Taylor Sheridan’s Special Ops: Lioness centers on the CIA’s “Lioness” program, a black-ops initiative that is as morally bankrupt as it is effective. The drill is simple: recruit female operatives to get close to the female relatives of high-value terrorist targets, maneuver into their inner circles and take out the bad guys before they can strike. The show may be inspired by a real-life Marine program, but Sheridan blows it up to blockbuster proportions.

Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira) is a desperate Marine trying to outrun an abusive past who becomes the perfect asset. She’s paired with Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña), a handler who has seen too much, done too much and is currently losing the battle to keep her own domestic life from imploding while she plays God in the Middle East. They work for Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman), a cold, calculating and cunning CIA supervisor. And Morgan Freeman plays Edwin Mullins, the Secretary of State.

What makes this show work isn’t just the tactical gunplay or the pulse-pounding extraction sequences. It’s the human cost. The series doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the job. You’ve got CIA operatives like Kyle McManus (Thad Luckinbill) causing international incidents just to get to a target, and the constant, ugly reality of the kill mission weighing on everyone involved.

The tension peaks in the final act in Mallorca, where the mission goes sideways in the messiest way possible. It isn’t a clean spy movie resolution. It’s a bloody, kitchen-knife-to-the-throat affair that leaves everyone broken. If you’ve followed Sheridan’s work (like Yellowstone or Sicario), you know he’s obsessed with the idea that the good guys have to become monsters to stop the monsters. This show is his most cynical take on that philosophy yet.

Extras include behind-the-stories features, an embedded extra, tactics and training and inside the series. You can get this from Deep Discount.