REVIEW: ‘Warrior’ Season 3 Episode 6 — “A Soft Heart Won’t Do You No Favors”

While Warrior Season 3 Episode 6, “A Soft Heart Won’t Do You No Favors,” tells two mostly self-contained stories, embracing the series’ choices to make travel episodes outside of San Francisco to embrace Western elements like large shootouts and escapes that don’t work as well in a small space. At the end of the last episode, Chao’s duplicity came home to roost, and Young Jun returned to Chinatown with his father and a new debt to Mai Ling.

While the episode opens in Chinatown with Li Yong wearing more American clothes now that he’s engaged to Mai Ling and Father Jun plotting with his son to get out from under the Long Zii, the episode switches quickly to the road. Chao, who was double-crossed right after double-crossing Lee, he’s on a train to presumably the South so that Happy Jack can collect Lee’s bounty. But exploring Lee’s past isn’t the only element of the episode as Ah Sahm and the father-son Jun duo head to a German town in an attempt to exchange counterfeited bills for silver.

For their part, Hoon Lee and Tom Weston-Jones give two of the best performances of their entire work in the series. They each bring a depth of emotion and fight that absolutely resonates. Here, we see Chao in a situation he vowed never to be in again and Lee facing the consequences of killing racists from a family he knew, with that bounty finally slamming down on his head. The two of them are, however, balanced. In the train car, we get moments of dialogue that inform who the two characters are and their paths. For Chao, he will never be a slave again, but for Lee, he will never bend his morals. The two aren’t diametrically opposed to each other, but the gap between their facades seems insurmountable until they rely on each other.

On the other side, Ah Sahm brokers a deal between the Hop Wei and the Germans as a translator, securing silver and rebuilding finances to inch back to power. But in the Spanish town, existing as a shade of its former self, sticky and whisky aren’t all the three men find. While this episode has Young Jun enjoying the best sticky of his life and Father Jun having a heart-to-heart with Ah Sahm about being there for his son, that bliss is interrupted when racism rears its head again. When a violent act maims a child, Ah Sahm has the choice to save the deal and leave or take vengeance.

You can guess how it goes.

Warrior has made a point to work in at least one pure Western shootout and episode in its seasons, which began with Season 1’s episode five, one of the greatest shootouts and Western episodes ever put on television. And now, with Warrior Season 3 Episode 6, they’ve done it again as Young Jun, Ah Sahm, and Father Jun have made their way out to the Krauts in an attempt to wrestle some independence from under Mai Ling’s and the Long Zii’s hand. While strong elements deal directly with the growth of characters, primarily for Chao and Lee, the truth is that this episode could easily be watched on its own in a similar fashion to “The Blood and the Sh*t.”

With a loud and rousing shootout, fantastic hand-to-hand combat, and kills that leave a lasting impression, Warrior Season 3 Episode 6 packs a lot of action into the back half of the episode, and all of it pays off. No matter how intimate the vengeance is or how grand the spectacle is, all of it works. A testament to the writers, action coordinators, and everyone involved, this episode brings a lot to the table and uses violence to tell its story.

Warrior Season 3 Episode 6 is available now on HBO MAX, with new episodes every Thursday.