Note: This article contains spoilers for “The Night Agent” Season 2.
“The Night Agent” Season 2 ended with a realization many refuse to confront: We’re more like our parents than we think.
After abandoning his mission to save the ones he loved, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) must make amends for the wreckage he left in his path. While attempting to halt a chemical weapons threat to the United States, he released a witness, stole intelligence and ultimately swung a presidential election.
Even though he saved Rose (Luciane Buchanan), Peter is not proud of his choices. The Night Agent turned himself in to his trainer Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren), but she did not let him off the hook just yet.
Catherine tells Peter that he made the same mistakes his father did to protect the ones he loved, and she gives Peter the same chance he did to atone for them: a new mission as a double agent.
“He’s realizing the amount of hatred he probably had for his father, the amount of bitterness he probably had for their relationship and lost time,” Basso told TheWrap. “The more he learns about this business, I think he realizes the harder it is to make good decisions in that environment, and the decisions my dad was making were the best given his options.”
Showrunner Shawn Ryan said that Peter’s complicated relationship with his deceased father was what drew him to develop Matthew Quirk’s novel for Netflix initially, telling TheWrap that the hit Netflix series wouldnt exist if not for the mystery surrounding his own dad’s death.
“It was very personal to me, because I lost my father very quickly and unexpectedly, and the 10-year anniversary of his death actually will be premiere day, which I found to be a very symbolic thing this year,” Shawn Ryan told TheWrap ahead of the Jan. 23 premiere of Season 2.
“There were things I learned about my father after his passing that were very mysterious to me, nothing as nefarious as Peter’s father being a traitor or anything, but this has always been the core, important part of the show to me,” he added.
Peter must confront before accepting his next mission that what he had resented about his father may be the thing that makes them alike.
“He’s becoming him, I think sort of freaks [Peter] out,” Basso said. “He doesn’t want to be his father, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
“To me, this has always been the core emotional anchor of this show: Is Peter trying to be a better man than his father was?” Ryan said.
Peter accepts the mission, perfectly setting up Season 3. This time he will commit his life to an even more exclusive position than the night agent team. He must determine the exact nature of Monroe’s relationship with Hagan from the inside by gaining their trust and turning over classified information.
Peter and Rose’s relationship is also on the line in the finale. The agent has to make the hard decision to tell Rose that they can not communicate as long as he’s on this new mission. Rose wants security, but Peter craves the rush of the night agent lifestyle. Ultimately, she agrees not to call him or come looking for him, and they tearfully part ways.
Filming has already started for Season 3, and Ryan teased that “it’s just the beginning.” Basso teased to TheWrap that the team wrapped up Episode 1 in Istanbul and will return to New York to shoot the remainder of the series.
“What we were able to get on-camera is just sort of mind-blowing to me,” Basso said of the first episode’s Istanbul sequences. “We were getting stuff that I felt like would have taken months and months and months of prep to plan, and we were doing it accidentally. There were things that happened on camera that weren’t planned, that were just sort of mind-blowing, so I’m psyched about it.”
“The Night Agent” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
