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Number One on Netflix is a weekly spotlight on whatever is currently the most popular thing on the world’s most popular streaming service. Sometimes it’ll be a movie. Sometimes it’ll be a TV show. Whatever it is, a lot of people are clearly watching, and we’ll try to understand why with a quick review. Today, we’re looking at Season 2 of the thriller series The Night Agent. The following contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale, “Buyer’s Remorse.”
When The Night Agent premiered in 2023, it proved to be addictive viewing. Season 1 of the Netflix thriller derived a lot of its power from its core premise, built on a classic trope — the attractive young couple on the run from no shortage of nefarious forces. In this case, the nefarious forces were trying to assassinate the President of the United States, with rogue agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) and cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan) doing their best to stop said assassination — with a little bit of making out along the way.
At the end of Season 1, Rose and Peter reluctantly parted to live very different lives: Rose returning to work in Silicon Valley, while Peter finally got promoted to the level of full Night Agent. But it was pretty clear their story wasn’t over, a promise made good early into Season 2 of the show. Picking up several months after Season 1, Peter once again finds himself in a deadly situation, a new conspiracy that also entangles Rose after she tries to track Peter down.
There’s no real need here to go into the specifics of the conspiracy that Peter and Rose have to thwart this season — it involves deadly chemical weapons, the UN, an Iranian defector, and a mission in which Peter has to wear a very snazzy waistcoat, with the accompanying twists designed to keep the audience on edge. And throughout most of it, Peter and Rose work very much as a team, with Peter’s handler Catherine (Amanda Warren) observing more than once that they operate well together.
Which is why the end of Season 2 is so frustrating, as Peter turns himself into the authorities for some of the light treason he committed over the course of the season — after he and Rose essentially break up, him pressuring her to realize that their relationship puts her in danger. While in the past, Rose has proven to be very bad at listening to Peter when he tells her to go away and save herself, this time it seems to be sticking: In her final scene of the season, she affirms that she’s returning to her life in California, and won’t try to contact him again.
The Night Agent has already been renewed for a third season, but that doesn’t mean Rose will return: In an interview with Deadline published after Season 2’s premiere, creator Shawn Ryan in fact implied that Rose wouldn’t be a major part of Season 3, given the way her character and Peter are on different paths. “We’re still figuring all of that out. What I would say is that we don’t want to artificially create a situation where characters have to be part of a specific season on a regular basis,” he said.
The Night Agent (Netflix)
At least Ryan is being kind about lowering expectations for where Season 3 might go — which, based on early reports, will include Istanbul before returning to New York, where Peter will contend with new series regulars including Jennifer Morrison, Stephen Moyer, and Genesis Rodriguez. Luciane Buchanan is not on the cast list.
As a viewer, I admittedly love a good love story (especially one where the main couple is facing epic external odds). But my frustration here goes beyond a craving for romance, because throughout Season 2, the show is at its most compelling when Peter and Rose are working together to stop whatever calamities are in play. For every line of dialogue meant to reaffirm that Rose really wants a normal life, we get a scene in which she once again proves her mettle as an operative, unofficial or not. It’s a much more interesting show when the two of them are working together… and lacks that same spark when they’re apart.
The fact that Rose has a normal life to return to (whereas Peter’s neck-deep in this world of spycraft) is a tension that comes up a lot over the course of Season 2, along with the dilemma perhaps best summed up by the movie Speed: “Relationships that start under intense circumstances, they never last.” All of this would be a fair concern… if The Night Agent were a grounded relationship drama, and not a high-octane spy thriller. Concerns about toxic don’t exactly feel applicable to a TV show about ultra-secret spy agencies and international intrigue.
What really stands out about the decision to break up Peter and Rose is the assumption that there would be nothing interesting about watching two people try to figure out how to be in love while also doing spycraft — not to mention the assumption that a Will They/Won’t They romance is only interesting as long as the core question remains unanswered. There are enough scenes in Season 2 which prove otherwise.
On the plus side, at least The Night Agent didn’t choose to fridge Rose, killing her as a way of motivating Peter further in his quest. Looking back on the Bourne films, 24, countless James Bond movies… It’s almost a shock she survived, given that it would have given the writers an easy way to close the book on Rose and move forward with whatever derrings-do will occur in Season 3.
Instead, Season 2 of The Night Agent ends on an unsatisfying note, with no promise that Season 3 will feature any of the same chemistry which made the first two seasons so watchable. Instead, it could end up being another spy thriller in search of a spark… leaving Netflix viewers in search of something else to watch.
The Night Agent is streaming now on Netflix.
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