Zoe Saldana’s Joe returns to the moral fog of the CIA’s Lioness program — with Taylor Sheridan again pulling the strings.

Taylor Sheridan’s tense espionage drama is coming back for more. ‘Special Ops: Lioness’ has been renewed by Paramount+ for a third season, returning Zoe Saldana to one of the most demanding roles on television: Joe, the hard-edged CIA officer who runs the agency’s Lioness program, embedding female operatives inside the inner circles of high-value targets.

What we know

The renewal itself is confirmed — Paramount+ announced Season 3 in early 2025 — but a word of caution is warranted on timing: as of this writing, no official premiere date had been announced, and any specific date circulating should be treated skeptically until the studio confirms it. Production is understood to have begun in Texas around October 2024, so the pieces are in motion even if the calendar is not yet set.

Saldana returns as Joe and, per the show’s structure, also serves as an executive producer alongside Nicole Kidman, whose CIA-supervisor character has been a recurring presence and who is one of the series’ driving forces behind the scenes. New to the cast is Ian Bohen, joining as a Delta Force operator and primary K9 handler — a hint that Season 3 will widen its lens on the military side of the operation. The return status of Season 2 players such as Michael Kelly, Morgan Freeman and Dave Annable had not been officially confirmed.

Inside the Sheridan machine

‘Lioness’ is a product of the most productive brand in modern television. Taylor Sheridan, the creator behind ‘Yellowstone’ and its expanding constellation of spin-offs and stablemates, has built a small empire on Paramount+, and ‘Lioness’ is among its most critically noted entries. Sheridan’s signature is all over it: morally compromised professionals, the human cost of institutional violence and a fascination with people who do the ugly, necessary work that official histories leave out.

What distinguishes ‘Lioness’ within that universe is its focus on women operating in a world designed by and for men — cultivating relationships they will ultimately betray, absorbing psychological damage that no debrief can undo. Saldana’s Joe sits at the center of that machinery, balancing the mission against the toll it takes on the young operatives she deploys and on her own fraying family life.

A star’s television moment

For Saldana, the show has been part of a broader career high. Long one of the most bankable actors in blockbuster cinema, she has increasingly used television and awards-season film to show range beyond franchise work, and ‘Lioness’ gives her a character defined by control, exhaustion and quietly enormous stakes. Kidman’s continued involvement, meanwhile, cements a stretch in which the Oscar winner has been ubiquitous on prestige TV.

No official synopsis for Season 3 has been released, but the expectation is that it will pick up the fallout from the Season 2 finale and continue tracing the Lioness program’s operations into new theaters of covert conflict. In the meantime, the smart move is to treat premiere-date chatter with caution and wait for Paramount+ to make it official. What is certain is that Joe is coming back to the shadows — and that, in Sheridan’s world, no one comes out of them clean.

Sources

•  Variety — ‘Lioness’ Season 3 renewal: au.variety.com/2025/tv/news/lioness-renewed-season-3-paramount-28446

•  TV Insider — Season 3 cast and details: tvinsider.com/1219973/lioness-season-3-cast-premiere-date-details

•  TechRadar — ‘Lioness’ Season 3: techradar.com/streaming/paramount-plus/lioness-season-3