Summary
The Night Agent Season 2 ups the intensity in Episode 4, delivering pacey suspense but strong underlying character too.
Episode 4 is easily the best installment of The Night Agent Season 2 thus far. As we approach the midpoint and have a clearer sense of who’s who after the previous episode, “Desperate Measures” conspires to get everyone together for a deft, pacey chapter behind enemy lines. In the background of that, a personal focus on Catherine makes her character much more compelling.
This is good stuff, pretty much across the board. We also get some clarity on what Foxglove actually is and surprising nobody, it doesn’t sound much fun.
Let’s break it down.
The Dream Team
An opening flashback to Noor’s time in Iran, when a pirate journalist friend was arrested for publishing treasonous rhetoric in a newsletter, helps to reiterate her personal stakes. And this is important, especially given what transpires at the very end of the episode.
But in the present day Noor goes to meet with her CIA contact, “Edward”, and finds Peter and Rose waiting for her. Peter explains he’s taking over, and Noor clarifies the deadline – her brother is about to be conscripted, and he’ll likely be killed in a pointless proxy war like their father was. This is why she’s so determined to get her family out of Iran, but Peter requires her to get copies of the contents of Abbas’s briefcase.
This is a stretch for Noor, though, who has so many responsibilities over the coming days that she can’t get the copies without arousing suspicion. To this end, Noor, Peter, and Rose plan to use a party Abbas is throwing to sneak in, swipe the keycard for his study, and copy the documents without being detected. Peter isn’t happy with Rose’s involvement and makes her promise that she’ll leave if anything goes wrong, but time is short.
It’s Party Time
Rose is infiltrating the party as the plus-one of a Swiss diplomat named Emil, who is on Catherine’s payroll and takes to his assignment like a duck to water. Peter is disguised as one of the catering staff and does not.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly – Rose pretends to choke on a pomegranate crostini to cause a distraction so that Noor can swipe the keycard, but when she goes to hand it off to Peter, Javad – whom we learn is former Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – takes him to the kitchen. While instructing him to dump the alcohol that has been gifted to the ambassador – they can’t regift it because it’d be rude, but alcohol is forbidden – Javad asks a bunch of questions that make it very clear he has figured Peter out.
This leaves Rose, against Peter’s instructions, to take the keycard and break into Abbas’s study. The briefcase is code-locked, so she has to force it, but she’s able to successfully take photos of the documents inside on Noor’s phone. She’s caught leaving by Haleh but claims to just be looking for a bathroom and to have found Noor’s phone on the banister. Haleh returns it to her and Rose gets out of there.
Peter also fights his way out of the basement and returns to his apartment, where he’s furious about Rose not following his instructions but is quickly disarmed by a kiss. Like taking candy from a baby.
Arienne Mandi as Noor in episode 204 of The Night Agent. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
A More Personal Side to Catherine
Catherine gets a fair amount of welcome focus in The Night Agent Season 2, Episode 4. She’s conducting her own investigation into Foxglove and is thrown to be informed by Aiden that Gedney, the director of the CIA, apparently has no knowledge of it. Gedney’s a bureaucratic appointment, not a real spook, but Catherine remains unconvinced.
Similarly weirdly, when Catherine goes to visit Celeste, she finds the house empty and is informed by a neighbor that she mysteriously upped and left in the middle of the night. But the thing that really throws her for a loop is some mail that she collects, the contents of which aren’t immediately revealed.
Catherine takes the box to a man named Isaac Leeds, who turns out to be Alice’s cousin. However, he had already received the box and sent it back, believing its contents were meant for someone who truly cared about Alice. They weren’t close; when she joined Night Action, she seemed to have severed ties with her family, which broke her father’s heart.
Furious about this, Catherine goes to see Gedney while he’s having dinner and dumps the contents of the package on his table – Alice’s ashes. She’s fuming about an agent who gave so much for her country being treated so unceremoniously in death. But she also takes the opportunity to press him about Foxglove.
Noor’s Gambit
After taking a moment with Peter to scatter Alice’s ashes at the pier, Catherine joins him and Rose in waiting for Noor to arrive with the photos. Here, Catherine shares the thin file that Gedney has shared about Foxglove. It was a joint CIA-military initiative to develop antidotes and countermeasures to chemical weapons, but that, of course, required developing the chemicals first. Nine were developed in a mobile lab that is now missing (we know why, but if you need more clarification, see below.)
Noor arrives but drops the bombshell that she hasn’t brought the photos with her. She has transferred them from her phone to a hidden drive but refuses to hand them over until her family is out of Iran. She has done her part, now it’s time for the Americans to do theirs.
Thanks to some of the earlier legwork done with Noor’s character, I was fully behind her decision here. It’s clear that she was being used by the American government in the first place, and whatever the contents of that lab might be intended for, she’s got a right to stand her ground.
And Another Thing…
A couple more notes from The Night Agent Season 2, Episode 4 that didn’t slot neatly into the recap proper:
- Early in the episode, Tomas meets with Markus and Solomon, the latter of whom gives the drive supplied by Warren Stocker to Markus. There’s clearly a bit of a coup going on here.
- Tomas’s initial plan for the mobile lab was to document it for evidence, not to steal it. Markus went above him, and it’s clear he has been conspiring behind his back.
- Towards the end of the episode Tomas tries to confront Markus, but he laughs it off. He tells Tomas it’s time to show some loyalty to “you know who” – no, not Voldemort – and reminds him that he shouldn’t keep his father waiting. So, is it Tomas’s supposedly imprisoned war criminal father who is really pulling the strings?
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