Lioness Season 3 Episode 3
Three episodes into season 3 of Special Ops: Lioness, and somehow the show managed to achieve a quiet feat in its narrative. The episode where there was no single shot fired became the series’ most nerve-wracking episode yet, proving that you do not have to blow something up every seven minutes when the real bomb is in the interrogation room where an incredibly suspicious double-agent from Ukraine is being interrogated.
The third episode of the series, “The Bear Is Infected,” was released on Paramount+ on August 16, 2026. This episode replaced the firefights of the episode that premiered it with a much slower chase of those who leaked Joe’s true identity to the Russians. No drones. No rooftop chases. Just a bunch of incredibly intelligent and paranoid people trying to identify lies among them, which is surprisingly creepy.
A recap of Episodes 1 and 2, the events of the week, and our predictions for Episode 4, “Murder Hornets,” to be released on August 23.
Quick Recap: Episodes 1 and 2
The third season began with Joe being kidnapped by armed men as she was going to work. The series then rewound six months and started explaining what had happened. During that flashback, a double agent from Ukraine within Russia’s SVR provided Joe with information about Aleksi Yurimov who was leading the SSD, an underground unit of military intelligence. This information forced them to conduct a brutal operation during which they managed to capture Yurimov alive.
Two days after Joe had returned from her mission, two men arrived at her house, saying that they were state police officers. She killed both of them right there in her house while her husband Neal was watching.
The second episode involved its repercussions. The CIA was on Joe’s tail, hunting for Russian spies around her locality, and the family got to know her job in full detail. Also, the team managed to catch the informant, Oleksandra Balakin (Elizaveta Neretin), as there is some suspicion that she might have betrayed Joe along with Yurimov too. Moreover, in the current timeline, the people who had kidnapped Joe from the CIA were looking for a tracking device on her body but couldn’t find any as it had been already removed.
Episodes 1: https://theblinkreview.com/lioness-season-3-episode-1-recap-review-ending-explained/
Episodes 2: https://theblinkreview.com/lioness-season-3-episode-2-recap-ending-explained/
Episode 3 Recap: “The Bear Is Infected”
Oleksandra Under the Knife
In Episode 3, six months earlier than in Episode 2, Kyle and Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira) take Oleksandra to a CIA black site in Baltimore, trying to figure out whether she is the leak. Since she was trained to withstand interrogation, Kyle quickly moves to threatening her family, sending operatives to find her mother and sister in Kyiv as leverage.
Oleksandra won’t crack. She claims that she did not betray Joe or the mission, and she has reasons for her. Her father died while battling Russia, her brothers are still in the fight, and she betrayed Yurimov on purpose, hoping to hurt Russia from within. Her explanation of how the Russians were able to track Joe down is quite plausible and down-to-earth — perhaps the drone saw her face, perhaps she was flagged in the airport. Kyle trusts her so much that he takes back the threat of blackmailing her family, although let us give a fair warning: it is either mercy or bluff, costing plenty of money.
A Family Meeting Nobody Wanted
Going back to the safe house, the elder daughter Kate of Joe calls a proper family meeting where she asks her mom to leave the CIA. It is one of those scenes which can be classified as a cliché and yet fails to turn into one because of the show giving Joe the opportunity to give the real answer rather than just saying anything comforting: leaving is not going to help her be safer as it will only reduce her capabilities to deal with the threat.
Before she goes to work, Joe puts a gun in the bag of Neal while sending her daughters to school with the security. The convoy of the escorts gets frightened by the accident and breaks away from traffic.
The Mole Theory Gets a Rethink
At the CIA’s central office, Kyle informs that Oleksandra’s story passes emotionally but not completely logically. He explains himself by saying that if Russians knew about Joe or the mission from the very beginning, then they would have killed Oleksandra immediately and not sent two agents just to find out information on her. It means that Russian only found out Joe’s existence lately when Yurimov disappeared and did not appear again.
Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman) is still suspicious and has an interesting phrase about coincidence and conspiracy which is a good way to describe her attitude towards things. Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly) has a colder and more practical approach: do not burn Oleksandra as an agent, use her. She will continue acting as a double agent, but unofficially she will be on the CIA’s side.
Tradecraft 101, Courtesy of Oleksandra
The best scene of the episode is pretty much a masterclass that pretends to be just a brief meeting. Errol, Kaitlyn’s husband, explains how China and Russia wage their own brand of the shadow war against the US. China uses its long history of financial penetration and intellectual property theft, while Russia relies on honeypotting and blackmail, compromising officials one favor at a time.
Oleksandra follows her partner in crime and explains how Russia creates honeytraps for Americans, like the CIA is training Lionesses to do but without extracting them from the network afterwards. She succinctly summarizes the episode’s title with one image – Russia is the pack of wolves, China is the tiger, and the US is the bear, and neither predator can defeat the bear face-to-face, hence the infection approach.
And that is when she offers up her real leverage – a list of Americans who have been compromised by the Russians, five of whom happen to be U.S. senators. Two of them were funded for their campaign from Russia. Another one has his spouse working for a business connected with a Russian fund.
Joe’s Whack-a-Mole Plan
Joe’s plan is somewhere between brilliant and cold-blooded. Instead of secretly investigating the senators individually, she coerces the CIA into releasing information that they have detained a Russian spy, sans names and photographs. The aim is to put all of the compromised agents, as well as their handlers, on edge so that they reveal themselves through their attempts at covering their tracks. Byron refers to the plan as burning the barn down to smoke the mice out, either a brilliant tactic or a term that must never be spoken out loud.
Joe also insists on having Oleksandra publicly “arrested,” with the thought that this move will lead to exposure of each of her contacts in her network. Byron is on board with the plan. Notably, Joe seems less concerned with international political gamesmanship and more focused on the possibility that Oleksandra knows more than she is saying.
The Ending: Joe, Strapped to a Bed
Fast-forwarding to the current timeline finds Joe chained to a bed in an abandoned facility, with a drinking bird dropping water onto her face so she cannot sleep. Above her head, a TV is showing footage of a news broadcast made six months ago: an announcement from the White House of the FBI’s apprehension of a Russian SVR spy.
What was the point of that exact clip? Again, the episode leaves the answer ambiguous. Perhaps they want to know exactly who the CIA had managed to catch. Perhaps they are searching for a traitor among themselves. Either way, “The Bear Is Infected” fails to reveal who is actually keeping Joe captive, whether out of sheer frustration or brilliant writing, we can only tell based on our patience level.
Lioness Season 3 Episode 3 Review
There are more dialogues in this episode than all the other episodes combined, and the risk that this episode takes is definitely worthwhile. The whole episode does not have to be very exciting for people to see Oleksandra explain great power espionage, but this writing manages to bring out the human aspect of all the strategy. According to one critic, this episode is “dialogue-heavy but effectively tense,” which is a perfect description of this episode.
It is a very risky move for the show to skip the action scene since it has included action scenes in all the other previous episodes. It works because the tension shifts from whether or not they are going to survive their mission to whether or not they can trust anyone in the room.
One thing may have gone wrong in this episode, and that would be the readiness of Joe and Byron to act as they do with regards to blackmailing Oleksandra’s family even as they bluff their way through the whole assignment. The episode certainly recognizes this irony, at least in part.
Lioness Season 3 Episode 4 Predictions
Episode 4 hits on August 23rd, and the official synopsis tells us the team is trying to prevent a crisis while Neal finds himself under a lot of pressure at home. Here’s how we think that plays out.
1. Joe’s whack-a-mole strategy actually works quite loudly. That’s why the whole point of the leak was to have all the compromised assets running around. “Murder Hornets” is a pretty accurate name for what happens once the chaos breaks loose. There will definitely be some quick-moving consequences from this CIA-induced panic.
2. One of the five senators becomes the center of attention for the episode. Since there are five compromised officials that could possibly play an important role in the show, it will make no sense not to take a closer look at at least one of them this episode, namely the one involved in the honey trap, which is definitely a story with much drama potential.
3. Oleksandra’s ploy will backfire somewhere along the line. “Arresting” an actual double agent in public to flush out the rest of his network is a ploy which is bound to fail as the handlers of Oleksandra may try to kill her to keep their identities concealed from the agents of the CIA. It will not come as a surprise if Oleksandra’s safety becomes an issue which the CIA failed to anticipate.
4. Pressure builds to a point of breaking for Neal. The synopsis clearly indicates that Neal has been under pressure from the family front, and there has been a lot of buildup in the series towards the confrontation between him and Joe ever since the pilot.
5. Name revealed for the present timeline mystery. With three episodes aired now and no name given officially to the person who is holding Joe captive, Episode 4 looks to be the one which the show should narrow down the names at least a little.
6. The wild card: the “accident” that frightened Joe’s security team. That “accident” during the school run in Episode 3 may have been overlooked, but chances are that Sheridan does not put something as strange as that into a story without planning on using it later on. Watch out for the possibility of its return as an actual assassination attempt.
Final Thoughts
With “The Bear Is Infected,” the show takes a daring leap into uncharted territory by focusing solely on dialogue but largely succeeds because of the strength of its cast. With the scandal about the senator brewing and the thin cover story Oleksandra has, as well as the fact that Joe is still tied up in some bed without knowing anything about who took her there, “Murder Hornets” has more than enough to live up to its title.
This time around, someone in the McNamara household definitely needs to take a vacation, one where there’s no Wi-Fi, drinking birds, or phony state troopers.
Lioness Season 3 new episodes premiere every Sunday on Paramount+.
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