Season 3 of the martial arts Western series Warrior should dive into a growing trend in martial arts films. Conceived in the mind of Bruce Lee before his passing, Warrior was eventually realized on Cinemax in 2019, running for two seasons before jumping over to HBO Max after its season 3 renewal (Cinemax ending original programming on the channel being the reason why). Warrior has rightly been acclaimed as one of the best action-heavy shows on television, but for season 3, it's naturally imperative that it continue stepping up its game - which it can do by jumping into the one-shot action scene trend.
Single-take fight scenes have become increasingly popular in the last few years. While they'd existed before in movies like Oldboy and Tom Yum Goong, anchored by Thai action star Tony Jaa, the current trend was arguably kicked off by Netflix's Daredevil, with all three seasons of the show boasting a single-take fight sequence that became the focus of water cooler talk about the series, each one also growing longer and more elaborate as the show progressed. Since Daredevil's 2015 debut, one-take fight scenes have been all over the place in movies like Creed, Close Range, Atomic Blonde, and Extraction. While some of the more complex one-shot fights end up masking cuts from one shot to the next, they still provide the same one-of-a-kind visceral thrill.
Some filmmakers are even going as far as to transform entire movies into one-shot wonders, with the World War I film 1917 being the most notable recent example, the two-hour movie hiding cuts throughout to successfully create the one-shot feel. Martial arts films have begun diving in on this too, with the Tak Sakaguchi-led Crazy Samurai Musashi (released in the U.S. as Crazy Samurai: 400 vs 1) presenting an unbroken 77-minute samurai showdown pitting the titular hero against hundreds of opponents. The upcoming Scott Adkins action movie One Shot is even proudly proclaiming its one-shot action movie bonafides right up front. Clearly, single-take action is bigger than ever, and it's a trend that Warrior shouldn't sit out.
Admittedly, Warrior did dip its toes in the one-shot fight waters a bit in a fight sequence in season 2's second episode, but it was also brief and not among the excellent martial arts battles that Warrior has in great abundance (one season 2 action scene drawing an obvious influence from The Raid movies). As a show originally dreamed up by Bruce Lee, Warrior has done his vision for it justice, even bringing no-holds-barred fights into the equation, and inserting Lee's philosophy of flexibility and adaptation, the precursor to modern MMA, into a Western setting. For Warrior's third season to take this even further, a one-shot action scene is a perfect tool to utilize.
One-shot martial arts fights are all the rage now, and Warrior would do well to craft at least one major one into its third season. Like Bruce Lee's fighting philosophy of capitalizing on whatever open opportunity is available in combat, Warrior has a big one right in front of it. The show would be wise to grab it by the horns, though with the basic template of Bruce Lee's Game of Death never truly realized, it's certainly not the only one.