Warrior

Series premiere. San Francisco, 1878. Ah Sahm, a newly arrived Chinese immigrant with serious fighting skills, is introduced to Chinatown's most ruthless tong, the Hop Wei. After impressing Young Jun, son of tong leader Father Jun, Ah Sahm is branded and taken to the local brothel, where he befriends Ah Toy, a courtesan with connections. Later, in search of a woman who left China two years earlier, Ah Sahm crosses paths with Mai Ling and Li Yong, followers of the rival tong leader Long Zii, who is trying to avoid an opium war with the Hop Wei--a war that Walter Buckley, the deputy to San Francisco Mayor Samuel Blake, actively promotes. Meanwhile, after two Chinese laborers are killed by white thugs, police sergeant Big Bill O'Hara is tasked with creating a Chinatown squad. Enlisting a southern-born cop named Richard Henry Lee, Bill soon finds that the hostility between the Chinese and white dock workers is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Intercepting a shipment of opium at the docks, Young Jun, with Ah Sahm and his Hop Wei lieutenant Bolo in tow, decides to send a message to Long Zii. Big Bill and Lee investigate a grisly murder scene in an alley next to an Irish bar, The Banshee. Penny Blake, the young wife of San Francisco's mayor, finds herself in a bind while visiting the wharf with her Chinese manservant Jacob. Ah Sahm pays a steep price for playing the hero. The Long Zii clean up a mess, and brace for more bloodshed.

Leary pressures Byron Mercer, Penny's father and a gentleman industrialist, to hire his men for a cable-car track job – despite the fact that Mayor Blake hasn't yet awarded Mercer the contract. Accused of assault and perhaps worse, Ah Sahm gets a cold shoulder from the Hop Wei, with his fate in the hands of an unexpected ally. Buckley urges Mai Ling to eschew restraint and start a war with the Hop Wei.

Big Bill finds himself compromised by his gambling excesses, but discovers a possible solution after an opium-den raid. Penny reveals the circumstances that prompted her to marry Mayor Blake, who's determined to show voters he won't tolerate San Francisco's "Yellow Peril." After meeting with leaders of the Fung Hai tong, Mai Ling offers Ah Sahm a way out of a protracted--and bloody--tong war.

Transporting precious cargo via stagecoach through the Sierra Nevada, Ah Sahm and Young Jun are forced to spend the night with three strangers at a frontier saloon in the middle of nowhere. The detour turns perilous when a notorious outlaw, Harlan French, shows up with his henchmen, looking for a lucrative payday.

Tensions escalate between the Hop Wei and Long Zii after an assassination attempt during a boisterous Chinatown parade. Big Bill sets out to pay his debt to Jack Damon, leaving Lee to keep watch over Lucy and the kids. Mayor Blake and Buckley get a mandate from Robert Crestwood, a senator with eyes on the White House.