Kyle is not a Lioness, but in season 3 of Paramount+’s Lioness he has moved firmly into the center of the frame. With Joe (Zoe Saldaña) abducted in the premiere, the cocky CIA senior case officer has taken over running her team in the present-day timeline—and the transition has been anything but clean.
In Sunday’s episode “Murder Hornets,” Kyle threatens a restrained Russian hostile for information about the plane that took Joe. Even after he gets what he needs, he pulls the trigger and orders the bodies left behind. “It’s their fing mess; let them clean it up,” he says of the Russians. When Bobby (Jill Wagner) later reports him to Kaitlyn (Nicole Kidman), Kyle defends the choice without apology. “Yeah, I treated this like war—it is fing war.” Earlier, in episode 3, he had already shown how far he would go by threatening the family of Ukrainian agent Oleksandra (Elizaveta Neretin) during a brutal interrogation.
Actor-producer Thad Luckinbill has a longer history with Lioness creator Taylor Sheridan than most of the cast. Both began in Hollywood as actors before moving behind the camera. Luckinbill and his brother Trent produced Sheridan’s screenwriting debut, the 2015 Oscar-nominated thriller Sicario. Luckinbill’s recent producing credits also include Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love (2025) and the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody (2022). When Sheridan offered him Kyle, the chance to act again in one of his projects was, Luckinbill says, impossible to refuse.
As Lioness reaches the midpoint of its third season, Luckinbill spoke about Kyle’s rise, his working relationship with Sheridan, and a show where, in his words, “anybody could go.”
A Show Hitting a New Level of Buzz
Lioness has been successful since its debut, but Luckinbill says the attention this year feels different. Walking in Marina del Rey with a friend, he was stopped by a man who spoke little English but clearly recognized him from the series and wanted to say the show was great. Co-star LaMonica Garrett, on vacation overseas, has reported the same phenomenon: strangers asking about the show wherever he goes. “It does feel like people have really caught on, and it’s getting a lot of buzz,” Luckinbill said.
Recognizing Sheridan’s Talent Early
Luckinbill’s belief in Sheridan dates to the night he first read Sicario. Their young film company was hunting for material when CAA sent the script. He started it at 10 p.m., got roughly 45 minutes in, and had to put it down because the intensity made sleep impossible. The next morning he finished it in one sitting. “His writing was so good from day one, and it’s probably even better now.”
He later watched Sheridan work as an actor as well. On 12 Strong, which Luckinbill produced, Sheridan did a polish and was persuaded to play a cameo with a substantial monologue in front of Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Peña. Luckinbill recalls Sheridan delivering the dense exposition with casual authority, holding the scene, then walking out. The reaction on set was immediate: the man could act as convincingly as he could write.
Why Kyle Broke the Pattern
For roughly a decade Luckinbill has mostly acted only in projects he also produced. Lioness was an exception. Acting remains his first love; when a role makes sense, he takes it. Sheridan had considered him for other parts over the years, but Kyle felt specifically shaped for him. “I don’t think it was supposed to go on for as long as it has, to be perfectly honest with you,” Luckinbill said. “It was supposed to be a few episodes, but it just clicked, and the Joe and Kyle relationship made sense.”
That supporting, recurring introduction has steadily expanded. With Joe missing, Kyle’s prominence has only increased. Luckinbill still sounds slightly disbelieving. After 25 years in the business, he said, it is rare to land on a show where the character fits so cleanly that the work is less about forcing scenes to function and more about letting strong dialogue land. “You just gotta do your part as an actor and let these lines speak for themselves.”
Interrogations and Instinct
Kyle has become the season’s dominant interrogator. The sequence with Oleksandra stands out for Luckinbill in part because of an unplanned reaction: when she attacks him, he plays a flicker of enjoyment. That beat was an ad lib that survived into the cut. He prefers not to over-decide scenes in advance. He went in knowing only that Kyle could not lose control—he had to extract the information. Elizaveta Neretin’s intensity pushed the encounter toward violence in a way he describes as “beautiful.” He also praises a quieter preceding scene, only two lines long, in which Kyle pulls her out of a bar: simply staged, carefully shot, and essential setup for what follows.
Joe, Kyle, and the Unwritten History
The Joe–Kyle relationship has become a fan favorite. One widely shared reaction to episode 3 noted Joe flipping Kyle off and his answering smile, labeling them a favorite “work husband and wife” duo. Luckinbill said the middle-finger moment was itself a variation: the script called for “F*** you, Kyle,” but Saldaña chose the gesture instead, and his laugh was real. He describes her as fun, generous and funny—the tone-setter for a cast that enjoys working together.
As for the characters’ off-screen history, he and Saldaña discussed it from their first scene in season 1. The two are equals in title; they have clearly used and helped each other in the field. Sheridan has hinted at a deeper backstory without fully defining it. “At a minimum, it’s a sibling rivalry, and, at maximum, there could be more.”
New Chemistry With Kaitlyn
Joe’s absence has also pushed Kyle into closer orbit with Kaitlyn. Previously, Luckinbill said, their dynamic often meant he had erred and she delivered the lecture. This season feels more reciprocal: she needs him. He and Nicole Kidman share scenes with real banter; how much survives the edit he does not yet know, but the give-and-take is new.
The Situation Room and the Pinch-Me Factor
Many of those scenes unfold in the situation room alongside Saldaña, Kidman, Michael Kelly and Morgan Freeman. Luckinbill is frank about the stress of the dense, institutional dialogue—“government this, government that” is harder to memorize than conversational speech—and about the absurdity, from his perspective, of sharing that space. Between takes the jokes fly. On camera, he still sometimes feels like the odd man out. “Fake it till you make it.” If someone had told him earlier in his career that he would be trading long speeches with that particular group of actors, he would not have believed it.
What Comes Next
Asked to tease the back half of season 3, Luckinbill kept the focus simple: the mission is to get Joe back. Everything else orbits that urgency. “There’s a lot of chaos and urgency around that. So we’re sprinting to the finish here.” He will not describe the ending except to say it is “very interesting” and that he expects fans to “flip out for it.”
On most prestige series, the idea of killing off an Oscar-winning lead would seem remote. On Lioness, Luckinbill does not treat it as unthinkable. “Anybody could go, up and down the cast. That’s the stakes of the job, especially the operatives that are out there in the field. So you’re right, our characters are all in high danger.”
That, more than any single twist, is the promise he is willing to make about the episodes still to come: the show will not protect its people simply because of billing or awards. In a season already defined by abduction, interrogation and unilateral violence, the man currently running Joe’s team is telling viewers the same thing Kyle keeps demonstrating on screen—no one is safe.
