For much of Lioness Season 3, Taylor Sheridan kept us looking toward Russia. Joe went after Russian operatives, dismantled a network of sleeper agents, took part in the capture of a member of the special services and, six months later, ended up kidnapped. It seemed obvious that one thing had led to the other, until “Sugar Land” revealed that the answer was not quite that simple.

Russians and Belarusians are involved in the operation, but Babat arrives speaking Farsi, and the trail begins pointing toward Iran. Oleksandra Balakin asks Kyle whether Joe has ever overseen operations against Iran in the past, and his reaction makes it clear that she has. Oleksandra’s point is that Iran has both the motivation and the resources to retaliate when it believes it has been seriously hurt. The most immediate conclusion, therefore, is to connect Joe’s kidnapping to the end of Season 2, when her team entered Iran and prevented Chinese scientists from reaching Isfahan to assist with the country’s nuclear program.

Could that be the answer? Of course it could. The problem is that we still do not know whether it is the whole answer. Babat makes it very clear that Joe is supposed to die, but he does not say which operation he is avenging or who exactly decided she should be killed. Knowing that Iran appears to be behind the kidnapping does not necessarily mean we already know who wants Joe dead.

That difference is exactly what made me go back to the earlier seasons, especially after something Oleksandra says in Episode 3. She demonstrates an extraordinary knowledge of the Lioness program, even citing an old operation involving Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and an operative who befriended his third wife, obtained his location, and helped make possible the strike that killed both Zarqawi and the woman herself.

Whatever else we take from that scene, one thing is clear: operations that should be buried deep inside American intelligence are known by foreign intelligence services. And if they know about that operation, what else do they know?

Joe’s career is filled with bodies and enemies we barely know. Lioness begins exactly that way. In the pilot, Isabel, one of Joe’s operatives, has her cover blown during an infiltration in Syria and finds herself surrounded by dozens of men. A live rescue would put the entire team into an almost impossible fight, so Joe orders the strike that destroys the compound and kills everyone inside, including Isabel. We later learn that the attack also eliminated a major ISIS figure and his team, but the series never develops who else may have been connected to that network or what consequences that mission left behind.

I do not see that operation as the most obvious explanation for Iranian revenge, since ISIS and Iran were enemies. What it does establish, however, is important: we have seen only a fraction of the operations Joe has commanded. There is an entire history of people, organizations, and governments that may have reasons to want her dead. And then we get to Season 1.

Cruz Manuelos was the Lioness, and Joe was the woman commanding her. Joe recruited Cruz, explained the mission, and placed her in Aaliyah Amrohi’s life in order to reach Aaliyah’s father, Asmar Ali Amrohi. In the pilot, Asmar is not presented simply as an Iraqi terrorist financier, but as one of the leaders of an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq. Cruz was the operative who earned Aaliyah’s trust and eventually fell in love with her, but the operation belonged to Joe.

On the night of Aaliyah’s wedding, Cruz killed Asmar and Ehsan and managed to escape. Aaliyah was left behind, having discovered that the woman she loved had entered her life as part of an operation that ended with the deaths of her father and the man she was about to marry. And then Aaliyah disappeared from the story.

We never learned what happened to her after that night, how much she eventually discovered about the Lioness program, or whether she ever learned who had commanded the operation that destroyed her family. I even understood she died, but I may be wrong. So far, there is absolutely no evidence that Aaliyah is involved in Joe’s kidnapping. But there is now a connection that is much harder to ignore: her father was part of an Iran-backed structure, Joe commanded the operation that killed him, and Season 3 has suddenly turned Iranian revenge against Joe into the central mystery of the story.

That does not mean Aaliyah needs to return as an Iranian terrorist or even as an operative. That would be far too simplistic for a character who was always much more complex than that. If she is somehow connected to what is happening, it could be through money, political relationships, contacts inherited from her father, or people who never forgot what happened to Asmar. An Iranian operation can be geopolitical and deeply personal at the same time.

Babat also does not necessarily have to be the person who decided Joe should die. He may simply be the man sent to carry out the sentence. Oleksandra herself estimates that abducting a senior CIA case officer on American soil and moving her out of the country would require an operation worth tens of millions of dollars, involving intelligence, logistics, and people across several countries. Lioness has already shown Belarusians and Russians functioning as pieces inside that machinery. We still do not know who, if anyone, sits at the center of it.

That is why Aaliyah remains on my radar, but not because Cruz is in danger or because Season 3 has secretly become a story about her. It has not. This mission is entirely about Joe, and the question remains exactly the same: who wants Joe dead?

And I am not the only one going back to Aaliyah. The theory has gained traction among fans on Reddit since Episode 6, especially after it became clear that Babat and Iran may be only part of the answer. Some fans are betting that Aaliyah could be financing or otherwise connected to the machinery behind the kidnapping as revenge for her father’s death, while others think bringing her back in that way would be forcing the story too much. What makes the discussion interesting is precisely that the series never closed her story, and Asmar’s connection to Iran has suddenly made that old loose end much more relevant.

Maybe Isfahan is enough to answer the question. Maybe the Season 2 operation was simply the final provocation in a much longer list of grievances. Maybe Babat is exactly what he appears to be, and there is nothing beyond him. Even so, there are still too many missing pieces for me to believe that Episode 6 has already given us the season’s definitive answer.

Especially because Laysla De Oliveira has already warned fans that the season ends with a major turn, something that will leave them desperate for a fourth season. If the mystery has already been completely solved by the simple revelation that “it was Iran,” what is still left to turn everything upside down?

That is why I keep going back to Season 1. Not because we can claim that Aaliyah is behind Joe’s kidnapping, because we cannot, but because there is an unfinished story involving a woman who survived a Lioness operation, an Iran-backed target killed under Joe’s command, and a relationship the series never truly closed.

Oleksandra has already reminded us of something important: the Lioness program’s old missions are not necessarily as secret as the people inside it imagine.

Now we only have to find out whether someone from one of those missions has finally decided to collect the debt.