Inside Cruz and Joe’s Complicated Bond in ‘Lioness’ Season 3

‘Lioness’ has spent three seasons exploring what happens when a mentor builds a soldier in her own image, and nowhere is that dynamic more central than in the relationship between Cruz Manuelos and Joe McNamara. Cruz Manuelos is a rough around the edges but passionate young Marine recruited to join the CIA’s Lioness Engagement Team to infiltrate and take down a terrorist organization from within. As Season 3 has unfolded on Paramount+, the bond between Cruz, played by Laysla De Oliveira, and Zoe Saldaña’s Joe has moved from tension to something closer to reluctant kinship.

That evolution has become one of the season’s most discussed threads, particularly as the show pushes both women through a string of harrowing missions. What started as a mentor forcing a broken recruit into shape has turned into a relationship neither character can fully name, which is exactly why fans keep circling back to it.

How Cruz and Joe’s Mentorship Began

Cruz grew up in Oklahoma with her two brothers, and her father is Syrian while her mother is from Jalisco, Mexico. She ran track in high school and won state in the javelin, but her life took a downward turn after her mother passed away during her junior year, eventually leading her into stripping and then fast food work before she enlisted in the Marine Corps to escape an abusive relationship. She became Force Recon and served two tours in Afghanistan before Joe found her at Camp Bragg and recruited her into the Lioness program.

That origin matters because it frames everything that follows. Cruz arguably has the most troubled arc in ‘Lioness,’ introduced as angry and emotionally isolated after coming off that abusive relationship, and Joe essentially broke her down before molding her into an effective Lioness operative. Their surrogate relationship has been described as complicated from the start, with Joe acting less like a commanding officer and more like a hard, unsentimental parent.

That framing has stuck with viewers because it explains why Cruz’s resentment toward Joe never fully curdles into hatred. The two are bound by something that looks a lot like family, even when neither of them enjoys admitting it.

Cruz’s Arc Mirrors Joe’s Own Sacrifices

By Season 3, De Oliveira has said Cruz is slowly becoming like Joe whether she wants to admit it or not. Joe herself earned her rank at the CIA at great personal cost, trading a stable family life and her own peace for the demands of national security, and she has learned to compartmentalize duty and emotional toll by resorting to questionable methods when training her operatives, especially Cruz.

That parallel became explicit in Episode 7, which reveals how much Cruz has evolved, to the point where she appears ready to potentially take over Joe’s command. Speaking with MovieWeb, De Oliveira suggested her character could eventually replace Joe given how far her arc has progressed this season, though that comment appears to describe a possible in universe succession rather than any hint that Saldaña is leaving the series.

De Oliveira has also pointed to a specific moment that captures the weight of the mentorship. She has said there are moments of frustration and fear in Cruz’s feelings toward Joe, but when Cruz is out in the field, she is focused on the task at hand and firmly believes that if she sees Joe, she is getting her, period, end of story. De Oliveira described one line from Episode 6, “How can I hate her, she made me,” as hitting her so deeply that she texted creator Taylor Sheridan about it immediately after reading the script.

De Oliveira called the bond a real partnership, comparing it to family, noting that people do not always like what their family members do to them, but the love still runs deep. That framing has become central to how the show wants audiences to read Cruz and Joe, not as a simple boss and subordinate but as two women shaped by the same brutal profession.

The Season 3 Kidnapping Tests Their Loyalty

The relationship was pushed to its limit when Joe was abducted following a mission tied to Ukraine. In the aftermath, Joe is abducted outside her own home by a group of operatives, and it falls to Cruz, Josie, and the rest of Joe’s unit to save her while grappling with a mission that has hit uncomfortably close to home.

The rescue itself became one of the season’s defining sequences. In the episode “Kiss the Girls,” police who pulled over the vehicle carrying Joe and her captors were ambushed, and the last surviving officer was nearly executed before Joe’s squad arrived to fight back, with Josie’s helicopter then bringing Cruz in to eliminate the remaining threat. Joe ultimately survives the ordeal but does not go straight home, and her escape leads into an emotional reunion with Cruz.

That reunion carries extra weight given how far the two have come. Cruz starts to see Joe’s heart more clearly in the moments after her rescue, seeing herself reflected in Joe whether she wants to accept it or not, and as Cruz starts to love herself more, she also begins to understand her mentor on a deeper level. Saldaña has told People that Joe’s work always comes at the cost of putting herself in danger, a line that captures why this mentorship has never been an easy one for Cruz to hold onto.

What Comes Next for Cruz and Joe

Cruz’s growth this season also reflects how far she has come since the show’s first season, when De Oliveira has joked about calling her character “baby Cruz,” and the actress has spoken about how Cruz increasingly recognizes the parallels between herself and Joe as the moral lines she once saw clearly have grown far more blurred the longer she stays in the field.

That growth has not been limited to her professional life. Cruz’s relationship with Josie, played by Genesis Rodriguez, has given her a kind of adult intimacy she never experienced in earlier seasons, a shift from the secrecy that defined her first real connection back in Season 1. De Oliveira has said that openness made this season particularly meaningful to explore.

As for where the Joe and Cruz dynamic goes from here, the show is not done answering that question. With new episodes releasing weekly on Paramount+, the season built toward a finale on September 20, and De Oliveira has made clear that fans should expect a payoff matching the intensity of everything that led up to it. Cast members Jill Wagner and De Oliveira have both suggested the story is far from over, and writer Michael Idov has joined ‘Lioness’ as a writer and supervising producer, a move that appears tied to a future season even though an official renewal has not yet been confirmed.

Given everything Cruz and Joe have survived together this season, how do you think their mentorship should resolve once the finale airs.