‘Leverage: Redemption’ Stars Talk Parker’s Decision, Sophie’s Love Life & Season 4 Hopes

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Leverage: Redemption Season 3 finale “The Side Job.”]

This very fun heist drama, with three seasons of the revival on Prime Video now done, has been doing deep dives on its characters’ pasts and figuring out who they are. In Leverage: Redemption Season 3, by the finale, it was Parker’s (Beth Riesgraf) turn.

The thief took the lead in a major way on this con, taking down a mark using child labor to the point he didn’t care who got hurt, with assists from the others (as she’d expected). But how far would she have gone without intervention from Eliot (Christian Kane)? Plus, what’s the appeal of Sophie’s (Gina Bellman) new relationship? TV Insider spoke with Riesgraf, Kane, Bellman, and Aleyse Shannon (Breanna) about the finale and their hopes for Season 4.

Parker on the edge

During the con, Parker brought the mark up to a bone grinder, threatening to throw him in. Eliot then found her, reminded her of their conversation on the mountain in the Leverage Season 4 premiere “The Long Way Down Job,” and she later said she had to drive the con until he stopped her to really sell it. But according to Riesgraf, even Parker wasn’t sure if it was all an act.

She enjoyed playing that beat, recalling Parker’s “history growing up in the foster care system and being mistreated and feeling very powerless,” which was why this job was such a trigger.

“No doubt she’s ready to push that guy in and she does not feel bad about it in not one bit,” she said. “We wanted people to feel like we don’t know what she’s going to do because she doesn’t know what she’s going to do. It was a one take all the way up the ramp into that moment. And so the build on it, we tried it a few different ways and we agreed, we don’t want her to crack. We don’t want her crying, we don’t want any of that stuff. She’s just really asking herself the question, ‘Is it revenge or is it redemption? What is it for me?'”

Riesgraf added, “She put herself in that situation very well knowing she may have gone the other way, and I think him coming in to reel her in really was necessary.” It had to be Eliot in that moment because Parker didn’t want her boyfriend, Hardison (Aldis Hodge), to know. “Eliot was the one that she couldn’t keep out,” she explained, with their similar pasts and things they’ve had to do to survive that the others wouldn’t understand.

He knows that “the tiger in her is still there,” according to Riesgraf. “It exists, and it’s a matter of choosing if you’re going to let the tiger out or keep it in. He understands that about her, and he’s not there to tell her not to do it. He’s just like, ‘This is for you to decide.'”

Kane said that Eliot’s both “proud of where she’s going but also scared because he’s led her along the road that he was on. Towards the end, he starts going, ‘Dear God, did I bring her where I’m at?’ And that’s not somewhere you want Parker. That’s not somewhere I want to be as Eliot Spencer. And so I’m really scared that I may have taken her down the road I was on trying to make her better or tougher and realize that she may have gotten there. And it’s a very scary place because now you can’t go home.”

Eliot’s redemption

As Dean Devlin and Christian Kane have both told us, Eliot would say he can never be redeemed, given what he’s done and the lives he’s taken. And so, exploring redemption for him, given the name of the show, is that “he sticks around long enough to see that everybody else gets redemption,” explained Kane.

“I think that’s his redemption. And then unfortunately, I think he has to move off somewhere else. Or maybe not. I have no idea. But I think that each one of these family members that he now has has to have redemption. And I think that’s his redemption. At least he tried,” he continued. “He can’t bring back the lives he took. So he tries to help people find lives that at this point they deserve.”

Sophie’s love life

This season, sparks flew between Sophie and Jack (John Charles Meyer), whom she met on a job in a small town. In the finale, she left to go on a trip with him to Manhattan.

“There’s something quite romantic about the relationship,” Bellman noted of what she called a “refreshing” relationship for her character. “It’s about poetry or music or nature walks. It doesn’t really traverse her reality of crime. It’s something she can really compartmentalize. She’s allowing herself to be romanced in a very feminine way and she’s got this other life where she is this tough mastermind making decisions, split seconds, in control, controlling the behavior of others.”

She shared that she and Riesgraf, who directed the episode in which he was introduced, spoke about who Sophie would be attracted to. “She’s not going to find a Nate [who died prior to the revival picking up]. She’s not going to be attracted to a powerful guy. She’s not going to be attracted to someone with money. She’s going to be attracted to someone who’s strong in their own self that has a community, a sense of community, and a certain kind of sex appeal.”

That was when Kane interjected and admitted he thought Sophie “would’ve been attracted to someone with a heart.”

Breanna’s future

The season began with Breanna actually off looking at colleges with Harry (Noah Wyle) and his daughter, but then we saw her really settle into the cons and embracing that part of her life. (Her bots on dating profiles? She has them talking to each other.)

“She has her own little quirks,” like those bots, Shannon acknowledged. “She’s definitely firing at the top of her game. Sophie, Parker, Eliot, her brother [Hardison], and Mr. Wilson have all sharpened her to a point where point where she’s using the top of her skills. I know if I was Breanna, I’d be like, ‘Dang, can I keep doing job after job after job, or do I revert back to where I was? It was easier.'”

Season 4 hopes

Prime Video has yet to make a decision about the show’s future, but the cast would love to return for a fourth season and even know what they’d like to see if there is one.

“We’ll have to have some high drama in it again. I think this season has been a classic. We had John Rogers back at the helm, and so we really leaned into the fun. We really leaned into the quickness of it and being light on our feet,” Bellman said. “But I think next season, we would have to go find some darkness again. I think we’ve always gone light, shade, light, shade, and we’ve always handled that really well. And this is definitely a very nice, bright, shiny, light season that people would get a lot of pleasure from.”

Kane agreed, “It’s the Jekyll and Hyde thing,” suggesting, “If there was a Jekyll and Hyde with [Eliot and Sophie] where we both flip back to some of the other stuff, then there’s no redemption, almost gets kind of erased. You know what I mean? Because it’s like, we’re coming after you now. You hurt us in a way that no one has, and so now the gloves are back off. You took us to a point where, ‘Alright, let’s just do some good for some people. Let’s be good. We’re all this.’ But then if you take that away from us and the gloves come off and we started getting bare knuckle, that would be a fun season.”

Shannon is hoping to see more genre-bending and enjoyed the “Scream Queen world” and noir episodes from Season 3. She also recalled The Office episode from the original run of Leverage.

Riesgraf, who wants to dive more into Parker’s backstory and other times she was operating, pointed out that they were one of the first shows to come back after the pandemic in 2020, which limited them as far as the number of people they could have on set and where they could go. “This season feels international. It feels global. I want to keep leaning into that as well,” she said, adding, off the episodes Shannon named, “Doing these episodes that are self-contained in their own little world keeps it super fresh and fun for everybody. So keeping the comedy and the character stuff we love so much and the action stuff with all that mixed in just makes it look like a really cool global experience.”

Shannon is hoping the show brings in her and Hardison’s Nana. “I already know who I want to play Nana, too,” she immediately told us. “If they could get a Whoopi Goldberg to play Nana, it’s like dream casting, right? Whoopi. Dean [Devlin], call Whoopi.”

What did you think of Season 3, and what are you hoping to see in Season 4? Let us know in the comments section below.

Leverage: Redemption, Seasons 1-3, Streaming Now, Prime Video