Explainer: Did Team Lioness exist? The real US military task force that inspired Taylor Sheridan’s series
Formed during the Iraq War, the unit comprised the first US women deployed in direct combat. So what does the Paramount+ series get right?
So Lioness – which premiered its Season 3 on August 2, and follows CIA operatives from an all-female undercover unit tasked with fighting terrorism – seems a far cry from the rest of his projects that are rife with gunslinging cowboys, rivalries and, of course, horses.
Here’s everything you need to know about this unit IRL.
Team Lioness was formed in 2003
In the Sheridan series, operatives are portrayed as a team of hand-picked elite female agents from various branches of the US military.
In reality, Team Lioness was an all-female volunteer programme established by the US Marine Corps during the Iraq War in 2003, initially formed of female soldiers with the sole purpose of searching women and children for arms and bombs at checkpoints in Iraq where men are prohibited from touching unrelated women, per the Marine Corps Association.
The beginning of Team Lioness is acknowledged in the pilot for Lioness, where Saldaña’s character explains to a new recruit that “when the Lioness team was first formed, we needed female soldiers to frisk and interrogate female insurgents.”