Unsettled Scores: WARRIOR Season Three – Bitter Reunions, Backdoor Politics, A Bloodbath In Chinatown And Mai Ling’s Betrayal

With the upcoming season three premiere of HBO Max series Warrior launching in June, I spent the last couple of days before publishing this article pondering the events of the first two seasons. In recalling the episodes, my mind started to wander into fan-fiction rabbit holes I thought would be more suitable for another article series, so I figured instead I would highlight some of the key arcs left open-ended in the season two close back in 2020 to help stir the hype.

Indeed, this is gonna dive into SPOILER territory. It’s been four years since the show began airing all twenty episodes, and its contents are all pretty much public knowledge by now and so I’ll be going into a more detailed and descriptive layout as I move forward. Otherwise, if you haven’t seen the show yet and want to avoid the enticing twists and turns that I’ll be pointing out, consider yourselves warned and scroll onto something else.

Perhaps the first and most crucial matter that needs to be dealt with is the rivalry between Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Mai Ling (Dianne Doan). Season 1/Episode 1 of Warrior saw Ah Sahm’s boat arrival from Foshan, China into 1870s Chinatown in San Francisco, on a mission to find his missing sister, who he’s always known as Xiaojing. From that moment he steps on American soil, he rightly plants his feet firmly as a force to be reckoned with, whether its with the racist and corrupt police, or local Tong thugs, which inevitably makes him a key asset to the most notorious Tong in Chinatown, the Hop Wei.

Once sold to the Hop Wei by local business-savvy hustler Wang Chow (Hoon Lee), Ah Sahm is inducted into the Hop Wei after being vetted by Young Jun (Jason Tobin), who is the son of Hop Wei boss, the stern, iron-fisted leader Father Jun (Perry Yung). Little does Ah Sahm know that his induction into the Hop Wei will become a major barrier that will sooner hinder his chances of returning home, regardless of whether he finds his sister or not, a fact he eventually learns following a dust-up with rival members of the Long Zii Tong at a brothel managed by hostess Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng).

Later in the episode, Ah Sahm finally confronts the Long Zii and their pugilistic lieutenant, Li Yong (Joe Taslim). Words result in a circular exchange that goes nowhere except a brief trade-off in fisticuffs between the two champions until Xiaojing finally reveals herself as Mai Ling, part of the Long Zii in the time since she fled China to escape an abusive warlord she married at a younger age to protect Ah Sahm years ago. Mai Ling makes it crystal clear that she’s chosen her home, holding her brother responsible for the fracturing of their family as well as the pain and turmoil she endured right until the titular boss of her Tong, the elderly Long Zii (Henry Yuk) took her in.

That guilt is firmly set into Ah Sahm’s mind, forcing him to contend with either fighting harder to rescue Mai Ling and bring her back to China and risk violating the parameters of his membership with the Hop Wei and being killed for it, or resign to his newfound life as a hatchetman for the Hop Wei. Going forward into the first season, however, Mai Ling’s ambitions become even clearer, secretly conspiring with Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood) San Francisco’s Deputy Mayor under Mayor Samuel Blake (Christian McKay), to start war between the Tongs, egging the Hop Wei on to the point of bombing Father Jun during a parade and nearly killing him, an incident that sets in motion a series of events that see Ah Sahm preventing Mai Ling’s assassination by Hop Wei right hand Bolo (Rich Ting), Ling murdering Long Zii and taking the throne, and a brutal and bloody street war between the Tongs that brings things to a head.

Both parties decide to parlay, agreeing to a one-on-one death match between the best fighters of each gang – ultimately Ah Sahm and Li Yong – to decide who takes precedence over the Chinatown molasses trade. The duel is as brutal and bone-crushing as you can expect with both Ah Sahm and Li Yong matching each other’s fighting prowess, until a crucial moment in the fight sees victory snatched from Ah Sahm as he’s pulverized by Li Yong and forced to submit, with Mai Ling voting to have Ah Sahm killed moments before entrenched Chinatown squad leader and SFPD officer Bill O’Hara (Kieran Bew), witnessing the bout from the crowd along with partner officer Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), fires into the air and disrupting the match.

The moment proves to be the most pivotal between Ah Sahm and Mai Ling going into the rest of season one and carrying over into season two, with Ah Sahm firmly set in his place with the Hop Wei and bitterly coming to terms with Mai Ling’s choice, long after the failed efforts of the latter to convince him to go back home. With Mai Ling now afflicted with the guilt of nearly having Ah Sahm killed, it’s only a matter of time before the agenda she’s spent so many hours on and all the angles she’s worked move to complicate things for her with the disreputable Mongol-rooted Fung Hai Tong, led by the notorious and mindful Zing (Dustin Nguyen) who is as cunning and sinister as he is fast and fierce. Between Zing’s menacing behavior and Ah Sahm and Young Jun working their angles to keep the Hop Wei afloat, and the San Francisco police pressured to find and arrest an unidentified “swordsman” leaving a trail of bodies of white men in his wake, it’s not too long before Mai Ling finds herself on the losing end, especially after making the single biggest mistake she could make, one so catastrophic that it forces all the Tongs to come together in a united front when the Mayor’s death inspires the Irish workingmens’ violent invasion of Chinatown.

There’s more to explain there which I’ll dive into in a later article, while the culminating events of season two then see Mai Ling’s betrayal of her secret sibling connection to Ah Sahm while conceding defeat to Young Jun after he’s taken power from Father Jun after an internal uprising between father and son; Thing is, Young Jun never knew of Ah Sahm’s relationship to her until the second season finale, and it nearly upends the brotherhood Ah Sahm’s worked to build with Young Jun, who grew up in America as an only child and never had a sibling, and is now burdened with the question of whether or not Ah Sahm will be truly loyal to him if it ever comes down to a choice.

I’ve skipped a few details which I may or may not reflect on in future pieces during this series, but there’s no question that the season two finale is going to set up some explosive answers along the way. Will Ah Sahm and Young Jun ever be the same? Will Mai Ling ever come to her damn senses? Will Ah Sahm and Young Jun be forced to fight each other for the throne? What future lies ahead for the Hop Wei? What happened to Father Jun in the aftermath of his ouster? How will the answers to these affect Chinatown?

Quite possibly, we begin finding out all these answers come June 29. Until then, tune in next week with a new entry in our Unsettled Scores series.

Lead photo: David Bloomer/Cinemax

Lee B. Golden III

filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com | Web

Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.