Two years after Shawn Ryan’s “The Night Agent” exploded on Netflix, the action thriller starring Gabriel Basso will return on January 23. Season 1 viewers will recall that Basso plays FBI agent Peter Sutherland, tasked with answering a mysterious phone in the White House basement that never rings — until it does.
The call from Rose (Luciane Buchanon) changes Peter’s life in more ways than one, throwing them both into a life-and-death hunt where they lose allies daily and can’t even be sure who’s after them. Everything Peter thought he knew about his job, his employers, and the FBI itself is challenged, and somewhere in all the high-octane madness, he and Rose fall in love.
Ahead of the season 2 premiere, Netflix released the first eight minutes as a teaser, as well as the news that Season 3 is officially on. But before we dive into all that, let’s brush up on everything to remember from “The night agent“Season 1.
The past
The cold open of “The Night Agent” Season 1 takes place a year before the rest of it. Peter boards a DC Metro train, where he sees a suspicious hood drop a backpack and then exit the train car. Sensing danger, Peter runs to the bag and opens it, revealing a bomb. He pulls the train’s emergency stop and orders everyone to evacuate, but the culprit escapes. While some hail Peter’s heroism, he also becomes a target of suspicion, with conspiracy theorists suggesting he orchestrated the bombing and called it off for his own glory.
Part of the reason people doubt Peter is that his father also worked for the FBI and was the counterintelligence section chief. When classified documents were leaked and threatened national security, the breach was traced back to Mr. Sutherland, but he died before being charged with any crimes. The evidence was never made public, but his name was, and Peter spent his entire life believing in his father’s innocence but unable to prove it. In the Season 1 finale, President Travers (Kari Matchett) gives Peter access to the file, which reveals that his father was guilty of treason, but unaware of how sinister his associates were.
The men behind the curtain
Rose calls Peter because people are attacking her aunt and uncle in their home, putting their three lives in danger. The police arrive before anything happens to Rose, but her aunt and uncle – two former night agents – are murdered. The killers then shift the focus to Rose and Peter, but both die at the end of the season.
The killers were working for Gordon Wick (Ben Cotton), the real culprit behind the DC Metro bombing along with Vice President Redfield (Christopher Shyer). The man tasked with doing so was Colin (Andre Anthony), who eventually kidnaps Redfield’s daughter Maddie (Sarah Desjardins) to get him to admit what he did (which includes killing Colin’s twin brother as a failed attempt to punish Colin for that he did not carry out bombing). When Maddie overhears her father talking about issuing pardons, she realizes that he plans to kill President Travers, and along with her Secret Service agent Chelsea (Fola Evans-Akingbola) Peter and Rose, she helps save the president and the day.
However, the president is not the main target. Both the events of the finale and the subway incident were intended for Omar Zadar (Adam Tsekhman), a foreign leader whom Redfield and Wick wanted out. They end up deciding that their best chance to eliminate him is at Camp David with the President. Sure!
Trust no one
For most of Season 1, Peter’s primary higher-level contact is White House Chief of Staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau), who is shown to be compromised and working with the Others. She is not in total morally bankrupt (if you ask her); when she learns of the plan to assassinate the president, she joins Peter’s team to stop it, but she has a long road of regret ahead of her. Unfortunately, with fingers pointed at the assassination attempt (and Wick on the run), Farr is in prime position to be made the scapegoat for everything that happened.
“Trust no one” also happens to be the theme of season 2, med the trailer shows how Peter is now working as a night agent but again suspects that sources he trusts have been compromised. He says he doesn’t trust anyone, and Rose replies “Except for me, right?”
The silence says it all.
Season 2 of “The Night Agent” premieres January 23 on Netflix.
