Warrior delivers an emotional gut punch in season 3 finale (#RenewWarrior)

The season 3 finale of Warrior, “A Window of F*cking Opportunity,” feels a lot like the season itself: dramatically potent, impeccably photographed, exciting to watch, and a bit jumbled. As a finale, it does feel like a turning point for the series, although part of me wishes that it had more of a sense of resolution, since the show has been on the brink of cancelation every season. Who knows if it will ever get to follow up on some of these twists?

Before we start, let me say that Warrior absolutely deserves a fourth season, whatever issues I have with the finale. Might as well try and get #RenewWarrior trending now. Bless this show.

Whoops, Strickland is dead

The episode opens with the death of Douglas Strickland, who it ends up wasn’t quite as formidable as he made himself out to be. I mean, it seems anybody can walk right into his fabulously opulent house to stab, shoot or beat him to death. You’d figure after Lai tried it he would have hired a few guards.

But no; with help from Nellie, Ah Toy bursts into his place and takes him out with a few well-placed slashes of her sword. Serendipitously, Dylan Leary was on his way to do the exact same thing, expect he was probably planning to tear Strickland apart with his bare hands. Bill O’Hara, now the chief of police, tries to talk him out of it, but he needn’t have bothered, since Ah Toy was going to get her revenge either way. And O’Hara is still willing to help Leary dispose of the body afterwards.

By putting the resolution of this story in the first third of the episode, the show makes it seem like it’s not as important as what comes after; it’s the junior partner, narratively speaking. And it isn’t as important as what’s happening in Chinatown, but I still think Strickland’s deserved more fanfare.

Also, the air was thick with coincidence and contrivance, what with everyone arriving at exactly the right time to do exactly the right things. Don’t get me wrong: it was fun watching Strickland finally get what’s coming to him, but it shouldn’t have felt so much like an afterthought. I think that’s a consequence of the show overstuffing itself this season.

Brothers and sisters

Meanwhile, the show makes good on the simmering tension that’s been building between Ah Sahm and Young Jun all season. After killing the Long Zii elders, a lot of the tong’s foot soldiers are abandoning Mai Ling, so Young Jun decides it’s time to attack, since she’s never been weaker. It is, as he puts it, “a window of f*cking opportunity.”

Obviously, Ah Sahm is conflicted. He’s never had to attack his sister directly before, and now that push has come to shove, he finds that not only is he not willing to, but he feels compelled to stop Young Jun. And this all happens when he’s supposed to be meeting Yan Mi at the train station so they can run away together. He’s having a really bad day.

Remember that Ah Sahm has already betrayed Young Jun by giving the counterfeiting plates to the cops in exchange for Yan Mi’s release, so he probably feels like he’s left the Hop Wei even before Young Jun announces the attack on Mai Ling. Ah Sahm is in a very conflicted place, and he resolves those feelings like he usually does: with violence. First he takes on several Hop Wei foot soldiers before facing down Young Jun and Hong in one of the best-choreographed fights of the series so far. It’s intimate and nasty, set not on an open battleground but in tight, claustrophobic corridors. We feel every blow.

That said, I never really believed that any of these three would die. We’re three seasons in now, and it’s clear that Warrior is hesitant to kill off members of the main cast. Father Jun only died last week, a whole season after his time came. I like the characters and don’t want them to die, but the show’s unwillingness to pull the trigger makes it harder to buy the high stakes of a conflict like this. You know they’ll gonna make it, although it’s hard to see Ah Sahm and Young Jun ever repairing their relationship after this. Young Jun literally stabs him; it’s over.

By the end of the fight, Hong and Young Jun are both out cold, and Ah Sahm stumbles over to Mai Ling’s place a bloodied mess. He doesn’t arrive in time to save her life — she manages that herself, by the skin of her teeth and the help of the few soldiers that remain to her — but he may give the both of them a new purpose. The episode ends with Ah Sahm and Mai Ling cradling each other and sobbing. Ah Sahm keeps whispering her real name, which we haven’t heard in ages: Xiaojing.

It’s a grim ending for the season. Both of these characters are riddled through with trauma, and when they have everything else taken away from them, they find refuge not in each other, exactly, but in the people they used to be when they were still young and innocent; that’s why Ah Sahm keeps calling Mai Ling by her original name. They’re regressing. This doesn’t play like a cathartic brother-sister reunion; it plays like Ah Sahm being so broken that he has no choice but to turn to the woman who ordered his death back in season 1, and that she’s so lost she has no choice but to accept his help.

Warrior isn’t the kind of show that gets Emmy nominations, but both Andrew Koji and Dianne Doan deserve them for their work as Ah Sahm and Mai Ling; the final scene is gloriously pitiful.

Verdict

There are other odds and ends the episode ties up. Lee looks like he’s going to rejoin the San Francisco police force now that Bill is chief; I liked their easy camaraderie in their final scene. I also liked the scene between Yan Mi and her father. Yes, it kinda feels like Yan Mi was brought into the show to inspire conflict among the principal cast, but the writers and actor Chelsea Muirhead still managed to give her some substance before her inevitable exit.

And then there’s Chao, who may be dead…although somehow I doubt it. Still, ending on him bleeding out at the train station is a hell of a choice; it’s Warrior daring Max not to give them another season, and I can’t blame them for trying. And if you’re wondering, it looks like Chao was shivved by a member of the Fung Hai tong. They haven’t shown up once this season and it’s kind of lame to bring them up now right at the end, but whatever.

Warrior always looks great, but this episode was especially gorgeous. The way mist from the ice wafted through the air during the battle between the police and Happy Jack’s gang, the silhouetted fight between Ah Sahm and one of Happy Jack’s goons in the tunnel, even the way light reflected off the glasses Yan Mi’s father was wearing…the cinematographer was really on their game this week.

But of course, the visuals don’t matter if the storytelling isn’t there, and the storytelling is there. Warrior isn’t perfect. The show has a few too many moving parts and could stand to think a little further ahead when planning character arcs, but there’s real, honest-to-god blood in its veins. It needs to come back. #RenewWarrior.

A Window of F*cking Bullet Points

• Mai Ling opens the episode by getting vengeance on the woman who got her sent to prison earlier in the season. But no blood is spilled; Mai Ling just points out the gaping hole at the center of the woman’s life and then shows herself out. It’s one of Mai Ling’s classier revenge schemes.
• Another sloppy bit from the Strickland story: I’m still not 100% sure if Lai is actually dead or just badly injured.
• Leary may not have wanted to play Strickland’s game, but he still intends to extend his own influence. He takes advantage of Strickland’s death to poach one of his former business partners.
• In soap opera drama, Buckley proposes to Catherine Archer, who is sleeping with what I think is Buckley’s campaign manager. Sure, cool, whatever.
• We got through the whole season without seeing Penelope or even hearing about her sister Sophie. They have well and truly abandoned that plotline, or maybe the actors weren’t available, or something.
• We get a stinger where we learn that a lot of the Long Zi soldiers who abandoned Mai Ling are now following Li Yong. Another thread we need to follow up on. Surely he can’t stay mad at Mai Ling forever?

Episode Grade: B+

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