Lioness Season 3 Episode 3: [SPOILER] becomes an unwitting Lioness - recap ahead

Ravikumar N Sun, August 16, 2026 at 2:26 PM UTC

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Zoe Saldaña in Lioness ©YouTube/Paramount+

Lioness Season 3, Episode 3 further adds to the mystery of Joe's current predicament as a hostage of the Russians. This week's episode was mostly set in the past, with the last act returning to the present, showing Joe in captivity. This season has endangered not just Joe but her entire family, as the previous episode forced Joe and her family to relocate.

Therefore, "The Bear Is Infected", the third episode, opens right in the aftermath of the previous episode. It opens with Oleksandra in the interrogation room as she is suspected to have leaked Joe's information in last week's Lioness Season 3 episode.

Lioness Season 3 Episode 3 recap:

As mentioned earlier, the third episode kicks off with Oleksandra being interrogated. Kyle had sent two CIA agents after her mother and sister so that they could torture the two, because he knew that Oleksandra could take physical torture. But throughout the interrogation, Oleksandra maintains her innocence. This scene also establishes her backstory.

We are told that she lost most of her family in the war against the Russians and therefore Oleksandra gave up Yurimov's location in the Lioness season 3 premiere. She even suggests that the Russians may have accidentally captured Joe's face on a drone or even had her followed without knowing her importance. The two SVR agents from last week's episode might have been there just to dig information on her.

Thus, Joe designs a trap to expose the Russian moles by using Oleksandra as a bait. They initially plan to announce that Yurimov has been captured, but Joe improvises it to make the same announcement without giving out any name. The current strategy is to cut Oleksandra loose, shadow her, and let SVR fall into the CIA trap, as they come for her. Thus, Oleksandra becomes an unwitting member of Lioness in this episode.

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This week's episode brought out our characters' strategic side, and therefore, there was very little action. A major development in this week's episode: the US government publicly announces that they have apprehended a Russian asset without mentioning Yurimov's name, like Joe improvised.

The closing minutes of the episode return to the present. We learn that the Russians are holding Joe hostage inside an abandoned hospital. It appears that Russians are depriving Joe of sleep as they have placed dripping water over her. It seems that the Russians are determined to break her to get some information. A sleep-deprived Joe is made to watch the same press conference that happened six months ago.

As of now, we don't know why the Russians are holding her, but there are two possibilities. The first possibility is to identify the Russian agent that the US government has in custody. If that's the case, Joe might be an easy target, and the Russians have not realized the hostage in their custody is important.

The second possibility is that this is the Russians' way of exacting vengeance on the Americans for exposing their spy network. They are torturing Joe to find out how the Americans learned about the Russian spies. Whatever the case is, we may learn more over the next five weeks.

Three episodes of Lioness Season 3 are currently available on Paramount+.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”