Special Ops: Lioness returns with The Bear Is Infected, directed by Michael Friedman. Last week ended with Cruz, Tex, and Kyle grabbing Elizaveta Neretin’s Oleksandra Balakin, the Ukrainian informant who handed the CIA the name of Aleksi Yurimov and whom they suspect of having handed the Russians Joe’s home address.
This hour is almost entirely about squeezing her for the truth, and it is a talkier episode than the first two. It also features certain dialogue-heavy sequences that make it a much better written one. By the end, Zoe Saldaña‘s Joe McNamara has a plan that involves letting Balakin walk straight into danger. Here is everything that goes down.
What Did the Team Learn from Oleksandra Balakin?
The episode opens in Kyiv, six months earlier, with Delta Force operators Cody J and Grady knocking on a door and asking for Olga Balakin. They push their way inside, and it becomes clear very quickly whose home this is. With Oleksandra’s mother and sister held at gunpoint on the other side of the world, Kyle begins his questioning back in the United States.
Balakin works through the possible ways Joe could have been identified. She argues hard for her own innocence, insisting she is not Russian. She even attacks Kyle when he calls her a Russian. It is enough to convince them for the time being, and her family is left alone. Kyle is not finished, though, and warns her there will be a round two.
Kyle and Cruz bring whatever they learn to Joe, Kaitlyn, and Byron. They agree that Balakin did not give Joe up. However, Joe wants to reach that conclusion herself, so she sits down with the informant in person. What she gets instead is a proposal, which shapes Joe’s moves for the rest of the episode.
The team then regroups at the Farm, where Dawn Olivieri’s Amber Whelan joins the meeting. Balakin brings up the old Lioness operation on Al-Zarqawi, proving that she and the Russians have information on Joe’s team. She then explains how Russian intelligence gains assets in the United States.
At the end of her and Whelan’s explanation, she presents the team with a packet that includes a list of Russian assets operating inside America. These are not the major players, though, and Joe learns that Balakin’s SVR cover isn’t blown yet. When she asks Kyle about pulling her out or burning her cover, he explains why they cannot. Balakin’s assets are five sitting senators.
How Does Joe Set Up Oleksandra Balakin as Bait?
The idea to present a bait to lure out the SVR agents came from Oleksandra Balakin. However, Joe improves upon the plan. Balakin tells her to announce publicly that the Americans have Yurimov, because that is what will bring the hornets out. However, when Joe presents the plan to Kyle and later Kaitlyn and Byron, it isn’t Yurimov’s name she wants to put out.
Kaitlyn and Byron have also gone through Balakin’s dossier of assets, which is heavy enough to cause real damage. They are not yet ready to throw Balakin to the wolves. However, after the day she had, Joe is determined to lure out her attackers by any means necessary.
She pitched that the public statement need not carry any names or details. Just that a Russian agent has been apprehended on American soil, and anyone in the network will know exactly who is meant. The plan is to cut Balakin loose and shadow her, letting the SVR come to them. Byron wants to sleep over it, but Joe already knows that the plan is set in motion. The press secretary makes the announcement, and the trap is set.
Did This Move Lead to Joe’s Kidnapping in Lioness Season 3?
The closing minutes of this new episode answer the question. In the present timeline, a captive Joe is tied up and made to watch that same press conference on a screen rigged above her. She is also being denied sleep, with water dripping steadily onto her face. The press conference, from six months before, being screened to her, strongly suggests that her own gambit may have put her in danger.
Moreover, Oleksandra Balakin warns that she would be disappeared without a trace if SVR knew who she was and what she did in Ukraine. That’s exactly what is happening in the present timeline.
We also get to see more of the McNamara family’s troubles in this episode. Kate calls a family meeting and asks her mother to quit, and Joe answers with a genuinely stirring case for why she cannot. She is a soldier, and the freedom her family enjoys is built on people doing exactly what she does. We also see the daughters being traumatized again when a routine drive turns into a scare for them as Two Cups and Randy read a passing vehicle as a threat.
M.N. Miller of FandomWire gave the show a 9/10 in our review of Lioness Season 3 and praised it as “a spectacular pressure cooker of espionage, politics, and personal sacrifice.”
What did you think of The Bear Is Infected? Let us know in the comments!
The third episode of Lioness Season 3 is now available for streaming on Paramount+.
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