‘Shooter’ Season 3 Finale Recap: How Did The Series End? [Spoiler] Dies

Bob Lee Swagger’s (Ryan Phillippe) taken his final shot on USA’s “Shooter.” The action-drama, which was canceled in August, aired the Season 3 finale Thursday night, which doubled as its series finale.

Swagger and his colleagues’ — Isaac (Omar Epps), Nadine (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and Harris (Jesse Bradford) — mission to take down Atlas comes to an end in the episode. Bob Lee saves Supreme Court Justice Gibson (Rhea Perlman) and other officials inside a safe house from an Atlas bomber, finally getting law enforcement and government officials involved and ending Atlas for good.

With that huge task now complete, the President follows through and makes Harris his chief of staff and also offers Nadine and Isaac the opportunity to take over as the heads of Atlas. The two accept his offer, with the sole goal of doing things better than how they were done previously. To start, they change the underground group’s name to Prometheus and agree to look through Atlas’ past missions and fix what they could.

As for Red Bama Sr. (Gerald McRaney), Harris forces him to resign from his government posting, which only makes him more upset about the situation that he’s in. He can no longer hide behind the veil of the government, Atlas is done and Bob Lee still might be trying to kill him for ordering the death of his father.

Not wanting to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life, Red asks Bob Lee if they can just call a truce. Wanting only to fix his marriage with Julie (Shantel VanSanten) and his relationship with his daughter, Mary (Lexy Kolker), he agrees but tells him to leave Texas. Unfortunately, this was all a ruse and Red hires someone to kill Bob Lee at his ranch and anyone else who happens to be around. He does this not knowing that Bob Lee and Julie had just decided to take a break, with Julie and Mary keeping the house and Swagger moving elsewhere.

Later, while Bob Lee and his daughter are out having a chat, Julie’s caught at home while a team of hitmen is outside shooting into the house. The sheriff saw their helicopter heading towards Bob Lee’s ranch and calls him to let him know. He quickly hops into his car and heads to protect the woman he loves. Never the one to play the damsel in distress, Julie’s quick to drop to the floor while the bullets fly, and she gets a gun from the safe. She shoots one guy as he passes by the window, but misses the second one. When he opens the door, they shoot each other at the same time, but while he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, she’s not. He walks over to her to shoot her again, but she quickly pulls out her piece and shoots him in the groin.

Bob Lee’s now at the property and is sniping down a few men, but one’s left, and he blows up the house. Julie’s quick to make her way to the bathtub, while Swagger kills the remaining hitman. The two are fine, with her gunshot wound being a through-and-through in the shoulder and not seeming too serious. He apologizes and tells her that she and Mary are his life, but just when they think it’s all over, it ends up being one of their lives that’s actually over.

Red’s waiting far away in the hills with a sniper and just as he has his shot lined up against Swagger, Bob Lee moves away at the last moment, and the shot goes right through Julie’s neck. Swagger holds her, screams and begs her not to leave him, but it’s too late.

“Shooter” skips ahead three months later, and Isaac and Nadine have Prometheus up and running. Harris stops by and gives Nadine a top secret mission that the President wants them to handle, but when Isaac comes in to ask what he wanted, she doesn’t tell him about it.

For the final moments of the show, it jumps over to Canada, where Red Bama’s been apparently hiding. Swagger calls him while he’s in the cabin and tells him that he told him if he touched his family he’d never stop looking for him. Swagger lines up his shot from afar and sends a bullet right through Red’s head, under his left eye. When Bob Lee stands up after his kill shot, there’s a sweet montage of his memories with his wife. The series ends as he walks alone, on a snowy Canadian mountain, away from his kill.

The trailer for this final episode teased the deaths, saying, “two will not survive,” and while Red Bama Sr.’s death was an easy guess after all of Bob Lee’s threats, Julie’s was not. That said, it makes sense because it’s the final straw that forces Bob Lee to kill Bama, and it validates Julie’s season-long worries about her or Mary getting caught up in Bob Lee’s troubles.

As far as series finales go, this one does a pretty good job of wrapping everything up. Seeing as the show’s cancelation was announced just last month, it’s reasonable that fans were nervous that that wouldn’t be the case, but it seems as though the writers knew this might be the final season of “Shooter.”

The only real questions that remain, though they’re small compared to what fans could’ve been left with, are: Why is Nadine hiding that top-secret case from her partner, Isaac? How will Prometheus right the past wrongs of Atlas, all while fixing the new issues that arise without crossing the line? Will Bob Lee change his mind and join Prometheus, or is he done with all of that and going to live a simple life with his daughter?

It’s possible these questions will be answered since producer Paramount TV is trying to find a new home for the show, but no matter what, fans can always rewatch “Shooter” by streaming Seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix.