'Lioness': Taylor Sheridan Plays 'Old Soldier' Cody Season 2 Premiere

3 days ago

TVLine

The following contains spoilers from the Season 2 premiere of Paramount+’s Lioness (fka Special Ops: Lioness).

Lioness Season 2 - Figure 1 — Photo TVLine

As Lioness Season 2 got underway, Zoe Saldaña’s Joe McNamara found herself begrudgingly working with not her usual QRF team but a bunch of “gray guys,” to retrieve a U.S. congresswoman who had been kidnapped by a cartel and moved across the southern border.

Playing Cody — the KT tape-wrapped former SEAL who assured an iffy Joe, “Beware of the old soldier; they’re old for a reason” — was none other than Lioness creator Taylor Sheridan, who wrote all of Season 2 and directed the first two episodes.

Sheridan, whose Lioness role could not be revealed ahead of Sunday’s Season 2 premiere, is no stranger to acting. His first on-screen gig was a 1995 episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, followed by a slew of other one-off roles, a handful of Veronica Mars appearances (as Danny Boyd), nearly two dozen Sons of Anarchy episodes (as David Hale), the 2016 new-Western Hell or High Water (which he wrote), and thus far 11 total appearances on Yellowstone and its prequel, 1883.

Lioness Season 2 - Figure 2 — Photo TVLine

This, however, marked Sheridan’s Lioness acting debut.

Thad Luckinbill as Kyle and Zoe Saldana as JoeRyan Green/Paramount+

Fortunately, Joe and the band of gray guys were successful in crossing the border into Mexico without their armory being detected, taking out a cartel patrol, and quickly tac-ing up. With the kidnapped congresswoman now being moved, they executed a vehicular interdiction and snatched their target.

Scores of armed and armored bogies — including Mexican police forces — gave pursuit. Joe and her team pulled to a stop in the middle of a main drag, then hunkered down inside the Suburban and behind its doors to pick off adversaries. They then got back inside and made a high-speed dash for the border, on a dusty road that, they had been warned, led to an eight-foot drop-off into the river. But bravely drop off the Suburban did, depositing Joe, the team and the congresswoman in the middle of the drink. The pursuing forces stationed themselves at the edge of the riverbank and laid down fire, until U.S. air support arrived in the form of a nimbly piloted helicopter that used its turret guns to buy Joe & Co. enough time to swim to their exfil boats.

Lioness Season 2 - Figure 3 — Photo TVLine

Later, the congresswoman — whose family had been brutally murdered during her abduction — asked Joe, “What now? What do you do next?”

“Now we play offense,” Joe answered.

The congresswoman then delicately asked a “favor,” noting, “I’m an elected official, I should be unemotional and seek justice and nothing else. But I’m going to be a wife and mother first. When you find the people that did this to me—”

“Justice is a different agency,” Joe interrupted/answered. “My agency doesn’t do courtrooms.” The congresswoman nodded, “Good.”

Joe then found Kyle and the two traded words and punches, and not in that order. Joe told Kyle, author of the riverbed escape plan, never to pull his “cowboy s–t” with her team again. Kyle pointed out they successfully saved the congresswoman, to which Joe noted they lost one of Cody’s men. That, Kyle contended, is that price they all agreed to pay in this line of work. Kyle questioned when the last time Joe had been in a firefight like this, and not with “some bimbo’s bodyguard.” He then told Joe that, if he were her, he’d be on the phone with his family right about now — and Joe agreed, walking away to ring Neal and the girls.