[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Leverage: Redemption Season 3 premiere, “The Weekend in Paris Job.”]
If you ask hitter Eliot Spencer (Christian Kane), the hits he takes is just part of the job, as he says in the Leverage: Redemption Season 3 premiere.
The season begins with the crew — Eliot, grifter Sophie Devereaux (Gina Bellman), thief Parker (Beth Riesgraf), and hacker Alec Hardison (Aldis Hodge) — mid-con in France when they have to flee. In the process, Eliot’s arm is slashed with a knife. Then, while trying to lie low, they end up in the middle of another con, and Parker suggests that Hardison, feeling like he’s not sure about how they crime anymore, give Eliot’s usual role a try, especially since the hitter’s lost a lot of blood and his left arm isn’t working. Parker even cuffs Eliot to a table, but he ends up freeing himself to help Hardison fight a guard.
Once back in New Orleans, Hardison asks how Eliot’s doing; his arm’s in a sling. It’s part of the job, Eliot says. But Hardison tells him he doesn’t like watching someone he cares about take punches for him; maybe he doesn’t want to do a job that involves him watching Eliot get hurt all the time. So what’s it going to take for Eliot to stop feeling like he should just take all the hits?
“I think it depends on the person, and that was one of my favorite lines of the season was when he said that, because it’s like if he’d have said anything else in a different way, I don’t think Eliot would’ve taken him seriously, but he did take that seriously, you know what I mean?” Kane, who has said that his character can never be redeemed, tells TV Insider. “You can see him take it seriously. And I tried to do that as best I could. I think that as long as these people are his family, which they are, until they find themselves, he’s still going to do it no matter what. I think Eliot goes down taking punches. I don’t think he ever stops.”
Adds executive producer Dean Devlin, “I don’t know if he ever will. That’s one of the interesting things about his character as opposed to everyone else. His growth was in the understanding of how bad the terrible things are that he had done in his past. And the deeper his understanding is of that, the more he’s absolutely convinced that he’s not redeemable. And because he’s not redeemable, he has to spend every single day working for his repentance. It’s an interesting character. Where everyone else is arced, he’s literally a missile firing forward.”
What did you think of the Season 3 premiere? Let us know in the comments section below.
Leverage: Redemption, Thursdays, Prime Video