Banshee is one of the best shows you've (probably) never heard of. That may be due to the fact that it's on Cinemax, which doesn't have nearly as many subscribers as its big sister channel HBO or even competitors like Showtime and Starz. Regardless, if you like pulpy crime dramas or old-fashioned R-rated action movies, Banshee will be right up your alley. Watch it. Enjoy it. Thank us later.

While season 1 leaned heavily on the pulp, the action, and the sleaze, season 2 veered into some interesting introspective stuff (though not to the detriment of the aforementioned pulp and action) with an occasional aesthetic that brought to mind the work of Terrence Malick. Now that season 3 is just a couple months out, Cinemax has released the first official trailer. Check it out at the top of the page.

There's a lot to unpack in the footage above. At the end of Banshee season 2, there were a number of plot threads left unresolved. The protagonist, Lucas Hood (Antony Starr), an ex-convict turned sheriff, had started to delve into the more altruistic (or at least not "bad") parts of himself. Was he a good guy? Could he be? This soul-searching seemed to develop alongside his romantic relationship with Siobhan Kelly (Trieste Kelly Dunn), a female deputy and his underling, who all the while grew more suspicious of who he really was.

See, Lucas Hood isn't really Lucas Hood. Lucas Hood - or whatever his real name is, because we're never told - watched the real Lucas Hood get shot and killed in the series premiere. As a result of a complicated (thought not particularly convoluted) series of events, our protagonist took Hood's identity and became the sheriff of Banshee. And therein lies the premise of Banshee - how might a hardened, badass criminal go about cleaning up a truly messed up town like Banshee, PA? Not by traditional means, that's for damn sure.

In the trailer, we see Siobhan pull a gun on Hood and question whether or not she knows him at all. Obviously, we're heading toward a revelation between the two - Hood almost told her who he was last season - but how will this (relative) do-gooder react when she finds out her (sort of) boyfriend is impersonating a dead man?

We also see a lot of presumed season 3 villain Chayton Littlestone (Geno Segers), the gargantuan, intimidating leader of a local American Indian tribe. Hood and Littlestone tussled near the beginning of season 2, and Hood didn't so much "win the fight" as "survive." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that these two will go head-to-head again in season 3 - and we see some of that fight (or at least a fight) in the trailer footage.

One of the things that makes Lucas Hood so much fun to watch - as far as badass antiheroes go - isn't his strength, his size, or his fighting ability, it's his resilience. His toughness. Guy can take a hundred punches to the face and keep on fighting. His talent is just being able to withstand more punishment than anyone else in the room.

The trailer footage also prominently features series villain Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen), the ex-Amish criminal mastermind behind most of the evil stuff that goes on in Banshee, and his niece/apprentice Rebecca Bowman (Lili Simmons), who has seemingly committed to a life of evil at this point.

Last season, Hood committed to taking on Kai Proctor and bringing him down - a move he'd avoided for the better part of the first two seasons. It was the sort of development one might expect to be reserved for the season finale before the final season (Justified did this very thing with Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder), but there's no reason to assume Banshee season 3 will be the last.

Which makes us wonder: Will we see the Lucas Hood vs. Kai Proctor thread fully explored this coming season? Or will the showrunners wait to end the series with their climactic confrontation?

Finally - how will the ramifications of Emmett Yawners' (Demetrius Grosse) death in the season 3 finale affect Hood and company in the coming season? Presumably, Brock Lotus' (Matt Servitto) line about how everything Hood touches turns to blood will have something to do with it; otherwise, the trailer doesn't seem to touch upon that tragedy.

There's a lot more in the trailer - gimpses of Carrie Hopewell (Ivana Miličević), Job (Hoon Lee) in trouble, Nola (Odette Annable) kicking the crap out of Kai Proctor's sociopathic sidekick Burton (Matthew Rauch), and more - so it's worth watching more than once for fans of the series. In this Screen Rant writer's opinion, season 3 can't come soon enough.

What say you, Screen Ranters? Are you looking forward to more Banshee? Drop us a line in the comments.

Banshee season 3 will premiere January 10th, 2014 @10pm on Cinemax.

Source: Cinemax