REVIEW: ‘Warrior’ Season 3 Episode 7 — “Gotta Be Crooked To Get Along In A Crooked World”

Last episode ended with a literal bang. After decimating a German town in a wave of vengeance, Young Jun (Jason Tobin), Father Jun, and Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) head back to San Francisco, only for the elder Jun, it’s a life or death return. It brought signature Western shoot-out choreography in a fantastic way, which has been largely missing this season. Now, in Warrior Season 3 Episode 7, “Gotta Be Crooked To Get Along In A Crooked World,” the action is back to hand-to-hand and the drama is back to the rising tensions in Chinatown.

While Leary (Dean Jagger) is aiming his sights toward politics, Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) is defending her girls from a Long Zi brothel trying to take them back, Father Jun is struggling to survive, and an opening power vacuum is starting to grow in San Francisco as all it retakes focus in the narrative after an episode away with even Chao (Hoon Lee) and Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) returning. A calmer episode, Warrior Season 3 Episode 7 is more about relationships between characters and the larger positions under and adjacent to power.

Ah Toy and Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) finally get to share a scene this season and it’s fantastic. The leading women of the series, both characters have been through so much just in this one season alone. They’ve had their power taken from them but in resiliency, took it back. They’re still standing, and to see them converse, to recognize that, and to back each other up in equal measure is what I’ve been waiting for since Season 1. Additionally, their conversation is one that holds great meaning for every element of the series. Having remodeled the Long Zi’s headquarters into a building more traditionally Chinese, Mai Ling has to answer to Ah Toy who mentions, “Our future here must be as Americans and not exotic curiosities.”

Having been abused and humiliated by a white woman in the Pond over an advance she didn’t invite, this sentence rings clear. Add in that Mai Ling points out that her plan to take advantage of the white gaze failed, and the core of this season comes through loud and clear. “Appealing to them will never change how they treat us,” Says Ah Toy, and that holds true beyond China Town and towards the Irish in the pond as well.

Leary is a racist, but the series has gone to great lengths to put in context of the parallel (but not equal) struggles that the Irish are living through. He’s attempting to rebuild the reputation of Irishman and is somehow keenly aware of the thin line that separates them from the Chinese in San Francisco. I hate Leary, but in his attempt to gain political power and jobs for his people through the political machine, he’s stopping more violence from spreading. It’s a small gesture, but one that speaks to a larger need for understanding between the Irish and the Chinese to stop further bloodshed, even pointing out that the politicians want them against each other to which Ah Sahm responds, “Then who will build their cities?”

It’s a quip, but it’s one that cuts a line of recognition between the two working classes of San Francisco. Warrior offers viewers a more nuanced look at who is considered white, and the damages done by putting immigrant groups against each other, and it does so without apologetics, just context. The series is beginning to develop more, teasing out the bound threads of history that serve as the foundation for Warrior. I have undoubtedly been hard on how much focus the white characters in the series have held this season, especially given their racism, but in Warrior Season 3 Episode 7, there is an understanding of who in the Pond is American, who is Irish, and where the Chinese fit into it. At least from the outside, since Ah Sahm sees no difference between the Ducks in the pond, but at the very least understands how they relate to each other.

As Ah Sahm begins to emerge further as a leader in China Town, Young Jun struggles to help his father, and the control of the Hop Wei seems to be in flux. Now in the back half of the season, the characters are having to plot their courses to the end of it. For Ah Sahm, it’s becoming more of a leader, if he doesn’t mean to be. Ah Toy is protecting the little power she has left. Mai Ling is getting ready to be married and ultimately salvage the relationships around her after being shunned by the Ducks. Leary is trying to keep lobbying for the Irish even as more of them begin to get arrested and their whiteness begins to be questioned in the eyes of “Americans” more blatantly than in the past. And finally, Young Jun is trying to find a future where his stoic and powerful father isn’t the stone he can lean on as the world gets harder—as his control of the Hop Wei begins to slip.

Warrior Season 3 Episode 7 is a more calm achievement than the lasts. There are small bits of action in the episode, but at the same time, the characters are the focus as the plotting for the last three episodes of the season is laid out. A foundation-laying episode, it’s clear how much the showrunners have changed the course of China Town in just one season, as well as the trajectory of the characters. When you look back, the story has morphed into something new while still maintaining the characters at its core and always foreshadowing for the end.

Warrior is available now on MAX (formerly HBO Max) and Netflix.