‘Special Ops: Lioness’ Episode 7 Recap: “Wish the Fight Away”

“I think I’m in fucking love with her.” OK, it’s maybe not the most positive conversation Cruz is having with Joe – her boss – in Kyle’s hotel room in New York City, while Aaliyah – her mark – waits for her in the bedroom of a luxury suite upstairs in Special Ops: Lioness Episode 7 (“Wish The Fight Away”). But let’s back up a second. After their kiss in the Hamptons, Aaliyah invited Zara/Cruz on a lux NYC shopping trip – you know, stuff for her wedding – which led to a private room for trying things on, and for enjoying champagne, and the next thing we knew they were back at the hotel suite. And things got pretty hot and heavy. Which is exactly what Kyle heard over comms, since he was on surveillance duty for the Lioness op. Joe heard about this latest development in the situation room at Langley, where she and Meade and Westield were planning the team’s deployment to Spain. With Aaliyah’s wedding in Majorca imminent, Joe flew to New York City to talk a little reality into her Marine.

“I know that you have been abused,” Joe tells Cruz when they meet in the CIA’s hotel room. “And ignored. You have no family. You have no friends. And then you gave yourself to the Marines. And then me. And you have a purpose. And it is noble. But it can’t make you feel loved.”

It’s a great speech. But it’s a solid take from Joe, stone cold. (Zoe Saldana and Laysla De Oliveira are great in the scene, too, as their characters try to keep this undercover’s weird ship sailing straight.) Cruz still wonders about the strike against Aaliyah’s dad, and how it’s affected by her and the mark sleeping together. But of course, it’s not affected. As Joe explains, Aaliyah was always going to be collateral damage to the CIA’s hit on her dad. That they had sex does not change things. 

Back there in the situation room, Meade and Westfield kind of came to a moment. They’re all speaking into like four phones at once, and a giant map is blinking on the wall, and suddenly these CIA executives decide to greenlight a mission in Spain with only halfway decent sanction. If they fly under the Spanish military’s radar, and the Joint Chiefs’ radar, and the radar of those angry senators in the debrief meeting, and the ultimate all-encompassing radar of Secretary of State Morgan Freeman, then all of the radars will be invalidated and Joe’s Lioness op will be in position in Majorca to eliminate their high valued target. At his daughter’s wedding. To the man she’s not not sleeping with in a New York City hotel suite.

“This has no future,” Cruz tells Aaliyah. “It has the future we make it!” she pleads, which feels immediately deflated. Cruz is right. Joe is right. Their fling is their fling, but jeez, the wedding has been announced, right? And Aaliyah has described what would happen if she didn’t show up. But here’s the thing. With Meade and Westfield pulling out all of the stops to mobilize QRF to Spain, Aaliyah told Zara/Cruz that there’s no way her father would even attend the wedding, due to a default security risk. In other words, the target might not be by the side of the mark as she celebrates her wedding in Majorca. If that’s how it goes down, Joe and her team are back to square one. Because what’s a Lioness operative if she can’t close on a target? 

In the meantime, they’re preparing for a result. Joe assures Meade that Cruz is still in play. (Kaitlyn: “I’m not sure she can be glued back together.”) And the team welcomes Cruz back to the line for chow as they spin up the Spain trip in an airplane hangar. She’s got the hardest job out of all of them, Tex reminds the Marine. She’s doing the work on the frontlines. Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes? As Bobby, Two Cups, Tucker, and the rest yuck it up on the private jet en route across the Atlantic, Joe sits Cruz down with a laptop. “We need the Marine who volunteered to do this,” she tells her recruit. Not the Marine who slept with her mark, in other words, but here we are. And Cruz watches a supercut of atrocities attributed to Aaliyah’s dad’s terrorist ties. She seems re-calibrated to the mission at hand. Seems. Joe assessed Cruz’s situation correctly. What’s at stake with her role in the Lioness program is how she sees herself. Who is she inside of all of life’s chapters? We’re going to see what happens with this wedding, and the kill mission, and any kind of relationship that would remain between Cruz’s fake identity and her forbidden lover. But beyond all of that is a question of her true identity. Her true self. After all of the violence, and the escape, and the blind dedication to a profession, and now the immersion in an even more dangerous profession – who is Cruz after the job is done? 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges