Everything We Know About Lioness Season 3

Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling TV ecosystem can be maddeningly unpredictable. Some of his shows run like clockwork, coming out on a yearly cade, but others languish for years between seasons, like 1923 did, and others get stuck in limbo, without being renewed or canceled, like Lioness was for almost a year after Season 2 dropped. But Paramount+ did eventually confirm a third season — and the wait isn’t very long now.

Lioness follows Joe McNamara (Saldaña), a CIA officer who oversees the agency’s Lioness program in the field. Joe recruits, trains, and supervises female operatives who carry out dangerous undercover missions. In Season 1, she sent former Marine Cruz Manuelos (Laysla de Oliveira) to infiltrate a terrorist organization in the Middle East. In Season 2, she recruited Army helicopter pilot Josephina Carrillo (Genesis Rodriguez) to go undercover in a Mexican drug cartel due to her family connections to the organization. Joe also deals with the stress her job puts on her family, including her husband, Neal (Dave Annable), and their teenage daughter, Kate (Hannah Love Lanier). The show features intense action, equally intense drama, and the most cynical depictions of the CIA ever shown on TV. 

Here what we know so far when it comes to Lioness Season 3. 

Lioness Season 3 premiere date

Lioness Season 3 will premiere on August 2, 2026, with episodes dropping weekly from there. The premiere is just one episode, and the season will run for eight weeks.

The full trailer for Lioness Season 3

On July 16, about two weeks before the Season 3 premiere, Paramount dropped the full, 90-second trailer. It’s an action-heavy trailer, which indicates there’ll be some big attack, possibly on American soil. This teaser has big “this could be the end of the road for Joe” sort of energy — like the parts where she appears to be telling her family that she’s about to be spending a lot more time at work and won’t apologize for it.

Lioness Season 3 cast 

The announced cast for the third season of Lioness is almost entirely the same group from Season 2 — though we expect the ultimate bad guy is likely still unrevealed, and could be a familiar face. There are at least two new faces that we already know about, though: Ian Bohen (Ryan the cowboy/Lainey Wilson’s boyfriend on Yellowstone) and, according to Deadline, a relative unknown named Elizaveta Neratin, who had a minor role in first episode of The Mayor of Kingstown. We don’t know anything substantial about their characters.

• Zoe Saldaña as Joe McNamara, a hard-edged CIA officer who runs field operations for the Lioness program.
• Laysla De Oliveira as Cruz Manuelos, a tough Lioness whom Joe recruits and alienates in Season 1, but who returns in Season 2 to work with Josephina.
• Genesis Rodriguez as Josephina Carrillo, a helicopter pilot recruited into the Lioness program to spy on a drug cartel. She and Cruz fall in love, which is a complicated situation. 
• Dave Annable as Neal McNamara, Joe’s loving and understanding husband, who’s a pediatric oncology surgeon.
• Jill Wagner as Bobby, a Lioness operative who leads the strike team.
• LaMonica Garrett as Tucker, a member of the strike team.
• James Jordan as Two Cups, a member of the strike team.
• Austin Hébert as Randy, a member of the strike team.
• Jonah Wharton as Tex, a member of the strike team.
• Hannah Love Lanier as Kate McNamara, Joe and Neal’s headstrong teenage daughter.
• Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade, a high-ranking CIA official and Joe’s boss.
• Morgan Freeman as Edwin Mullins, the secretary of state.
• Thad Luckinbill as Kyle McManus, Joe’s fellow CIA officer, who’s not trustworthy and is always getting her in bad situations. 
• Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield, the CIA deputy director for operations and Kaitlyn’s boss.
• Ian Bohen as Grady

Lioness Season 3 plot 

Here’s the Season 3 plot synopsis we have form Paramount+: “In Season Three, hidden networks, foreign operatives, and personal betrayals collide. Joe walks the line between duty and home as unseen forces circle her world. Patterns appear where they shouldn’t, names vanish, and paths rearrange. Guided by Kaitlyn and Westfield, Joe confronts enemies operating in the shadows, leaving her to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life.”

Lioness tends to have a new story as the characters carry out a different mission each season, so the Season 3 plot described above may not be a direct continuation of the main thread from Season 2. But that description, and the trailer above, are vague enough that it’s hard to really tell.

That being said, it’s still useful to remember what happened in Season 2, because those pretty intense events will affect the characters going forward.  

The two main plot threads in Season 2 were wrapped up in a fashion that was suitably bleak for this series. Kaitlyn and Byron negotiated a deal with the cartel’s second-in-command to help install him as the leader in exchange for him not doing business with enemies of the United States like his predecessor, his brother. And in the Middle East, the Lioness team was attempting to intercept Chinese nuclear scientists before they reached an Iranian nuclear base, primarily as a show of force against the two nations for their aggressive, cartel-aided actions at the U.S.-Mexico border. An intense firefight broke out between the team and security forces, and things looked really bad until Delta Force operator Cody Spears (Taylor Sheridan) arrived with the cavalry and saved the day. Both operations were cynical missions meant to protect American imperial power and do nothing to make the world safer. 

Where to Watch Lioness 

Lioness Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Paramount+, along with several other Taylor Sheridan series: 1883, Mayor of Kingstown, 1923, Tulsa King, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, and Landman.