Every Monday morning following a new episode premiere, social media explodes with conspiracy theories, breakdown videos, and intense debates surrounding Paramount+’s hit series Lioness. The high-stakes, geopolitical thriller has officially cemented itself as a weekly must-watch, driving collective conversations that feel increasingly rare in today’s content-heavy climate.

Since Lioness first hit our screens, we’ve been engaged. Three seasons in, right when many shows would normally start to fall off, the show has only gotten stronger, and plenty of fans would argue this third season is the best one yet. From the first episode, viewers have been locked in, with each installment pulling us deeper and deeper into a world of international relations and military operations that most of us have zero real-world knowledge of, yet somehow can’t stop trying to piece together ourselves.

Right now, the on-screen tension is at an all-time high. The Quick Reaction Force (QRF) is frantically tearing through every available lead to find Joe (Zoe Saldaña), who has been compromised and captured by Russian operatives. Meanwhile, fans across Threads and X are enthusiastically playing armchair detectives, piecing together subtle breadcrumbs to figure out if there’s a mole inside the operation, and who exactly it could be.

Anchoring the tactical heart of the series is LaMonica Garrett, who stars as Tucker, a mechanically inclined former U.S. Marine and veteran operative on the CIA’s Quick Reaction Force, the tactical team tasked with backing up Saldaña’s Joe McNamara on her most dangerous missions.

Before breaking into major film and TV franchises, Garrett was a standout linebacker at Central State University, an HBCU in Ohio, and later spent six years as a top-scoring professional SlamBall athlete. His work with Taylor Sheridan goes back further than Lioness: when Sheridan cast him as Thomas in 1883, Garrett stepped into a role that did vital work for history, helping restore a truth mainstream media had long erased: that one in four cowboys on the American frontier was Black.

We caught up with Garrett to talk about the intense hunt for Joe, Sheridan’s uniquely truthful approach to writing, and the thrill of poking the bear while live-tweeting with passionate fans every week.

First and foremost, why haven’t y’all found Joe yet?

LaMonica Garrett: Yeah, them bad guys is crafty this year. They’re giving us the runaround, but, yeah, Taylor knows how to make for great suspense. It’s enough to fulfill you, but it’s still breadcrumbs. You can’t find her that fast. But even when, if something does happen, I think it’s going to send the internet into some waves.

This is not your first time working with Taylor Sheridan. You worked with him on the prequel for Yellowstone, 1883. What is it about his writing that you think just captivates audiences?

LG: I told him before, I had an award given to me in Fort Worth, and part of the speech was saying how Taylor is a truthful writer. Now, he says if you put a camera up at nature, whatever’s looking back at you, that’s the story you need to tell. And some people don’t do that. Some people, it might be one-sided or one way, and Taylor gives you… he gives you both sides, but he doesn’t hit you over the head with it. He just puts it out there for the discussion to be had. And that’s what storytellers should do.

I see you’re pretty active on social media for the most part, especially on Threads. What is the feeling watching all the reactions, knowing what’s going to happen, and hearing all the conspiracy theories about the mole?

LG: It’s fun to watch. Season one, we came out in the dark, where it was during a strike. So we couldn’t interact. We couldn’t talk to fans. We couldn’t tweet about it or anything like that. So now, just poking the bear a little bit when I hear people talk about who’s the mole and this and that, and I’ll just come in and throw a set of eyeballs on there. Like, “Oh, wait, I was right. I was right.” It’s fun, but it’s interactive. And I knew when I used to watch shows before I got into acting, if I had that opportunity to interact with the actors on the shows, that would have been awesome.

What do you think it is about specifically the story of Lioness that has everybody going nuts every week?

LG: I think our show, we have a bit of something for everybody. And I know I like action. I like sci-fi. My wife, she likes the slower family dramas, and we don’t watch the same shows a lot. And this is a show if I wasn’t on it, we’d watch together because she’d have the family dynamic with Joe and Neal and everything that’s going through on that side. And that’s its own story in itself could be its own show. And then you have the White House tactics, and then you have Nicole’s [Kidman] husband on the Martin Donovan. I don’t think he’s got out of his chair in three seasons on that little balcony or whatever. But everything he says is riveting, and it makes you go to Google and start looking stuff up. So that’s that part, and then you have the tactical with the QRF, like the stuff that we do and the action and that’s its own show also. So you got something for everybody and Taylor just knows how to tell a good story.

Every Monday after it airs, fans are asking for more Tucker. If you could write more for your character, what would you want to see?

LG: First of all with that, it’s a team sport and we got a hell of an all-star team. If it’s basketball, we got Jordan and Kobe and Bron. We got everybody like a three-headed monster. And then you have really good actors that like right in the middle of the story of whatever’s going on, and sometimes you get the ball and sometimes you’re passing and facilitating. So whenever it is you do get your shot, you better make it because you don’t know when the ball is going to come back around again. But yeah, Tucker, I think with all the QRF guys, like it would be cool to see some backstory with what makes them tick and what gets them out of bed each morning.

Check out the full interview. A new episode of Lioness premieres on Sundays on Paramount+.

Photo Credit: Paramount+