So Taylor Sheridan's paramilitary soap opera just got the nod for another round, because of course it did.
Paramount apparently looked at the numbers, saw that people will watch literally anything with a gun and a slow zoom on someone's conflicted face, and said "greenlight it." Yellowstone's corpse isn't even cold and they're already strip-mining the spinoff mine.
For the uninitiated: Lioness is the show where the CIA recruits a lady, trains her to infiltrate terror networks, and then everyone scowls in dimly lit rooms about the moral cost of it all.
Nicole Kidman shows up occasionally to deliver exposition in a pantsuit.
It's basically Homeland if Homeland had a nicotine addiction and a ranch.
Season 3 ended with the usual Sheridan special—a bunch of people dead, a bunch of people traumatized, and a cliffhanger that exists purely to make you renew your subscription.
Now we're getting a fourth season, which means roughly eight more episodes of operatives whispering "copy that" into earpieces while ambient drone music plays.
Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: these shows are the television equivalent of a gas station hot dog.
You know exactly what's in it, you know it's not good for you, and yet you're standing in line at 11 p.m. buying two.
Sheridan has cracked the code on making prestige-adjacent content that appeals to people who claim they don't watch TV but somehow have opinions about Beth Dutton.
Critics will call it "pulpy" and "unnecessary," which is critic-speak for "we watched all of it in one weekend." The audience score will be like 87%.
Some guy on X will post a thread about how it's the last honest show on television, and then he'll get into a fight with a stranger about the ending of Sicario.
Season 4 means we're looking at late 2026 at the earliest, by which point Sheridan will have premiered four other shows, two of which will also be about tough people in dusty places.
The man is single-handedly keeping the state of Texas employed in the film industry and also possibly writing every script himself on a legal pad while riding a horse.
Nobody involved has confirmed plot details, because Sheridan treats information like it's classified at the actual CIA level.
Will somebody's daughter get kidnapped again?
Will there be a scene in a dimly lit bunker where someone says "we don't have jurisdiction"?
The real question isn't whether you'll watch it.
The real question is whether you'll pretend you're above it while doing so, and the answer is yes, because that's the American way.
We endure them with a smirk and then post about it. **The Take:** Lioness is the kind of show that makes you feel like you're consuming something serious while you're actually just eating popcorn in the dark like everyone else.
Final Thoughts
Season 4 will be fine, it'll be forgettable, and we'll all be there for it anyway.