LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: Episode 3.1: “The Weekend in Paris Job”

The Leverage crew is back after a two-year gap, and the chemistry that made this show work is still here. Sophie, Eliot, Parker, Hardison, and Harry are as loveable and funny as ever, and the season opener moves with energy — better set pieces, sharper editing, the usual banter under pressure. If you've watched this show before, you'll settle back in easily.

But the same problem that has always shadowed this franchise is still here too. The crew's entire method is lying, theft, and fraud, all framed as good because the targets deserve it. This episode piles on moderate violence, a prolonged conversation about orgies used as a distraction tactic, brief profanity, and pointed jabs at America and capitalism along the way.

The redemptive theme — people trying to overcome their pasts and help the powerless — is real and worth something. It just arrives wrapped in enough moral fog that this isn't one to hand to a teenager without a conversation first. For grown viewers who can watch with discernment: fine. For family movie night: not this one.

A weekend getaway to Paris goes sideways when the crew's planned job falls apart — and they land, instead, in the middle of a wealthy American water dealer's international auction party. What they find there is worse than they expected: a business quietly bleeding small towns dry. Sophie has to steer her team toward taking the tycoon down without blowing their cover, all while each of them wrestles with what they've given up to live this life.

Two stars means solid but uneven — and that's exactly what this premiere delivers. The show's core strength is intact: the cast's chemistry, the humor under pressure, and noticeably improved set pieces and digital editing that keep the action moving. Watching these characters work a room together is still a pleasure.

What holds it back from more stars is the same structural problem the franchise has never fully solved. The story requires you to root for lying, theft, and law-breaking as the good guys' whole toolkit, every episode, and this one is no exception. It's well-crafted entertainment built on a shaky moral foundation — which is a fair way to sum up where this series usually lands.

This episode wants credit for its heart, and some of that credit is earned. It genuinely champions redemption — people trying to grow past broken relationships and past mistakes — and it cares about justice for the powerless against the powerful. Friends look out for friends. Those are values Scripture recognizes as good.

But the show's method undercuts its message. Its heroes lie constantly, steal, defraud, and manipulate — and the story asks you to cheer them for it because their targets are worse people. That's a worldview built on ends justifying means, not on truth-telling as a virtue in itself. Layered on top is a running current of anti-capitalist sentiment and a dismissive attitude toward America and its institutions, presented as simple common sense rather than argument.

The film's better instinct — that people can be redeemed from their pasts and that the poor deserve defenders — echoes something true. Scripture also insists that how we pursue justice matters, not just whether we win: "You shall not steal... You shall not lie to one another" (Leviticus 19:11) sits right alongside its command to "defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:9). This episode wants the second half without the first, and that's the crack running through it.

Leverage: Redemption still knows how to have fun, and its crew is as easy to root for as ever — but this premiere leans hard into lying-as-heroism, a distracting orgy conversation, moderate violence, and political digs that muddy its genuinely redemptive heart. Our answer stands as we opened it: wait and see — adults only. Looking for something the whole family can watch together tonight? Start here:.