Summary
The stakes of The Night Agent Season 2 are firmly raised by Episode 8, which feels very much like a point of no return for several characters.
There it is – that end of season feeling. It took a while, but Episode 8 is where The Night Agent Season 2 really kicks into gear, delivering significant character turns and major twists to build the stakes ahead of the final two episodes. Peter crosses a line, a well-intentioned effort goes up in plumes of toxic vapour, and nobody seems quite sure of what to do next. Either way, “Divergence” makes it clear that there aren’t going to be solutions without significant personal compromises.
I’d argue that this is what you want from an episode at this stage of a second season, and I should take a moment to note that I respect what The Night Agent has managed to do in its sophomore outing by really digging into the characters and the underlying themes of international espionage, keeping the drama human-scale despite the geopolitical backdrop. And I think that comes to the fore better here than it has in any of the previous episodes.
A Family Affair
Central to this episode is the relationship between Tomas and Viktor. After speaking to his father, Tomas was determined to take the reins of this revenge mission, but while he assisted in stealing the necessary chemical compounds, he’s less keen on the idea of killing hundreds of thousands of people. Markus is a die-hard, though, and clearly has his own agenda.
This relationship goes back ages. In a seventeen-years-earlier opening flashback we see Viktor fuming at Tomas for using his mother’s surname at his English boarding school, slapping him in front of everyone when he retorts that Balas are known as warmongers. But Markus, who was taken in by Viktor after his own parents were killed fighting for him, is deeply jealous of Tomas being part of the family but unfit for the name. He has always considered Tomas weak. This is just an extension of that.
It’s obvious from early on that one of them is going to bite the bullet in this episode. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
Peter Goes Rogue
Solomon is taking Peter to see his boss, whose name is apparently Jacob, but I’m not sure this has been clarified at any point previously. Nevertheless, Jacob is willing to do Peter a solid and tell him where the mobile lab and Rose are if Peter performs the straightforward task of breaking into the United Nations building and retrieving a case file from the personal computer of the secretary general. No biggie, then.
The case file, which Jacob makes Peter memorize, is IUN0134-20180713; the second half supposedly pertains to a date (July 13, 2018, I assume), but its significance to Jacob is mysterious and prompts a lecture about relative value. But the real cost is that Peter will be a traitor, like his dad before him. Jacob will own him. He’ll be giving his own life in exchange for Roses’s, which he’s willing to do. But he’ll need help.
The help needs to come from Noor, who can get him access to the UN building. She’s willing to do so but wants to meet him in person, obviously setting him up so that Javad can snatch him (although in that case it’s fortunate Peter called – what else were Javad and Noor doing to find him, just sitting around?)
(L to R) Louis Herthum as Monroe, Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland in episode 208 of The Night Agent. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Peter and Noor Team Up
When Noor meets Peter in the usual place, he’s candid with her for the first time. He apologizes and tells her the full truth about everything, including the very real stakes of Foxglove. She still doesn’t believe him about her mother being safe because of Javad’s claims, so Peter calls Sami, who picks up this time. Noor is able to speak to her mother, validating Peter’s story.
In exchange, Noor tells Peter that Javad is waiting for him outside. So, they come up with a plan. Peter gives Noor a taser and they both leave the building. Noor plays along and is taken away by one of the guards. Peter is left with Javad and the others. Both violently assault their captors – Noor with the taser, Peter with a nightstick – and flee. Poor Javad gets whooped three times on the bounce by a guy who has come off worse in every fight he’s had this season – all that ominous talk about him being former Quds Force doesn’t amount to much.
Peter heads to his apartment, where Catherine is waiting for him. She tries to talk him down, and when he doesn’t listen holds him at gunpoint, but Peter disarms her and locks her in the bathroom. Noor, meanwhile, heads back to the mission, where Abbas catches her snooping around. However, she’s able to sway him by promising to hand over the names of Iranian dissidents, which include his daughter, to the UN, giving them a chance to escape before the Iranian authorities track them down. He agrees to give her a ten-minute head start.
Peter and Noor meet back up, and the latter informs him there has been a slight change of plan – she’ll be going into the UN building with him.
Mutiny
Elsewhere in The Night Agent Season 2, Episode 8, Rose and Dr. Cole remain prisoners of Markus and Tomas. They’re confined to the mobile lab with Cole’s wife Gloria and daughter Jesse being used as leverage to keep them working on KX. Their only option for the time being is to work as slowly as possible until a solution emerges.
It looks like the solution may be Tomas. He and Markus are constantly bickering about the approach (“I’m glad to see you’ve finally found your spine” is crazy work) and at one point Tomas takes Rose aside, having deduced that she’s not really a scientist. She appeals to his better nature, asking what kind of person he wants to be for Sloane, echoing Sami’s earlier speech to Peter about finding a moral anchor.
Once Cole gives Tomas a rundown of how KX actually works, and how it can’t be contained, he gets the message. Tomas tells Cole that under no circumstances can he complete the work; he needs to stall for long enough that Tomas can get him and his family out of there.
But Markus sees what’s happening. When he gets annoyed by how long things are taking – several hours just to produce a single small test batch – he brings out Gloria and Jesse and threatens to kill them. Tomas tries to intervene, but Markus overrules him. He’s locked in the fridge, while Rose and Cole are confined to the lab.
Tomas tries one final time to talk Markus down, but it backfires considerably. Markus tosses the test batch of KX into the fridge with him and closes the door. He screams as he burns on the inside and out, as the camera pans to the much larger batch of the substance Rose and Dr. Cole are being forced to create.
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