‘Warrior’ Season 3: Max Martial Arts Series Is Back to Kick Some Serious Ass
Midway through a sword fight in an upcoming episode of Max’s period action drama Warrior, one of the combatants loses her blade and seems on the verge of death at the hands of the man she wants revenge against. He’s so confident in his abilities, though, that he invites her to pick up her weapon and resume, smugly telling her, “You came all this way. It would be a shame to give up now.”
For a while, it seemed that the TV business had given up on Warrior. Set in post-Civil War San Francisco, and inspired by the writings of legendary martial arts master Bruce Lee — writings that his family long claimed were stolen to make the Seventies TV series Kung Fu — the show debuted in the spring of 2019 as the latest entry in a decade-long push by Cinemax to establish itself as the home of efficient pulp dramas that were always better than they needed to be. It unfortunately turned out to be the last of its kind. With the birth of the streamer that was then known as HBO Max, Cinemax’s original series budget went away, and with it, shows like Warrior. To add insult to injury, HBO Max’s initial library contained exactly zero Cinemax originals, despite the name. The second season climaxed with a massive, thrilling action set piece where hard-punching Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), his best friend Young Jun (Jason Tobin), and their various enemies and allies defended Chinatown from white invaders. But Cinemax had already declined to renew it.
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That should have been that. Even in this age when half the shows on television seem to be revivals of preexisting titles, Warrior felt too obscure to qualify. But then a funny thing happened: HBO Max eventually added it to the library, along with other Cinemax dramas like The Knick, and Warrior found a new audience, one apparently big enough to justify a third, straight-to-streaming season. Warrior came all this way, after all, and it would have been a shame for its corporate overlords to give up on it now.
Despite the three-year gap in our world, very little time has passed for the characters. Young Jun is still jealous of the enormous mural of Ah Sahm that was painted in the wake of his previous heroics, and still finding his footing as the new leader of the Hop Wei tong. Ah Sahm’s sister Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) is still consolidating power as head of the Hop Wei’s chief rival, the Long Zii. Madam-turned-vigilante Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) is recuperating from injuries she suffered late in Season Two, and businessman Wang Chao (Hoon Lee) is still finding ways to make money while staying a neutral party in the ongoing feud between the tongs.
It all feels reassuringly familiar, including the creative team’s understanding of what the audience most wants to see: impeccably choreographed fights, and plenty of them. The hatchets come out within the first two minutes of the premiere, as Ah Sahm takes on a half-dozen Long Zii soldiers by himself. Among many other battles over the course of the season, we see the aforementioned sword fight, a whip vs. machete duel at night in front of a burning building, Ah Sahm using just his fists and Young Jun using just his knives to face off with a group of gun-toting desperadoes(*), various sparring sessions between Mai Ling’s lover Li Yong (Joe Taslim, still seeming like he could break your neck without his pulse rate rising a bit) and his old friend Kong Pak (professional badass Mark Dacascos, a welcome new addition to the ensemble), and a nifty, Jackie Chan-esque sequence where Young Jun has to use a metal headboard as both shield and weapon when trapped in a room with a group of men who are all eager to kill him. As always, the action is crisp, clear, and thrilling.
(*) It has now become a Warrior tradition for the two buddies to take one road trip per season, in environments that either pay tribute to Bruce Lee movies, or to his original pitch that allegedly got stolen for Kung Fu.
And as always, the creative team, led by developer Jonathan Tropper (also responsible for another underrated Cinemax show, Banshee) and showrunners Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard, takes great advantage of this huge cast of API characters, each with their own goals and desires, but all of them trapped by the laws and prejudice of a white community that views them as subhumans who should all be marched onto the first boat back to China. From the start, Tropper and company have deployed a simple yet effective narrative device: When the Chinese characters are away from white people, we hear them speaking unaccented English, but when white people are around, Young Jun and the others are either speaking subtitled Chinese or halting, accented English(*). It’s in theory a little thing, but it gives the show license to treat its Chinese heroes and villains with the same complexity and nuance as you’d find in a crime drama with a white ensemble. There’s a subplot, for instance, about Ah Sahm and Young Jun’s sidekick Hong (Chen Tang), who is gay, falling in love with a cabaret performer and being torn between combating homophobia and anti-Asian prejudice. And Mai Ling and Li Yong’s relationship takes many fascinating twists and turns as each tries to figure out how much of it is love and how much of it is a business arrangement to keep the tong together.
(*) Ah Sahm and Mai Ling are the exceptions to this rule, since they learned the language from their American grandfather.
But if all the series’ strengths are still present four years later, so is its biggest weakness. In attempting to present a full picture of the Chinese immigrant experience at this moment in history, Tropper and company frequently leave Chinatown to follow various white authority figures, including scheming interim mayor Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), Chinatown cop Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew), and Irish gangster and labor activist Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger). In theory, these scenes are necessary to provide context to the oppression all the main characters are feeling. There are some good performances here by Bew and others, but these characters occupy too much story real estate overall, and their problems are rarely as interesting or complex as what the Chinese characters are facing. Bill and his ex-partner Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) getting into brawls, and/or trying to shut down the Hop Wei’s new counterfeiting operation? That’s both entertaining and on-topic. Bill trying to win back his estranged wife, or Lee’s fugitive past catching up with him? Much less so. Similarly, Buckley campaigning as the 19th century equivalent of a MAGA candidate feels useful from both a thematic and plot standpoint, but attempts to explore Buckley’s inner life always seem besides the point, while also failing to elevate him above cartoon villainy. Better to spend even more time in Chinatown, where Warrior is at its strongest, even if it means some of the outside antagonists feel even thinner in the process.
Even allowing for that, most of the series remains so impressive and purely entertaining. The production values on the series’ re-created Chinatown look great. The performances by Koji, Doan, Tobin, Lee, and others are strong. And the story feels propulsive even when people aren’t pulling out hatchets, daggers, and chains. (But it’s especially fast and thrilling when that happens.)
Though Season Two was made before anyone knew that Cinemax was about to get out of the original series business, its ending functioned well enough as a series finale. It’s a miracle that Warrior is back to continue the story. This time around, the season ends much more on an ellipsis than a period, as if Tropper and company are all but daring their bosses to cancel them again. After all, they did come all this way …
The first three episodes of Warrior Season Three are now streaming on Max, with additional episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all 10 episodes.
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