If there’s a silver lining to your favorite show taking three years off between seasons, it’s that I’ve had plenty of time to get people into “Warrior.” I’ve always pitched Max’s period action series as a West Coast version of “Gangs of New York,” one that weaves together historiography and spectacle in equal measures and features some of the most talented Asian-American actors in the industry today. And with the third season finally here, I’m pleased to share the good news with all those new “Warrior” converts out there: the show may continue to add new threads to its complex web of characters, but it remains the shining north star of high concept pulp fiction we all know and love.
After reluctantly fighting alongside his enemies during the Chinatown riots, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) finds himself an unlikely hero in the eyes of his community. But as the San Francisco police ramp up their raids into Hop Wei territory, new boss Young Jun (Jason Tobin) gambles the future of his tong an illegal counterfeiting operation – causing the United States government to send the Secret Service into Chinatown to investigate the source of the bills. Meanwhile, Long Zii leader Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) and brothel owner Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) make their moves to cross over to polite, white society – each seemingly destined to fail in the face of unchecked anti-Chinese prejudice.
One must wonder how much the availability of the cast and crew played into the narrative arcs of the current season. “Warrior” was able to bring back almost all of its actors for the third season, and the ramifications of the Season 2 finale caused new alliances to form and fracture. Despite spending much of the show in outright war with the Chinese, Irish gangster Dan Leary (Dean S. Jagger) now sits on the City Council and becomes a valuable ally for a local billionaire looking to own the railroad trade in California. But instead of being limiting, these new threads add flavor, reminding us of the world outside Chinatown and the relatively small stakes for which each tong fights.
Perhaps the biggest evolution belongs to Joe Taslim‘s Li Yong. In the first two seasons, Li Yong served as both lover and consigliere to Long Zii boss Mai Ling. As a result, he has always been defined by the actions of the characters around him, leaving him with little room for his own desires as a leader. Season 3 offers some much-needed growth for Li Yong, throwing in Mark Dacascos as a former mentor who pledges his tong to the Long Zii effort. Unsurprisingly, Taslim and Dacascos have sparkling chemistry onscreen, and “Warrior” digs deep into their mutual respect and unspoken concerns about Mai Ling’s ambitions.
Given the changes behind the scenes, it is not surprising to find the new episodes of “Warrior” a bit more contemplative than previous seasons. As the show has moved from Cinemax to HBO Max and now just Max, executive producer Jonathan Tropper and new showrunners Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard have struck a shifting balance between the explicit and the interpersonal. Tropper helped boost the reputation of Cinemax with shows like “Banshee” and “Warrior” – series that leveraged the demands of nudity and violence to tell more complex stories about people in conflict – but it’s still refreshing to see the balance shift as the series moves further away from its cable roots. In this season, sex – and queer sex in particular – is there for the characters, not just the audience.
In fact, almost everything in this season seems designed to muddle the ambition of its characters. If the first two seasons were about acquiring power through any means necessary, then Season 3 shows what happens when power must be held – and sustained. Suddenly, the leaders of each major faction – the Long Zii, the Hop Wei, and the Irish – enter a period of tentative peace and struggle to manage the competing demands made upon them by their own people. “Warrior” has always been a show that leaned into the ambitions of its characters, but now men like Young Jun and Leary are forced to govern – not wage outright war against their enemies.
That allows the show some leeway to explore new narrative threads. In this season, we finally learn more about the dark past of Richard Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) and even get to see what life outside of the tong could be like for men like Hong (Chen Tang, who adds some much-needed levity to scenes of increasing tension between Ah Sahm and Young Jun). As the San Francisco police raid Chinatown to create favorable political headlines, much of the violence happens between law enforcement and the residents of Chinatown.
The secret hero of “Warrior” has always been stunt coordinator Brett Chan, whose work with the cast to create varied fighting styles gives the show a visual shorthand for its action sequences. In all of the show’s biggest fight sequences – and no, there are no shortcuts in this season regarding the brutality of the fights – each actor maintains a unique fighting style that provides clarity and consistency to the chaos. When Ah Sahm, Young Jun, and Hong wade into battle, their weapons and choreography make them visually distinct. “Warrior” reminds us that, even in combat, character development makes all the difference in the world. And as each character finds new things to fight for this season, the violence’s stakes (if not the scale) has never been higher.
The joy in a show like “Warrior” is how all the elements come together. “Warrior” is many wonderful things, including a showcase of Asian-American talent on both sides of the camera and a history lesson about institutionalized hate crimes in America. But what makes the entire package work is its emphasis on pulp. “Warrior” is a martial arts masterpiece and genre storytelling of the tallest order, and that makes it a veritable Venn diagram of everything we want from a television series these days. It’s a show that’s been too good to kill twice now; and with any luck, it will earn another season to pick up some of its tantalizingly loose threads. [B+]
