Good news, folks! Joe’s still with us. And then some. Just when it seemed our girl was staring down a permanent sunset, she’s alive and literally kicking the shit out of hospital staff in a blind rage. Turns out the shrapnel in her side was a piece of her cell phone, lacerating an artery that could take her out again real quick if she doesn’t take it easy for at least the next week. “All I’ll say is that the devil’s showing’ aces,” the doctor tells her. “Think it through before you play your hand.” Love when Sheridan gets a little cowboy lyric in via some side character you’ll never see again. Anyway, Joe’s response to this omen is about as cautious as you’d expect, and it bodes ill for the rest of the Lioness crew, who find themselves in a sinister game of international speed poker with no option but to play the cards you’ve got against the devil’s aces.
The season’s penultimate episode opens with a heavy stew of a monologue from Mullins, who shows up at Byron’s house for a quick rundown of the situation at hand; a little too conspicuously for the audience’s sake, but it certainly helps in the season’s final innings. As the situation stands, they think the suicide bomber at the border was a proxy at the behest of Chinese intelligence and served two purposes: one, to continue destabilizing the border to influence the election, and two, to shift U.S. intelligence focus stateside to obfuscate the two Chinese nuclear scientists stationed in Turkey, with plans to transport into Tehran soon.
Mullins clears the runway for his monologue with the age-old question, “Where were you on 9/11?” Then he proceeds with a cross-section of spitting straight facts and spewing garbage anyone who watches this show will come to expect, regardless of political leanings. According to Mullins, George W. Bush (never named in the show, but essentially referenced as “the 43rd president who kinda stole the election”) answered America’s call to rise as a true leader in the aftermath of 9/11, regardless of “what you thought about what he did after that.” That disclaimer is doing a massive amount of unholy work there, but the point is, “We needed a leader, and a leader rose. We trusted him to rise.” So, what eroded that trust? Mullins asserts that the difference between folks coming together in the wake of 9/11 and folks driven further apart in the wake of COVID was strong leadership. This may be true up to a point, though 9/11 also provided a tangible enemy on which America could hang all its most xenophobic imperial impulses for the next two decades and counting. In any case, Mullins is certainly spitting when he says no one in the political game is innocent of the erosion of trust in American institutions in the intervening years. “Not one president, not one member of Congress, not the press, nobody.” But Pandora’s Box is wide open, and America, in all her excess and corruption and institutional fuckery, has given herself no choice but to try and slam it shut.
Which means all systems go for the Lioness crew — systems being the dubious word here. Because the systems are about as shaky as everything else surrounding this operation. Back at the safehouse, Kyle and the gang are questioning Gutierrez on the polygraph while the maid, his informant in the Carrillo home, is having a much quieter chat with Kaitlyn. The maid confirms to Kaitlyn what Kyle uncovers in the other room: our Special Agent Gutierrez is a “Boy Scout” — doing his job in total secret to avoid any chance of it leaking to Los Tigres through one of their many moles in every corner of U.S. government. Gutierrez also killed a fellow DEA agent who made him an offer to turn, also corroborated by the official record. So now they’re stuck with a DEA agent whose ass they’ve already “Guantanamoed,” and who hasn’t touched base with his desk or at home in over 24 hours. Kyle and Kaitlyn discuss their options for “getting rid” of the guy in hushed tones (which, once that discussion’s been had, your chances of survival under the eye of the CIA narrow mighty quick). But a steely conversation between Kaitlyn and Gutierrez keeps the guy alive and on their side again, for now. This ain’t Kaitlyn’s first time at the rodeo — the “rodeo” being a soft touch that’s no less swift at taking command of the room — and Gutierrez seems to accept her offer to see the mission through with limited reservation.
With Pablo Carrillo firmly in custody and on his way to San Jose, Cruz and Josie arrive at the new safehouse in Fort Liberty ahead of the rest of the crew with just enough time to answer the question, “These two wanna fuck?” Not that they actually get to consummate this episode, but the door’s officially been opened on that front. Man, you’d think Cruz would have been able to keep it in her pants for another Lioness operation, given the severity and personal injury of the previous op’s romantic entanglements. Then again, spies tend to take moments of physical and emotional connection where they can get them, often with other spies who also know how to compartmentalize their feelings to fit the chaos of the job. “It would be nice to feel something other than shame and fear,” Josie says. “Just forget for a moment.” This soldier’s already showing plenty of aptitude for the spy lifestyle.
Meanwhile, the role of lone gunman touching down for moments of quiet between storms has never been less on the table for Joe. Her marriage is strong and her family life is happy, and she’d just found a replacement field operative in Cruz. But the suicide bomb at the border has only strengthened her resolve to play against the devil’s aces as fast as they come. “I’m hunting how to make peace with walking away,” she tells Neal in the hospital, having just been told her torn artery will prove lethal if it tears again. “But I have to find it [..] and you can’t fucking guilt me, you can’t reason me, and you can’t love me into doing it.” That last part is surely what stings most for Neal, who’s just told his wife he won’t survive it if she dies on the job. Appropo of her work/life priorities, she’s even more straight with Byron later on when they’re discussing the next phase of the mission: “to show Iran and China that we aren’t the only nation with an open border,” as directed by Mullins. And they’re going to do that by intercepting the two Chinese nuclear scientists at an Iranian air base. The empire will strike back.
Wouldn’t you know it, the deck’s been reshuffled to suit the skills of our Lioness. Their best covert option of illuminating the targets in Iran is by sending in a helicopter to strike closeby, and Joe has the clearance to run the operation from the field. Byron isn’t sure about letting Joe go to Iran, even if she promises not to set foot off the base, but he’s swayed just enough when she lays out her real reason for being there: “I can’t walk away on a loss.”
The sunk cost of these special ops. It’s enough to leave a pit in your stomach as the Lioness crew boards the plane to Iran. “This one’s going to be spicy,” Joe says, egging on her comrades’ bloodlust before making a devastating last phone call to Neal. The final stretch of this mission couldn’t be further from where it started, and the chances of finding any redemption in it are next to nil, even if they do “win.” Doesn’t bode well for the future of Joe’s family, nor for any spy aiming for order as the solution to all this chaos.