Summary
The Night Agent is arguably better than ever in Season 3, delivering more focused, character-driven storytelling with skimping on the action.
Who’d be Peter Sutherland? Sure, he’s the star of one of Netflix’s most unexpected hits, but his life sucks. None of his relationships work out. His career is all over the place. People are always trying to kill him. None of this has changed in Season 3 of The Night Agent; on the contrary, he’s more fed up now than ever before. But the irony is that this vibe improves things a notch, the vein of end-of-his-tether insularity giving what would otherwise be a so-so political-action thriller a surprising depth of character.
The Night Agent’s success was weird, by the way. The first season was quite average in its broad strokes, and while the second was arguably better, it wasn’t a world-beater either. And yet audiences loved it. I think the secret is probably Peter, who is played by Gabriel Basso – fun fact: according to Bas Rutten, Basso can legitimately do most of the stuff that this show wants him to pretend to do – with a compelling put-upon vibe. He’s got the skillset of an action hero with an everyman’s relatability. Season 3 shifts focus back to him almost exclusively, which is a smart choice.
This makes sense, since the ending of Season 2 found Peter becoming a double-agent, pretending to be at the beck and call of shadowy intelligence broker Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum) while really waiting to entrap him. In the year or so that has elapsed between seasons, he hasn’t heard from the Broker and has instead busied himself by constantly carrying out Night Action missions to make himself more and more valuable as an asset. What he’s really doing is avoiding having to think about Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan, missing from this season since Chief of War filmed at the same time), from whom he parted ways last season.
Peter’s latest mission is seemingly simple: He’s to apprehend Jay Batra (Suraj Sharma, How I Met Your Father), a junior analyst from a company called FinCEN who has absconded to Istanbul with classified intelligence after allegedly murdering his supervisor. As is standard in this show, it’s quickly revealed that this is only the tip of a global conspiracy iceberg involving U.S.-backed terrorism, political schadenfreude, and homeschooling assassins. Peter’s new ally is pretty journalist Isabel De Leon (Genesis Rodriguez, Lioness), who appropriately fills the Rose-shaped gap in Peter’s story.
Meanwhile, Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola, Back in Action), who was a major player in Season 1 but only had a cameo in Season 2, gets a full-on subplot in the White House, since she’s now a key part of the Secret Service security detail looking after President Richard Hagan (Ward Horton) and First Lady Jenny Hagan (Jennifer Morrison). The Night Agent Season 3 does smart work avoiding the obvious angles with Hagan, whose election was finessed in Season 2 by Monroe’s manipulation, and it’s satisfying to see how the storyline within the administration eventually – and inevitably – dovetails with what Peter’s doing.
I have to think that Rose would have been here if circumstances were different – she’s mentioned pretty frequently, and Peter’s character arc is largely defined by her absence – but the fact she isn’t proves to be a valuable creative choice, since it avoids any contrivance and frees up more space for Genesis Rodriguez and Evans-Akingbola to grow into their respective roles. The former, especially, would have been easy to get wrong, but her relationship with Peter is different than Rose’s, and her righteousness works well with an increasingly fed-up Peter. In the supporting cast, his new partner Adam (David Lyons, Truth Be Told) is a great foil for him, and “The Father” (Stephen Moyer), a pretty unconventional take on the cold-blooded contract killer archetype, is a good antagonist.
But Basso remains the heart and soul of this franchise. The consistent refusal to turn him into an all-capable superman is a very welcome decision. The season contains a solid amount of really good – and sometimes ridiculous – action, but it’s grounded in real-world terms thanks to just how much physical and emotional punishment the show is willing to visit on Peter. It makes him easy to root for, and keeps the rest of the show feeling appropriately deadly. He’s a really great physical performer and a surprisingly strong emotional one, and The Night Agent is a perfect vehicle for him. We’ll probably look back in a few years and give Netflix due plaudits for recognising he was a leading man early.
Is Season 3 The Night Agent’s best outing, then? I think you could make a case, certainly. It has tighter storytelling and a strong sense of character, and there’s no sign of things neatly wrapping up any time soon. That desire to keep the show going may prove its undoing down the line, but for now, at least, I don’t think we’ve exhausted everything it has to offer just yet.
RELATED:
