Special ops series "Lioness" continues its MAGA courtship

Judged on the premise alone, “Lioness” might sound like the kind of progressive Hollywood fare that could alienate MAGA audiences. The streaming series, which just concluded its second season on Paramount+, stars Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman as leaders of the CIA’s clandestine Lioness program, through which they recruit and train women to infiltrate terror networks and drug cartels. The titular lionesses are lethal, highly effective warriors — who would have no place in the military as reimagined by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee for Secretary of Defense. 

Only about a third of the storytelling in “Lioness” is shoot-'em-up action, though. The remainder is political intrigue and family drama, and in these realms the show seems carefully calibrated to appeal to politically conservative viewers. Often, the political leanings of the show are subtle, glimpsed in B-story plots and transitional moments between more intense scenes. 

In a recent episode, Saldaña’s character, Joe McNamara, walks in on an argument between her tween daughters and their father, Neal (Dave Annable). The girls have just called Neal transphobic because he balked at using someone’s pronouns. 

“The definition of ‘phobia’ is the extreme or irrational fear of something,” Neal patiently explains while continuing to make breakfast. “Disagreeing with somebody is not a phobia.”

Did you get that? He’s not transphobic; he’s not extreme or irrational. He merely “disagrees” with somebody. About their gender. Never mind that Republicans spent more than $65 million demonizing trans people in election ads this year — handsome, soft-spoken Neal reassures us there’s no such thing as transphobia. 

Joe backs him up. “Ideas are meant to be challenged,” she says. “He has the right to disagree with you.” It’s what makes America great. 

Back in season one, in another father-daughter moment, Neal admonishes his daughter Kate (Hannah Love Lanier) after a car accident: “Cars kill more teenagers than any other cause combined,” he says. The character is a surgeon, so he ought to know what he’s talking about. In reality, though, guns are now the leading cause of death among American adolescents. (Perhaps that truth would be an uncomfortable thing for Republican viewers to hear, since 81% of them believe that guns make people safer.)

Fourteen-year-old Kate is also briefly pregnant, but the show sidesteps the complexity of her reproductive choices by writing a convenient miscarriage into the very next episode. (“God decided,” Joe tells her.) Avoiding hard conversations about abortion has been part of the Republican playbook since the U.S. Supreme Court made the unpopular decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

“Lioness” also portrays government and the fourth estate in ways that closely align with Trumpian fantasies: Though a Democratic President may occupy the White House, the country is actually run by deep state technocrats who don’t even bother to loop him into their machinations; America has “open borders” — an indisputable truth that even Democrats acknowledge matter-of-factly; and the mainstream media is dishonest, biased and cartoonishly woke. 

Morgan Freeman as Secretary of State Mullins and Michael Kelly as Bryon Westfield in "Lioness" (Ryan Green/Paramount+)In the penultimate episode of the show's second season, Secretary of Defense Edwin Mullins (Morgan Freeman) takes a moment to watch the Sunday morning political talk shows. On “Face the Nation,” a guest uses the word “Latinos” and is immediately reprimanded by the host. 

“‘Latino?’ Do you think that’s an appropriate term in our current climate?” she asks, incredulous. 

“So what should I say?” the interviewee responds. “‘Latinx?’ I should just invent a term that has absolutely no meaning in the English language to satisfy your aversion to being disagreed with?”

Of course, it’s completely plausible that a Republican pundit might disdain the use of the word “Latinx.” But would a Sunday morning host on network television scold a guest for using the word “Latino”? Only in a MAGA fever dream. 

“Turn that s**t off,” Mullins says, disgusted. He then dismisses mainstream media outlets as “court jesters.” Newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post have lost all credibility, he says, because they peddle only opinions and propaganda. 

 “Americans have always been gullible, but they’re not stupid. Lie to them enough, and they won’t trust you to tell them the sun’s rising.” In a line that resonates with recent talk of right-wing retribution against the media, he predicts a violent end for those court jesters: “Before long, the court’s gonna start chanting ‘off with their heads.’” 

In the same scene, Mullins — who, let’s remember, is ostensibly a Democrat — waxes nostalgic about the presidency of George W. Bush in a soliloquy so preposterous, ahistorical and silly that not even Morgan Freeman can salvage it. Without mentioning him by name (referring only to “our 43rd President”) Mullins recalls serving in Congress when Bush was elected, and laments that he and his “petty” Democratic colleagues opposed all the new President’s appointments. “If he tried to get a kid into the Naval Academy, we figured out a way to block it.” Then came 9/11. “We needed a leader,” Mullins muses, “and a leader arose.” 

Of his own party’s leaders, Mullins admits, “Right now we don’t have one.” (Though the Democratic President in the “Lioness” universe is never named, he’s often dismissed as ineffectual or absent, which echoes Trump’s characterization of Joe Biden.)

Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade and Michael Kelly as Byron Westfield in "Lioness" (Ryan Green/Paramount+)It’s unclear how (or whether) the tectonic shift in real-world politics might be reflected in future seasons of “Lioness.” The show has only obliquely referenced elections. In a prospective third season, the story could continue to depict Trumpian ideas, even without a Trump-like character. On the show's recent second season finale, CIA Deputy Director Byron Westfield (Michael Kelly) travels with Kaitlyn Meade (Kidman) and a team of American operatives to Mexico to help assassinate a cartel leader and install a more cooperative replacement. If that plot point sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because Donald Trump has been floating plans to send American “kill teams” into Mexico to neutralize drug lords.

“Lioness” is hardly the first prestige TV program to accommodate conservative sensibilities. “Reacher” star Alan Ritchson surprised and enraged that show’s right-wing fanbase when he called Donald Trump “a rapist and a con man” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. And it should come as no surprise that “Yellowstone” is a hit with conservative audiences — it’s the creation of Taylor Sheridan, the same showrunner who helms “Lioness.”

None of these shows, though, is popular exclusively among conservatives. As sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom explains in a “New York Times” column, liberal viewers are more omnivorous than conservative viewers. “Liberals watch, read and listen to more stuff than conservatives do,” McMillan Cottom writes, citing research by colleagues. “They also do not necessarily reject a cultural object because conservatives like it.”

So far, there are scant details about a third season for “Lioness,” but Saldaña told Vanity Fair that she has a “contractual obligation” to play Joe for at least three seasons. With more than 12 million viewers streaming the second season premiere (a record for Paramount +, it’s clear that “Lioness” has found its audience.