Summary
Joe and her team are truly tested in Season 2, Episode 5 because children’s lives are at stake. It’s become more than just the loyalty to their country. Their ethics are being tested. Recent events have reached their threshold. It makes for compelling drama.
The events of Episode 5 of Lioness Season 2 are unsurprising. When Joe and her team encounter hundreds of young female girls in a warehouse during what was meant to be the takedown of a cartel drugs operation in episode 4, the story changes course.
When children’s lives are at risk, the human in us means the status quo changes, but the feeling of being the protector of our young generation significantly elevates when it reaches the horrific nature of human trafficking or equivalent, heinous crimes. Joe faces different territory, stoking that motherhood inside of her. This discovery also impacts her team, who are conflicted by orders from their authority and doing the right thing.
Again, it’s all fun and games until it involves the innocence of children. Even as the viewer, I felt compelled to say f-ck the CIA and save the children. Here’s my breakdown of the fifth episode of Season 2.
Joe Wants To Rescue The Children But Is Conflicted By Her Duty, Authority & Mission
After returning to base, Joe is understandably pissed. The mission was to take down an illegal drug operation by the cartel, but Gutierrez’s DEA intel was wildly off the mark. Kyle tries to calm Joe down, telling her to remain on course with their remaining mission, but Joe reminds him, and rightly so, that children are being sex trafficked. Seeing Joe deliver this reality was chilling.
Joe tries to speak to her seniors about it; she asks Kaitlyn and Byron for approval for a rescue mission, highlighting that the young girls were between 8 and 18 years old to emphasize the seriousness of this discovery. But Kaitlyn wants Joe and her team to stay away from the events they found at the warehouse, believing a rival cartel is doing the trafficking of young girls.
“Turn your heart off and your brain back.”
Joe is understandably an emotional figure at this point. She’s a mother. She understands more than anyone the preciousness and innocence of childhood. She knows this could easily be her daughter’s one day. While her reaction is flippant and is felt by her team, all we can have, as viewers, is sympathy.
Despite Joe showing authority over everyone else, she still wants a solution to the children being trafficked. She placed a tracker on one of the young girls.
Joe asks Gutierrez for a hypothetical plan if they can gauge where the children will be crossing over the border. Gutierrez states he’d stage an SRT unit to intercept when cross. Despite her annoyance with the DEA, Joe asks for timelines and a plan without violating any restrictions placed upon them.
Cruz Evolves Into Joe And Brings Josie Under Her Wing
The re-introduction of Cruz in Season 2 is a clever one because there’s a familiarity there. She has been through it with the Lioness programme: she can relate and fully understands what Joe wants. However, interestingly, Episode 5 of Season 2 sees Cruz slowly evolving into her boss, Joe, just as we expect Joe to develop into Kaitlyn in the future.
Amongst Joe’s emotional tirades (in which Kyle tells her to stop expecting their assets to have an opinion), Josie tells her she no longer wants to be a Lioness.
And this is where Cruz comes into play. Joe expects Cruz to manage Josie. Cruz speaks to Josie privately, reminding her of the stakes at play with her family. She asks Josie if her father is evil because he profits from the suffering of others and softly reminds her of her oath to the country. She ties the children in the warehouse into the conversation. Cruz gives Josie the “bigger picture” perspective, but you get the feeling that Josie is too concerned with her family (and understandably).
Afterward, Cruz tells Joe to make Josie believe her family has a chance.
And this, readers, is where character development is evolving. Think about Cruz’s position in season 1. And now, look at her position in season 2. She knows the playbook of the Lioness programme. She has become Joe.
Joe offers Josie a deal of some sort, even though it feels watery. She tells Josie that she understands that the notion of betraying her family is complex, so she suggests reducing the risk of them being killed; she could tell her father the truth and then move her family into protective custody. The reason why her father is the mission, and not just her uncle, is because Joe and Cruz have sensed that being rich is how he survives; it’s his weakness. They believe her father will understand once Josie presents him with a choice. If the father agrees, they’ll continue the mission.
Cruz is in charge of Josie in ‘Lioness’ Season 2, Episode 5, a role that seems natural to her (Credit – Paramount)
Josie Returns Home And We Meet The Father For The First Time
I’m not saying this Lioness mission is destined to fail, but it feels like a paper-thin strategy compared to Season 1. Joe tells Kaitlyn that Josie is in Dallas and Cruz is with her, leading on the mission. She trusts Cruz and believes she’s better than her.
But, as the episode reveals, Joe wants to find more time with family. She tells Neal she may have a “way out” of her hectic, dangerous role and moves behind the desk. But little does she know that she’s heading to a life similar to Kaitlyn’s, which is less about family.
Josie returns home with Cruz by her side (which already looks suspicious in terms of optics). At first, she’s hyperventilating and crying—she knows her life will never be the same. It’s heartbreaking to watch. Cruz can only tell her to calm down. She loves her family but misses who her father was, not who he is now. The work Cruz and Joe have done on her has worked. She appears to be invested in doing her mission.
Eventually, the family visit turns to dinner, and we meet the father, Pablo Carrillo, for the first time alongside the mother, who seems irked by her husband’s rambling and wild comments. The discussion of why Josie was dishonorably discharged from the military comes up, and Josie explains she was blamed for an attack on an Iraq base – she claims the State Department needed someone to blame.
Pablo goes on a long rant about sensitivity programmes in America and how it has infiltrated the military. He explains how they are pressured to hire women. He does not believe it makes sense that they targeted a woman to be dishonorably discharged due to the progressive politics involved.
In his rant, he discusses the slow fall of the US empire and how a new empire will rise. In the rant, he’s homophobic and misogynistic. His words are venomous. He does not hold back.
Josie and Cruz do not look surprised, but as the viewer, this is the first time you meet Josie’s father. It’s completely unexpected. He’s meant to be an immigration lawyer.
Joe And Her Team Track Down The Young Female Victim Of Trafficking
Despite being told to stand down on the human trafficking mission, Joe has decided to circumvent some processes to help track down the girl who is about to cross the border with her instigators. It helps that Joe has sent Cruz to aid in the Lioness mission with Josie, and you wonder if she’s done this to distract Byron and Kaitlyn.
Joe, Gutierrez, and a team locate the girl in the dead of the night, killing armed personnel on the way. A firefight ensues, and they have to fight off armed drones. The DEA team is blown up, quickly getting ugly for Joe and her team. Eventually, they find the tracked trafficked child who is with a group of men. But as they approach the young girl, one of the men commits suicide by blowing himself up, leaving the mission in disarray. The episode concludes purposefully confusing and disorientated.
Lioness Season 2, Episode 5 ends in confusion and turmoil. Joe may have overreached here. The underlying theme of motherhood is once again strong. Joe is being tested, and the human trafficking story is testing her duty and loyalty to her country. It’s compelling TV.
