The Night Agent - Season 2

The first season of The Night Agent suggested that we would have another cracker of a spy series. Will the second season keep us glued to the screen? The FBI has sent agent Peter Sutherland and an experienced agent out into the wide world to learn the tricks of the spy trade. In Bangkok, they must try to prevent the sale of secret information. However, things go terribly wrong there, with tragic consequences: a traumatic event for the young agent.

Peter is determined to catch the perpetrator behind this debacle. What plays a role is the feeling that they have been betrayed by someone with a high position within the FBI. This causes Peter to no longer trust his superiors and he regularly goes against explicit orders. The logical consequence is that Peter himself is viewed with suspicion by his employer.

The FBI cannot find him and calls in the help of Rose, the cybersecurity expert who Peter had to protect in the first season. He tells her that a top-secret military project is in danger of falling into the wrong hands. If that happens, thousands of people could lose their lives. Rose trusts Peter with her life and convinces him that her help could be important.

The trail leads to Iran, among other places. Desperately, they seek the help of an Iranian embassy employee. She has her own reasons for betraying her country, but the consequences for her and her family could be fatal.

This second season is actually divided between two stories.

The suspicion that Peter himself wants to commit a terrorist attack is becoming increasingly fertile ground. After all, he does strange things. For example, he lets an important prisoner go and breaks into an international top location. What are he and Rose doing? And are they not going too far? Peter and Rose's race for the truth is full of action and danger. That is pleasant for the viewers, but a critical viewer will still look for a certain credibility. And that is sometimes where the shoe pinches.

This second season is well made. There are credible locations and a dose of potentially ‘wrong’ people pulling strings behind the scenes. The Iranian embassy also feels credible, as does the pressure that is put on the people in the totalitarian country. All dialogues there are in Farsi, the official language of Iran.

This second season is actually divided between two stories. We see Peter and Rose on the American side hunting spies and terrorists. The other half revolves around the Iranian Noor who wants to get her family out of Iran to continue living in freedom in America.

While I did not always find the main storyline credible or clear, Noor's story was actually much more exciting and human. After a while it became clear that I mainly kept watching because I wanted to know what was going to happen to her. The scenes at the embassy were much more exciting and threatening to me than the rest of the season put together.

This season also appears to be a prelude to the third season during the finale. The events even had consequences for the American presidency and an important puppetmaster still has to be unmasked. I hoped that the third season would have the credibility and tension that this second season lacked a bit too often.

Although somewhat disappointing, the second season of The Night Agent is still worth watching. However, the score is lower than for season one.

Breaking news: season two seemed to be the build-up to a potential cracker of a third season. Production had already started, but the disappointing viewing figures made Netflix decide to cancel the series. A strange decision, because competitor The Recruit had also been canceled. The reason for this was that that series was too similar to The Night Agent. Netflix's decision to then also cancel this series, and during production, is therefore quite astonishing.