first week across Paramount+ globally and during a linear preview on the Paramount Network. This record was later surpassed by Lawmen: Bass Reeves, a series produced by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+. It garnered 7.5 million viewers worldwide within the first 7 days across Paramount+ and during a broadcast sampling run on CBS. Special Ops: Lioness emerged as one of the most-watched global series premieres on Paramount+ in 2023.