Everything to Remember from ‘The Night Agent’ Season 1

Two years after Shawn Ryan’s “The Night Agent” exploded on Netflix, the action-thriller starring Gabriel Basso returns on January 23. Season 1 viewers will recall that Basso plays FBI agent Peter Sutherland, tasked with answering a mysterious phone in the White House basement that never rings — until it does.

The call from Rose (Luciane Buchanon) changes Peter’s life in more ways than one, catapulting both of them into a life-and-death chase where they lose allies daily and can’t even be sure who’s after them. Everything Peter thought he knew about his job, his employers, and the FBI itself is called into question, and somewhere in all the high-octane madness, he and Rose fall in love.

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Netflix released the first eight minutes as a teaser, as well as the news that Season 3 is officially a go. But before diving into all that, let’s refresh ourselves on everything to remember from “The Night Agent” Season 1.

The Past

The cold open of “The Night Agent” Season 1 takes place a year before the rest of it. Peter boards a train in the DC Metro, where he spots a suspicious hooded figure who drops off a backpack and then exits the train car. Sensing danger, Peter runs to the bag and opens it, revealing a bomb. He pulls the train’s emergency stop and orders everyone to evacuate, but the culprit escapes. While some celebrate Peter’s heroism, he also becomes a target of suspicion, with conspiracy theorists suggesting that he orchestrated the bombing and thwarted it for his own glory.

Part of the reason people doubt Peter is because his father also worked for the FBI and was section chief of counterintelligence. When classified documents leaked and threatened national security, the breach was traced back to Mr. Sutherland, but he died before being charged of any crimes. The evidence was never made public, but his name was, and Peter spent his whole life believing in his father’s innocence but unable to prove it. In the Season 1 finale, President Travers (Kari Matchett) gives Peter access to the case files, which reveal that his father was guilty of treason, but not aware of how sinister his collaborators were.

The Men Behind the Curtain

Rose calls Peter because people attack her aunt and uncle in their home, putting all three of their lives in danger. The police arrive before anything happens to Rose, but her aunt and uncle — two former Night Agents — are murdered. The killers then shift their focus Rose and Peter, but both die by season’s end.

The assassins were working for Gordon Wick (Ben Cotton), the real culprit behind the DC Metro bombing along with Vice President Redfield (Christopher Shyer). The man tasked with it was Colin (Andre Anthony), who eventually kidnaps Redfield’s daughter Maddie (Sarah Desjardins) to get him to admit to what he did (which includes killing Colin’s twin brother as a failed attempt to punish Colin for not carrying out the bombing). When Maddie overhears her father talking about issuing pardons, she realizes that he plans to kill President Travers, and together with her Secret Service agent Chelsea (Fola Evans-Akingbola) Peter, and Rose, she helps save the President and the day.

The President isn’t the main target, though. Both the events of the finale and the metro incident were meant for Omar Zadar (Adam Tsekhman), a foreign leader that Redfield and Wick wanted out of the way. They end up deciding that their best shot to eliminate him is at Camp David with the President. Sure!

The Night Agent. Hong Chau as Diane Farr in episode 103 of The Night Agent. Cr. Dan Power/Netflix © 2023DAN POWER/NETFLIX

Trust No One

For most of Season 1, Peter’s primary higher-up contact is White House Chief of Staff Diane Farr (Hong Chau), who turns out to be compromised and working with the others. She’s not totally morally bankrupt (if you ask her); when she learns about the plan to assassinate the President, she joins Peter’s team to stop it, but she’s got a long road of repenting ahead of her. With fingers being pointed after the assassination attempt (and Wick on the run), Farr is unfortunately in prime position to be scapegoated for everything that transpired.

“Trust no one” also happens to pretty much be the theme of Season 2, with the trailer showing Peter now working as a Night Agent but suspecting, once again, that sources he trust has been compromised. He says he trusts no one, and Rose replies “Except me, right?”

The silence says it all.

“The Night Agent” Season 2 premieres January 23 on Netflix.