REVIEW: ‘Warrior’ Season 3 Episode 8 — “You Know When You’re Losing a Fight”

We’re closing in on the end of Warrior Season 3, and with Episode 8, “You Know When You’re Losing a Fight,” you can feel the tension reaching a roaring boil, even as Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) and Li Yong (Joe Taslim) celebrate their marriage, with Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) in attendance. Last episode, Mai Ling invited every on important in China Town to her wedding, including those she’s warred with like Hop Wei and her brother, Chao (Hoon Lee), and Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng).

The wedding is simple, but there is a joy in the opening of Warrior Season 3 Episode 8 that the audience and the characters know is fleeting. A small unification of China Town yes, but that illusion of peace gives way to now-Mayor Buckley (Langley Kirkwood) as he’s sworn in with his racist rhetoric in tow. Moving back and forth between the wedding and Buckley’s racist diatribe is stark. While Buckley calls the Asian community in San Francisco an “alien race” and calls for the “cleansing of the rot” in the city is hard to hear, the white citizens smiling and cheering in the crowd. This balance of the ugly racism against Mai Ling’s wedding shows that there is a larger threat than warring Tongs. It’s infuriating, and it’s a hammer that the audience can see hovering over China Town, waiting for it to fall.

But while the audience can see that outside threat, the men of the Long Zi are more concerned with using Li Yong to strip away pieces of Mai Ling’s hard-won power. A female leader of a Tong, Warrior’s third season has been about her finding her place. In power within China Town, and trying to assimilate in the Pond, the surrounding white areas of San Francisco. She has been physically and verbally humiliated by cops, she’s been questioned by the elders of the Long Zi, and while she doesn’t carry those scare on the surface, she does hold them inside. When ___ approaches Li-Yong to try to overthrow here, the nuptials pinpoint the fact that nothing is protected.

Mai Ling’s heart has always been made of stone in one way or another. We can talk about how the world made her this way in order to survive, but that doesn’t detract from the way she’s seen her power as what should be protected beyond her relationships. She killed her husband and took power. She warred with the Hop Wei, exploiting her brother. And now, she betray’s her husband’s trust, only unlike the other two in this paragraph, Li Youg is devoted to her. So much so, as Mai Ling’s assassins cut down the threats to her leadership, you stop and think that it’s him, orchestrating it. Where Mai Ling is cold, Li Yong is warm. He cares and loves, and in Warrior’s third season he ha been given a larger focus beyond just bodyguard.  But for him, as he tells Chao, “There’s only Mai Ling.”

As a series, Warrior has used sex extensively in its storytelling. Still, in this episode, Mai Ling and Li Yong’s wedding night intimacy is woven into a larger narrative. At peace, in love, and in pleasure, Mai Ling and Li-Yong have a passionate night, a tender one, much different than what we usually see in the series. But that tenderness is rocked by assassinations, but also Mai Lings complete letting go of worry in that moment. Only, this act of maintaining her power was without Li-Yong, again. When Mai Ling moves, she moves forward without consulting or even telling her now husband. She is alone in her choices and while that may be a weight for her to carry, it’s an emotional shock for the man who sees her as his sun.

In the episode’s climactic fight, and one of the best of the season, Kong Pak (Mark Dacascos) and Li Yong fight. As a fan of both actors and their martial arts backgrounds, it’s fantastic to watch Mark Dacascos and Joe Taslim fight, this time, with the intent to kill. Only, the emotional weight that the fight carries is a heavy. Li Yong has to choose between his wife and his best friend. While Li Yong as a character hasn’t had as much dialogue, here, we see his heart and his struggle as someone deeply in love with his wife, and still her pawn.

There are no happy endings in China Town, like the title of one of this season’s episodes says, especially for the powerful. It’s a reminder that even a wedding can divide when you are singularly focused on going through the world alone and on your own terms. As she looks at her now-husband his friend in his arms, she’s crying. She’s assured in her choice, but she’s crying all the same.

But Li Yong and Mai Ling aren’t the only emotional moments of the episode. In Warrior Season 3 Episode 8, we also get to see a vulnerable moment between Father Jun (Perry Yung) and Young Jun (Jason Tobin). The father-son duo have been repairing their relationship since they escaped the detention facility in Episode 5, but in this moment, we get to see them interacting not as a current leader of the Hop Wei and the former, but as a scared father and a terrified son.

After being wounded in Episode 6, Father Jun’s dementia has gotten worse, to the point that he’s a shadow of who he was. And while Young Jun knows this, he still has an unshakable faith in his resilient farther, that is, until Father Jun confides in him the title of the episode, “When you’ve scrapped as much as I have, you know when you’re losing a fight.” It’s a small moment in a large episode, but as the episode ends, the audience is reminded of Father Jun’s conversation earlier.

Nearly every episode of Warrior Season 3 has been an emotional wrecking ball, but Episode 8 hurts a different kind of awful. Thanks to stellar performances by Jason Tobin, Joe Taslim, Perry Yung, and Joe Taslim, you can feel the pain and fear as each character is beginning to lose their fight or be thrown into new ones. Warrior Season 3 Episode 8 is a fantastic episode, one that cuts deep and has large personal implications at the same time as narrative ones.

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