The second season of Netflix’s 2023 thriller ‘Night Agent’ dropped in late January, after nearly two years in the pipeline. The story picks up 10 months after season one, where FBI agent Peter Sutherland and cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin tenaciously uncover a political conspiracy. Now, Peter is deep in a Night Action mission in Thailand while Rose suffers with PTSD-induced anxiety, rendering functioning in her civilian life impossible.
When Peter goes missing, due to yet another bad seed in the U.S. government, Rose uses her current employer’s software to track him down. She finds him in New York, working alone to uncover more corruption.
Though the story is interesting and unfolds in a relatively engaging manner, there is a sense that the writers have attempted to go too big, too soon.
What distinguishes this season from its predecessor, however, is the dual storyline that takes place. Previously, Rose and Peter were the primary focus, but this instalment also follows Noor Taheri, an aide working for Abbas Mansuri – the Iranian Ambassador to the UN in New York City – as she negotiates with Peter to get her family out of Iran.
A tentative romantic subplot develops between Noor and Javad Rahmani, the Ambassador’s head of security. Herbetrayal of the mission thus becomes even riskier through her proximity to the one individual most capable of uncoveringher treachery.
Though the story is interesting and unfolds in a relatively engaging manner, there is a sense that the writers have attempted to go too big, too soon. The show’s initial success might have pressured them to escalate and ‘up the stakes,’ accelerating from a domestic threat to Washington, to an international conflict with European war criminals and a possible terror attack.
Another ‘forced’ element is Peter and Rose’s relationship. In season one, their attachment grew out of a mutual dependency (Rose more so than Peter) to stay alive. But here, as a civilian, Rose inserts herself into Peter’s situation in a way that feels unnecessary. It might seem harsh to suggest her character was gratuitous in this season, but her entitled insistence on full access to classified government information while simultaneously deploring that she ‘can’t be involved’ in the dirty work, seemed jarring and frustrating.
Unlike other crime thrillers, ‘Night Agent’ entertains but unfortunately fails to deliver anything exceptional. Amazon Prime’s ‘Reacher’ successfully used its second season to expand on its protagonist’s backstory within a compelling plot, but ‘Night Agent’ keeps its characters static, recycling the same corrupt-government-exposure theme and spreading the plot too thin across a global scale.
