WARNING: Spoilers for The Righteous Gemstones below.
As The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 speeds towards its conclusion, the Gemstone family is on a collision course with Junior (Eric Roberts), a shady figure from patriarch Eli Gemstone‘s past. The situation reached a boiling point when Eli was gunned down by the Cycle Ninjas, a gang of machine gun toting assassins on dirt bikes who had previously fired on Jesse and Amber at a gas station. However, Eli survived the encounter. Knowing that the Cycle Ninjas would be looking to finish the job, Jesse hatched a plan to bait them into attacking Eli at the hospital and proceeded to dispatch the motorbike thugs with the help of Gideon, BJ, and Martin. It was a surprising win for the Gemstone family, who now have one of the gang members in their possession. There’s just one small problem:
No one knows who the Cycle Ninjas are working for.
While the show has painted Junior as the likely culprit behind the Cycle Ninjas, and he very well could be, there could be another party pulling the gang’s strings: The Lissons.
Introduced early in the season, the Lissons (Eric Andre and Jessica Lowe) are a fellow megachurch family who were desperately hoping to lure the Gemstones into investing $10 million into a Christian resort in Florida. While Jesse and Amber were sold on the idea, Eli shut the whole thing down, and the Lissons seemingly went on their way after angrily ditching Jesse and Amber at a bar after breaking the news. However, there are significant clues pointing towards the Lisson’s involvement.
While the Cycle Ninjas technically attacked Jesse and Amber first, they were in a party bus that was specifically meant for Eli. Their next attack is directly on the big guy himself, and when they find out he survived, they return to finish the job. As for why the Lissons would want Eli out of the way, well, he’s the one who stopped Jesse and Amber from investing in their timeshare scheme. With Eli gone, Jesse becomes the family patriarch and can spend the televangelist fortune as he sees fit.
Of course, there’s always the chance the Cycle Ninjas are controlled by a not-yet-revealed party. The Righteous Gemstones was created out of Danny McBride‘s desire to make an epic series about the Dixie Mafia, and Jesse has repeatedly accused the motorcycle gang and Junior of being tied to the Southern crime organization. Could the show be building towards a larger connection to the Dixie Mafia heading into Season 3? Quite possibly.
HBO’s ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ airs on Sunday evenings.