‘Lioness’ Star Addresses Biggest Season 3 Rumor About Her Taylor Sheridan Character

A gritty spy thriller that leans heavily on genre tropes, Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness succeeds as a gripping action series by weaponizing a proven formula to keep viewers hooked. The show’s characters represent traditional archetypes, with each one functioning like a cog in the well-oiled machine that is the CIA’s secretive counterterrorism task force. Lioness keeps its edge by defying stereotypes within this familiar structure.

Jill Wagner’s Bobby, one of the show’s scene-stealing characters, is the quintessential grizzled enforcer, who serves as spearhead of the Lioness program’s Quick Reaction Force. Bobby subverts damsel-in-distress tropes; instead, she’s a highly capable soldier who executes orders with lethal precision. So far, the character’s arc has been all about the mission, to the extent that it’s hard to imagine Bobby getting wrapped up in a romance. Wagner addressed this head-on in an interview with MovieWeb.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s like, ‘Oh, who’s her girlfriend? Who’s her boyfriend? Who’s she dating?’ I’m like, ‘Is that really that interesting with this character? We have enough love interests on the show. Everybody’s got a love interest, right?'”

Jill Wagner as Bobby in Lioness — Jill Wagner as Bobby in ‘Lioness.’

Wagner pitched the premise of Lioness to Sheridan because she wanted to subvert female action tropes, and the series is meant to honor the real-life female service members she met while doing her research. In previous interviews, she’s explicitly opposed turning the series into “Barbies with guns,” alluding to films and TV shows that portray women in combat as hyper-sexualized vixens.

“I don’t think [Bobby] is one of these women who are driven to go find love. I think she’s married to her country, and it looks like the QRF is pretty busy. So I don’t know when everybody’s getting this time to go out on dates and stuff. It’s not like she’s on a dating app. I don’t think that’s her.”

Wagner expressed the same sentiment in a previous interview after her co-star, Laysla De Oliveira, echoed calls for Bobby to have a love interest. Wagner revealed that Sheridan originally wrote himself as Bobby’s ex-husband, Cody, who was supposed to work alongside her and her ex-boyfriend Tracer (Max Martini) in Season 2. Sheridan ultimately abandoned that subplot, which Wagner believes was for the best. As she put it, “I think Bobby’s first love is her country, and she’s pretty focused.”

The actor did assert another Lioness character’s dynamic with Bobby that the series has downplayed — her intense camaraderie with her brother-in-arms, Two Cups. “They’re playing cards, they’re drinking beer, video games,” she said. “I feel like James Jordan and I have created this little thing that wasn’t necessarily written.”

After dismissing the need for a love interest for Bobby, Wagner pitched an alternative that she hopes audiences will rally behind. “I talked to Taylor at the very beginning of this. I wanted Bobby to ride a motorcycle, a Harley,” she teased. While this has yet to materialize in Season 3, Wagner remains hopeful that Sheridan will give her the go-ahead soon.