Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Warrior’ Season 3 on Max, The Return Of The Gritty 19th Century Action Saga That Started On Cinemax

Renewed for a third season way back in 2021, the 19th century action-drama Warrior returns as a part of Max instead of Cinemax, where it began life in 2019 as the next series from Banshee creator Jonathan Tropper. Executive produced by Justin Lin and Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter, Warrior is based on an original idea from Lee and is set in 1870s San Francisco, where Tong gangs battle for supremacy in Chinatown, unrest surges between Chinese and Irish laborers, and the city’s white establishment jockeys for power and influence.   

WARRIOR – SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: In the crowded alleyway markets of Chinatown, goods arrive by wagon and the food stalls bustle. Watching for trouble is Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), chief enforcer of the Hop Wei Tong, and as per usual it doesn’t take him long to find it. 

The Gist: In Chinatown, the Long Zii are Hop Wei’s rivals for control of protection money and other rackets, and Ah Sahm steps in to remind some of the tong’s goons to keep Long Zii opium trading off Hop Wei turf. (“Remind” as in destroy ten guys wielding hatchets and knives with only his fists and flying feet.) Times are always tough in Chinatown, what with labor strife, limited resources, and virulent racism toward Chinese. But in the wake of a deadly riot that swept through the enclave at the end of Warrior season two, the city government has established restrictive new codes and ordinances meant to further punish the Chinese community. The turf war between the Hop Wei and its new leader Young Jun (Jason Tobin) and the Long Zii, which is run with ruthless efficiency by Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) – she also happens to be Ah Sahm’s sister – is really a battle over scraps, as the larger power structures in San Francisco continue to shift.  

Those ordinances are the work of Walter Franklin Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), a cruel and calculating politician who’s running for mayor in a special election and has a secret and wary agreement with Mai Ling to eliminate her competition by flooding Chinatown with head-busting cops. (The Long Zii leader has leverage over Buckley in the form of some incriminating personal dirt.) Sergeant Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew) has always been loyal to the force, but Buckley ignores his angling to become chief of police and instead installs his own man, Atwood (Neels Claasen), a New York City transplant whose resume includes harsh treatment of that city’s Chinatown. And Leary (Dean Jagger), who has organized his fellow Irish workingmen into a voting bloc, remains frustrated by his forays into politics. The corporate fat cats he’s trying to convince still won’t hire Irish labor, because the Chinese, politically and socially powerless in San Francisco, will work nearly for free.    

Chao (Hoon Lee) is a savvy black marketeer whose power is in moving freely between all of the players – the tongs, the Chinese, the whites, and the blue – and he sees the writing on the wall. “Adapt or die,” he advises Ah Sahm, who’s trying to contain the hotheaded Young Jun and secure new revenue streams for the tong, and a Chao tip leads the Hop Wei to an intriguing new business proposition. By assimilating his tong into hers, Mai Ling has secured some new muscle in Kong Pak (Mark Decascos), a friend and mentor to Li Yong (Joe Taslam), her top henchman and lover. And while she remains the most powerful madam in Chinatown, Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) is also a fearsome swordswoman, a liberator of enslaved Chinese sex workers, and someone who’s falling further in love with Nellie (Miranda Raison), the wealthy owner of an estate in rural Sonoma.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Warrior shares with Deadwood its 1870s setting and a love for factional warfare among rival groups in a municipality. And Tom Weston-Jones (Colonel Lennox from Sanditon), who here turns in a soulful performance as a San Francisco cop ideologically opposed to the job, starred in the impressive BBC America drama Copper, which was set in 1860s New York City. (Copper, which lasted for two seasons back in 2012 and ‘13, is well worth a watch or revisit, by the way, with a terrific cast including Weston-Jones, Tessa Thompson, Franka Potente, and Donal Logue.)

Our Take: The 1870s of Warrior is full of hard times and hard whiskey, brutal violence and rampant corruption, racial discrimination and the denial of rights for women, and shifting fortunes as society careens toward the end of the century. Over its first two seasons, the series gave itself all of this to cover and much more, from internecine warfare between rival tongs to the trade in vice and deadly fight clubs of San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast district, and has also, with the arcs of characters like Ah Toy and Hop Wei fighter Hong (Chen Tang), found time to explore the nature of sexuality and the dangers of being gay in the 19th century. In short, Warrior has a lot going on, and its expansiveness has at times constricted its storytelling. Will the Irish unionist fight his way to justice for the working man, and will he find true love with the pretty socialite from the rich side of town? Maybe, but in Warrior, that’s just one of the many, many subplots that stack up on the docks in San Francisco Bay. 

With so much going on, it’s a neat trait of Warrior to keep its world as fictional as it is historical. Bareknuckled street brawls can erupt around any corner, and explode in every direction like the double panel scene of a comic book. (The fight choreo in this series is some of the best you’ll see on the small screen.) Spaghetti western grooves keep the soundtrack of Warrior in swashbuckling mode, and its contemporary touches – like 19th century tough guys dropping modern-sounding turns of phrase, a continued flair for creative cursing, and Chinese hip-hop needle drops to close out episodes – acknowledge and celebrate that Warrior is as much action-oriented fantasy as it is an historical drama based in fact.     

Sex and Skin: Nothing in this first episode of Season 3 beyond some background toplessness from the sex workers in Ah Toy’s brothel.

Parting Shot: Acting on intel from Chao, Young Jun and Ah Sahm pay a visit to some low-level crime doers in a hovel down on the docks. They dispatch them with ease, but also make a discovery in something nobody was expecting, something that could tip the balance of power in Chinatown in their tong’s favor.

Sleeper Star: As Job, Hoon Lee was a sleeper star and a multiple season MVP of Banshee, and he continues his scene-stealing hot streak in Warrior as Wang Chao, independent contractor to the criminal underbelly of San Francisco and respected veteran of Tong Wars past. 

Most Pilot-y Line: “I don’t see you moving against your own sister, and neither does Young Jun.” Chao is right. Ever since Young Jun learned that Mai Ling is Ah Sahm’s sister, he’s been on edge around his friend and top lieutenant. And ever since the riot, Ah Sahm has become a kind of folk hero in Chinatown. Now, there is tension at the top of Hop Wei tong, and it’s evolving.  

Our Call: STREAM IT. Warrior, whose fans once mobilized a petition for its third season return, rewards them with tightly-choreographed action sequences that don’t skimp on the bloodshed and visceral death blows. But it also offers political and interpersonal dramas set in an interesting historical time period, and writing that crackles with the energy of a contemporary action movie. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges