“Trapped in the deadliest prison on Earth. . . With one week to save his family. . . Now, it will take his brother’s courage to launch the most dangerous break yet. Two brothers. . . Seven days. . . One shot!” Hit the alarms!

After the cast got out from behind bars at Fox River in Season 1, they all went on their own rides during a manhunt in Season 2 but it all ended back in a prison in Panama with the most explosive season of Prison Break yet. The breakout hit has gone through twists and turns but has yet to hit a universal low and with Season 3, the contrary can’t be argued for as it may very well be the ultimate high or close to it.

Everything begins where Season 2 left us breathless as Michael Scofield walks out of a hallway into the light of an open pit crowded by onlookers cheering-on a brawl where only one man is allowed to leave alive. Michael has now been put in a prison that holds the worst of the worst, a place where a killing spree may not even get you in, but for what reason? Sona is a facility that has been run by the inmates and guarded only from the fence since a riot the year before. Season 3 follows both Scofield inside Sona and Lincoln Burrows on the outside with a new character posing as a widow, Sofia Lugo, caught in the middle. Burrows is quickly contacted by The Company who have kidnapped his son LJ and Sara Tancredi, the woman Scofield loves, and is told that they want Scofield to escape with a mysterious James Whistler within a week’s deadline. Any hopes of a promised transfer are now diminished for Michael when the reason for him being there is revealed, but the reason as to why The Company wants Whistler out is one that doesn’t rear its ugly head throughout the season. James Whistler maintains throughout that his identity is only that of a simple fisherman: a simple fisherman who was also convicted of killing the son of Panama City’s Mayor, forced within the walls of Sona as a bounty was put on his head promising freedom to anyone who killed him, while also sending out messages with the dead to his girlfriend Sofia Lugo to obtain a pocket book on birds from a security deposit box. Fisherman? Right! He must not be too familiar with Michael Scofield.

The season follows Scofield and Whistler's trials in formulating an escape plan, as Scofield has to deal with extreme tension and Burrows deals with The Company's sexy and deadly representative, Gretchen Morgan. Bellick returns in this season on the other side of the bars and Mahone is also trapped as he was framed for a crime by Michael in Season 2. But that doesn’t make him innocent considering the turmoil in his past that leads him to his drug-thirsty state in a vermin-ridden predicament. All this is happening under the rule of a figure serving five life-sentences, the tyrannical kingpin Lechero who serves as the voice of the prisoners to the guards on the outer perimeter, so as to keep partial order within the walls of lawlessness. The sinister and always devious T-Bag returns working his way up under Lechero, as Sucre soon finds himself working as the prison’s gravedigger to help his friends. As Lincoln toils for leverage and Michael digs for a way out, the double-cross is underway but who will execute it first and who will be executed.

The very last episode of Season 3 was meant as the Fall finale but had to serve as much more with a beat-up automobile cruising the highway towards revenge. With only thirteen episodes due to the WGA Strike it’s remarkable Prison Break didn’t lose its touch. The cast of Robert Wisdom, Robert Knepper, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe and William Fichtner excel in the roles of the accented Lechero, tongue-master T-Bag, Satan’s angel Gretchen and addictive Mahone. This season is still filled with so many mindbenders that a single spoiler wouldn’t give away a thing. The idea of The Company is much more narrowed down here and with a shortened season is epitomized in the question of: who is James Whistler? Without seeming old compared to the seasons of before, Prison Break ventures off into a nicely stylized heat-stricken hell in what should be paradise.

Every season so far has been able to offer something different in all its continuation. In the first one, breaking out by means of a tattoo’s engineering genius was the plan. By the second time, staying ahead of authorities was the game. But by the end when we all knew Michael Scofield had been sent back to prison, we thought the game plan would be over, that the series had no more to offer but a rehashing of plot elements. The series exceeded expectations and the closest comparison can be made with Season 1 considering the context. Season 1 existed mainly within the cells and yard as the good guys tried to get out and the bad guys tried to sweep them in under a rug needing them only to disappear. Season 3 functions in the evolution of these sides conflicting, coming closer, and showing both the in and out intersecting with family and hidden objectives on the slate. Both seem to need something from the other. The walls are the barrier, motivation and at times protection and always curse. It’s here where Michael, the always good guy, reluctantly helps to get Whistler out, an obvious bad guy hiding his true angle. It’s also here where Lincoln, being just as far from his son as any death penalty can keep a man, experiences freedom under the control of The Company’s bidding while searching for any cracks to save his family. This season turns the plot of breaking out from under the blanket of a conspiracy on its head, and into both sides trying to get ahead of the other rather than the good swimming their way against a wave of dead ends. Though, plenty of those still lay.

So get ready to get back in as they battle to get back out with a sweat in Prison Break: Season 3 on DVD.