Taylor Sheridan’s Special Ops: Lioness season 1 made Cruz and Joe, specifically, witness many emotional highs and lows, more than they would have ever witnessed in their lifetimes. They felt very scattered from within, and there were times when they didn’t know what they were doing. Joe was desperately trying to balance her professional and personal lives, but she didn’t know what magic elixir she should take to make everybody happy. Kate was always unhappy about the fact that Joe didn’t spend time with the family, whereas on the professional front, even her bosses were not satisfied with her modus operandi, making her go through the toughest of times.
Cruz, on the other hand, didn’t know what she was doing or why she was consenting to go through such hell. To top it all, Cruz had fallen in love with Aaliyah, and she didn’t know how she was going to execute her father when the time came. Joe had told Cruz time and again that Aaliyah was using her and that she just wanted to have some fun and take full advantage of her freedom before she got married, but deep down, Cruz knew that it was not the truth. Cruz trusted Aaliyah with all her heart. They had fallen in love with each other, and Cruz didn’t know how to take her feelings out of the equation now. Cruz felt a certain way, and no matter what Joe told her, she was not going to believe that her intuitions were not telling her the truth. Joe had a conversation with Cruz when she felt that the latter was having second thoughts about going on the mission. Joe made her realize that people like Amrohi didn’t deserve to live and that she was doing the right thing by killing him. But something inside Cruz told her that it was not right and that for betraying the trust of someone so badly, she would have to pay a huge cost, maybe not in the present but eventually in the future.
So, let’s find out if Cruz was able to execute the mission successfully or if her feelings got in the way of her duty and created a problem for the CIA and the United States of America.
Spoiler Alert
How Did Ehsaan Find Out About Aaliyah’s Affair?
Aaliyah reached Mallorca, and she was immediately taken to Ehsaan, as apparently he wanted to have a conversation with her. Ehsaan asked Cruz why the other day she had left crying from Aaliyah’s room, and he suspected that something might have happened between them. Cruz told her that Aaliyah was scared because everything in her life was going to change after the wedding, but Ehsaan didn’t buy that. He knew that both ladies were up to something and that they were hiding things from him. Ehsaan became so agitated that he raised his hands on Cruz and told her that it was the last time she would meet Aaliyah, and after her wedding, she wouldn’t get to see her ever again. Cruz never told Aaliyah that Ehsaan had confronted her, and she knew there was no point in doing so.
Later, in Special Ops: Lioness, Aaliyah told Cruz that Ehsaan had an idea that they were having an affair and that once she married him, her entire life would change completely. Aaliyah was feeling apprehensive about her future married life, but she was helpless, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to do anything even if she wanted to. Cruz told her time and again to rebel and speak up for her own cause, but Aaliyah knew that it was not a possibility as she was well aware of the kind of men her father and fiancé were. She told Cruz that she didn’t agree that her father was a terrorist, as the Western nations had labeled him to be, but obviously, she was too naive and too in her cocoon to understand what happened behind the curtain and the kind of complex and dirty politics nations indulged in.
How Did Cruz Kill Amrohi?
Cruz, while talking to Aaliyah, realized that Amrohi had already arrived at the wedding venue, and she geared up to take action and do whatever was in her hands to kill the man and bring this nightmare of a mission to an end. Aaliyah came to Cruz’s bedroom once again in the night, and she made it very clear that she wanted to get close to her forbidden love. She had just this one night, and after that, she was never going to see Cruz. She wanted to take full advantage of the time she had on her hands, and she wanted the night to last for an eternity. But things didn’t happen as she had planned, and Cruz decided that she didn’t want to indulge her in any manner because, as it was, she was feeling very guilty. Cruz loved her, and she told her that, and that is why she didn’t want to hurt her anymore. Cruz went down to the kitchen, and that’s when, out of nowhere, Amrohi arrived there and had a conversation with her.
Meanwhile, Ehsaan got to know that Cruz was a Marine, and he realized that his intuitions were actually true. He rushed to the kitchen, but before he could do anything, Cruz stabbed him, then turned to Amrohi and slit his throat in cold blood. Aaliyah came to the scene, and seeing her father and her fiancé lying in the pool of blood, she shouted at the top of her lungs. The guards came running to her but till then Cruz had escaped. Joe and her team had already reached Fortaleza Estate, and they started giving cover fire to Cruz. Cruz somehow managed to escape from there while dodging the bullets and leaving things to fate. Joe and her soldiers killed everyone who came their way, and they successfully escaped from there in their yacht. Amrohi was dead, and the CIA had accomplished their mission, but the battle was still not over.
Did Cruz Leave The CIA?
During Special Ops: Lioness’s ending, Cruz lost her control and went into a fit of rage as she blamed Joe for turning her into a killing machine and making her hurt someone she loved with all her heart. Now she knew that she could never go back to Aaliyah even if she wanted to, and moreover, she knew how shattered it would have made her when she would have gotten to know that whatever time she had spent with Cruz was all a lie.
The Secretary of State, Edwin Mullins, and his team had told Byron time and again to call off the mission because they realized that by killing Amrohi, they would be putting their relations with the entire Middle East in jeopardy. But it was way too late by the time they came to that realization. They asked Byron to call off the mission and ask his team to retreat, but Cruz had already reached the venue, and there was no way they could contact her and tell her to abort the mission.
Nobody but the government was to be blamed for the indecisiveness, and as Byron said, they shouldn’t have put Amrohi on the most wanted list if they didn’t want him to be killed by the CIA. Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and Cruz told Joe that she was not going to be a part of this system as it had done nothing but wreck her from within. She had lost a lot in the process, and in the end, he came to know that it all amounted to nothing. The bureaucratic procedures were a mess, and the leaders should have been more in sync and reached a conclusion prior to giving the green light to the mission. Probably in the future, Russia and China would both get involved in the issue, as Amrohi used to deal with them, too. The oil prices were affected, and now the field was open for others to take advantage of the situation.
If there was a Special Ops: Lioness season 2, we would get to witness the repercussions of what had happened in Mallorca, and surely the CIA had triggered a chain reaction that was going to face a lot of problems for them in the times to come.
