Warrior Season 3 review – Hop Wei of the Dragon

Criminally under-watched in its first two seasons – despite all the online proselytizing I did! – martial arts action-drama series Warrior found itself without a home after Warner Bros. shuttered all original programming on its Cinemax home in late 2020. For all intents and purposes, it was cancelled, and the fans [INSERT “THERE ARE DOZENS OF US!” GIF HERE] were not happy about it one bit.

Cue an online petition campaign, pleas from the cast – already scattered back to their homes in Britain, Canada, the USA, and more from the production here in Cape Town – and even offers of financial aid made by industry compatriots to exec producer Shannon Lee, daughter of martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Lee’s once-lost eight-page TV series treatment was the basis for Warrior’s creation, for the record. Nearly two years later, WB rewarded that zeal with the announcement that all previously aired episodes of Warrior would be moving to its HBO Max streaming service (recently rebranded to just Max), paving the way for a hyped-up third season debuting internationally today, and locally on Showmax tomorrow.

So, was all that herculean effort worth it? Does this sprawling tale of loyalty, inequality, social upheaval, family, and one bad-ass dude with a pair of nunchakus get the resolution it deserves? Well, no. Hold on! Don’t reach for your own weapons just yet! What I mean is that this new season of Warrior is fantastic. Arguably the best it’s had so far. So good, in fact, that it shouldn’t end now but instead get an instant renewal for at least another season.

Across ten episodes, Warrior creator Jonathan Tropper and the rest of his writing team once again weave together a tale that dodges, feints, and strikes with all the intensity of its martial arts prodigy leading man, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji). Like it did in previous seasons, Warrior pulls off that nimble sleight-of-hand of telling a story set during the Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the late 19th Century, yet making those story beats feel eerily timely to today. Modern immigration crises, anti-Asian violence, the disenfranchisement and manipulation of desperate youth, and the dangers of capitalism all feature. The standout theme here, though, is that oppression is not just based on the colour of your skin, or the country of your birth. Rather, those with power will exploit anybody – including their own – in service to their lustful greed for more.

In the fight against such evil, not being tainted yourself is the hardest thing. Sometimes you take the moral high ground, other times you take the actual high ground to deliver a crippling downward kick to your enemy’s spine. That combo of subtext-rich character drama and kick-ass action is why we love Warrior.

Admittedly, the show hasn’t always been able to pull off these lofty storytelling ambitions, and this season is no different. Most noticeable during a slight mid-season pacing slump, nuanced character work and more compelling arcs occasionally give way to too-on-the-nose plotting and filler B-story serving up cheap thrills. However, even when Warrior is not exactly “Golden Age of TV” stuff, it’s always high-octane pulp entertainment.

Season 3 picks up almost immediately where we left off. Ah Sahm has been immortalized for his actions in saving the lives of Chinese immigrants from Irish attackers during the chaotic Chinatown riot (Based on the real San Francisco race riot of 1877, also born of the escalating tensions between cheap immigrant Chinese workers and a white populace staring at the bread line). Respectively led by Ah Sahm’s best friend, Young Jun (Jason Tobin), and his dangerously ambitious sister, Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), the Hop Wei and Long Zii Tongs are at each other’s throats again. The temporary truce that was formed to face their common enemy has been quickly shattered. As Ah Sahm and Mai Ling’s lover/devastating right-hand man, Li Yong (Joe Taslim), come to blows again, it’s clear that all bets are off for this season.

This also goes for those not in the Tongs. Sgt. Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew) sees his well-deserved promotion to Chief of Police snatched away by sleazy Mayor Buckley (Langley Kirkwood) as the latter ushers in a cruel new police presence. Irish teamster Dylan O’Leary (Dean Jagger) is taken under the political wing of railroad baron Douglas Strickland (Adam Rayner), who has designs on both the Irish populace and the idyllic countryside wine farm run by Nellie Davenport (Miranda Raison) and Chinatown brothel-owner Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng). Meanwhile, resigned policeman Richard Lee’s (Tom Weston-Jones) brief glimpse of a simple life is violently disrupted when both his bloody past and Secret Service agents come a-knocking.

The latter is the new wild card thrown into the mix, hot on the trail of a counterfeiting operation. The same counterfeiting operation, which, through the actions of perennial schemer Wang Chao (Hoon Lee), also comes to the attention of a cash-strapped Young Jun, increasingly desperate to step out of the overbearing shadow of his errant father. Cue the entry of fresh face Yan Mi (Chelsea Muirhead), straight into Ah Sahm’s orbit. Sparks fly immediately. And if that’s not enough twists and turns, we have a selection of newcomers (including local actors Colin Moss and Neels Clasen), betrayed allegiances, tragic romances, dashed dreams, a lavish spectacle of a wedding, and, of course, a whole lot of action.

As he has done from the start, masterful stunt coordinator Brett Chan gives his gifted cast several eye-popping showcases of their skills. The ever-superb Koji (how is he not a bigger star yet?!) seems to carry even more of a swagger in his fights now, while martial arts fan will get to geek out to the sight of Taslim engaging in several little tussles with the iconic Mark Dacascos as Kong Pak, a childhood friend of Li Hong’s who has now joined Long Zii. Early episodes may not be as jam-packed with fisticuffs and there’s nothing on the jaw-dropping scale of last season’s riot, but the action ramps up noticeably in frequency and intensity as the season goes on. Standouts are a devastating late-season barroom brawl that is easily the most vicious thing the show has ever done; and a sizzling Taslim, already put on quite the dramatic rollercoaster this season, literally fighting through his emotions in heartbreaking fashion.

Not that Koji’s Ah Sahm is shortchanged on the drama front. He gets to show off a vulnerability here that he’s rarely had to, and his suitability to the criminal lifestyle of the Hop Wei, and his prickly leadership position in it, drive forward a large part of the narrative. The writers continue to also give the women of the cast particularly strong storylines. In a society that disregards them as almost third-tier citizens, the likes of Mai Ling, Ah Toy, and Nellie succeed, fail, plot, and overcome with the best of them. Theirs are often the most compelling arcs.

And all of these facets come together in a season finale that is positively operatic. Warrior’s final episode is filled with gasp-worthy unexpected deaths, gratifying comeuppances, surprisingly happy endings, and a bout of long-simmering animosity exploding to the surface in a flurry of limbs and blood. In the end, we’re left with a cataclysmic restructuring of the hierarchies of power in Chinatown. Whether Tropper and his cast will actually get to further explore those intriguing narrative possibilities is mystery right now. We can help make that a reality though if we all just watch it this time!

The first three episodes of Warrior S3 premiere on Showmax tomorrow, 30 June, with subsequent episodes following weekly.