Special Ops: Lioness Finale Recap: Red Wedding — Plus, Grade the Season

This Sunday on Paramount+’s Special Ops: Lioness, Cruz RSVPd for Aaliyah’s wedding to Ehsan. Did the lavish event prove to be a killer party?

Sufficiently steeled for her mission after bingeing eight hours’ worth of footage of the terrorism funded by oil titan Asmar Amrohi aka Aaliyah’s father, Cruz slipped aboard a flight to Mallorca, where she was picked up by the bodyguard now known as Tons of Fun. Upon arriving at the mansion venue, Cruz was led to a meeting with Ehsan, who was curious as to why there were so many reported tears during her and his fiancee’s day/night of New York shopping.

“You don’t know her to cry for her. She doesn’t know you. So, why the tears?” he asked/interrogated. Cruz claimed that Aaliyah was anxious about her life changing, but Ehsan called her out on her “lies,” before swatting her across the face. Ehsan declared that after the wedding, “There is no more you,” and that if Cruz tattles on this conversation, “I will throw you into the f–king sea.”

“I suggest you bring ‘Tons of Fun’ if you do,” Cruz shot back, “because I could wipe the floor with your boney ass.”

Ehsan told Tons of Fun, in Arabic, that Cruz can stay, lest a pissed-off Aaliyah keeps her legs closed on their wedding night. “I bet she spends it with her legs closed anyway,” Cruz snarked in Arabic, further arousing Ehsan’s curiosity about “the fire with this one.”

Cruz met up with Aaliyah, and met the icy cold mother-of-the-bride. When Cruz remarked on Aaliyah’s father actually being on-site, the bride-to-be shrugged that “danger is everywhere” for him — and that even the American heads of Chevron and Exxon have armed guards and bulletproof cars.

“Ehsan knows about us…,” Aaliyah reported, adding that she has probably seen the last of New York for a while, and that soon all she will know of love is “what I can remember.

“And maybe you’ll remember me some day,” she hoped. To which Cruz affirmed, “You’re going to be pretty hard to forget.”

Elsewhere, Joe, Kaitlyn and the QRF team boarded a boat stocked with weapons and which Tucker captained. They cruised within site of the wedding venue, and realized that they, in turn, were being watched. They then parked and waited to hear if Cruz hit her target and needed a coastline exfil…. Meanwhile in D.C., Westfield did what he could to keep at bay Secretary of State Morgan Freeman, NSA Advisor Bruce McGill and Chief of Staff Jennifer Ehle, who were lobbying to scrap the op and pull the Lioness — keep “the devil we know” alive, avoid turbulence in the oil market and all that.

That night, Aaliyah slipped into Cruz’s room… and bed… and the two started to canoodle, but Cruz put a stop to the futile hook-up. Cruz then left to get some air, heading to the kitchen to get water. Her late-night fridge raid was interrupted by… Aaliyah’s father, who had come down — alone, unguarded — to grab from the freezer a bit of “the best gelato outside of Italy.” But just as he and Cruz got to bonding, Ehsan stormed into the kitchen, having learned from an exhaustive online image search that Aaliyah’s new bestie is, as he bellowed, “a United States f–king Marine!”

Cruz acted swiftly and precisely, punching Ehsan in the face and then grabbing a knife to stab him, lots. Asmar came at Cruz with a frying pan, but she knifed him again and again as well. For good measure, she was sure to slit Asmar’s throat, before pinching her necklace to signal the QRF team and then darting outside, in her pajamas, to reach the exfil site. Gunplay followed, as a wave of guards gave chase, while Joe and the team swam toward the shore. The QRF team showed up in time to get Cruz out of a pickle, and then take out guard after guard — with help from Tucker aboard the boat, playing sniper.

Arriving at the boat, Cruz’s first order of business was to slug Joe. Inside, Kaitlyn pressed an amped-up, nearly-feral Cruz on whether she hit the target. “The Ace of Spades is dead,” Cruz grunted — news that Kaitlyn relayed to Westfield, and in turn the others who were anxiously gathered in D.C. “Congratulations, Deputy Director,” the Chief of Staff snarked. “You have set Middle East relations back 40 years.” And also thrown a wrench into any hope of weaning the U.S. off of relaying on fossil fuels.

“Don’t give me s–t because we did our f–king job,” Westfield told the Secretary of State, who responded by flipping the bird.

Back on the boat, Joe ordered Cruz outside, where she was dealt another punch by her Lioness. Joe pinned Cruz against a railing, warning that if she ever lays a hand on her again, “We’re gonna figure this out until the sun comes up.”

“Look at what you made me,” Cruz growled — someone who just “took out an old man in his underwear.” “What you did,” Joe countered, “was eliminate one of the worst perpetrators of violence in the past 20 years.”

“Says you!”

“Says f–king history! And you just changed it.”

Even so, “I’m not like you,” Cruz asserted, before quitting. “I’m done with this, and I am f–king done with you.”

“Maybe he is what you said. But she wasn’t,” Cruz said before walking away. And if Aaliyah does have children some day, who then learn of what transpired on this night, “All we did was make the next generation of terrorists.”

What did you think of Special Ops; Lioness? Would you want a second season with Cruz, if Joe even wants to and can lure her back, or a new operative?