Summary
Family is the emotional crux of the opening of Season 2, as Joe’s career precedes her personal needs.
The opening of Season 2 of Lioness is eventful, which you’d expect. The cartel raids a house. A man and a child are both shot in the head coldly. US Congresswoman Hernandez is captured and kidnapped. Episode 1, “Beware the Old Soldier,” establishes the story.
The opening events are important for Joe, who is cooking breakfast for her family, and there’s a sense of normalcy. Of course, this normalcy is artificial, as Joe does not lead an everyday life, as the premiere of Season 2 makes clear.
She ruins breakfast by burning it, so her husband, Neal, suggests they eat at Waffle Palace. While there, Joe sees on the news that U.S. Congresswoman Hernandez has been kidnapped and held hostage by a Mexican cartel.
That beautiful family environment feels diminished already. Joe knows these events will impact her.
Foreign Policy
In Pecos, Texas, Agent Kyle is checking out the crime scene, and he learns that the Congresswoman is being held in Ojinaga, Mexico. The politician was clever and kept a tracker on her. The only issue is that the FBI cannot put together a team.
So, Kaitlyn Meade heads to the White House and advises on sending Kyle and a team to rescue the congresswoman. Interestingly, the White House wants it to be messy; they believe Mexico is complicit with China’s involvement.
Foreign policy suddenly becomes the heart of the TV show again.
However, Byron takes a different view. He believes that if a U.S. operation is identified in Mexico, it’s a political disaster and will give reason for China to head into Taiwan. He admits that the USA’s and China’s economies are too intricately linked for sanctions.
Joe then heads into the meeting, and she’s made aware that they want Lionesses involved. She does not have much time, and President Mullins is impatient with the elections coming up.
I love how Season 2, Episode 1 lunges straight into geopolitics, economics, and the shallowness of elections. Everything is about public perception but not doing the right thing.
Despite Joe believing this will be an impossible mission for a Lioness, Kaitlyn and Byron tell her she’ll be given a QRF team and must go through with the mission. And so, Joe has to make the call to her family—she asks them not to wait for her and to put up the Christmas tree themselves.
This is such a sad indictment of the realities of her career.
A Dangerous Extraction
Season 2, Episode 1 gets into the action fairly quickly. It moves to Del Rio, Texas. The QRF team crosses the border with ease.
It does not take long for Joe and her team to find the Congresswoman in a high speed car chase with the cartel. The cartel are unable to handle the strategic approach of the American forces, and they are killed. Congresswoman Hernandez is rescued, and Joe has to deliver the sad news that her family is dead. The subject of family is strong in episode 2 as there’s small reminders of what Joe has to sacrifice for her country.
However, the mission is not easy, as once they have the Congresswoman, they need to find a way out of the city. Mexican police and military are on alert, and another car chase materializes. To get out of this situation, the team goes on the offense and fights back.
Their predicament lands them in a deep river bank, and their extraction team finally arrives to save them via a military helicopter. One of their team members, Dean, is dead.
Joe is absolutely furious at Kyle for putting them in danger, which leads to Dean’s death. Kyle centers Joe and tells her she must call her family to tell them she is safe.
Joe calls Neal, and as usual, there are plenty of unspoken words. Neal’s intuition about her work and where she is is usually accurate, mostly because he watches the news. Neal puts Joe on speaker, and she cries when she hears her daughters.
Lioness Season 2, Episode 1 is about family, as the realities of Joe’s career are spotlighted. It’s a grand opening to the Season as we are reminded of Joe’s personal turmoil from Season 1 and how it is integral to the story.
