The Night Agent is the newest mystery-thriller series on Netflix, making its premiere on March 23, 2023. Based on the book of the same name by Matthew Quirk, the series untangles a winding political conspiracy that will have viewers captivated by the page-turner adaptation.
Gabriel Basso stars in the series as Peter Sutherland, a low-level FBI agent working in the White House basem*nt. He’s tasked with answering a phone that isn’t supposed to ring very often, but he finally answers a call, he’s thrust into twisted web of dangerous lies and corruption with far-reaching consequences.
The series also stars Luciane Buchanan, D. B. Woodside, Academy Award-nominee Hong Chau, Sarah Desjardins, and more supporting cast members. The Shield, Timeless, and S.W.A.T. creator Shawn Ryan created the action-drama, which gives it the edge-of-your-seat quality audiences love. You definitely won’t guess how this one ends!
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The following episode guide contains heavySPOILERSfrom the series, so make sure to read along as you watch. We’re breaking down and explaining all 10 episodes of The Night Agent, so if you have questions about certain twists and turns, dive right in!
The Night Agent episode 1 recap: The Call
When we first meet Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), he’s playing the hero by saving a train full of people from a bomb on the metro. Peter cannot stop the bomb from going off, but he manages to rescue most passengers. While being tended to by the EMTs, Peter notices the bomber in the crowd and gives chase. They get into a scrap, and Peter sees the man has a rattlesnake tattoo on his side just before he slips through Peter’s fingers.
One year later, Peter’s heroics earned him a new job working the White House’s night action desk. He’s not a field agent; he mans the phoneline where night agents in distress can call in for assistance or backup.
He answers to two bosses, the Deputy Director of the FBI, Jamie Hawkins (Robert Patrick), and the President’s Chief of Staff, Diane Farr (Hong Chau). The first time we meet Diane Farr, she’s rebuking Peter for letting the leader of an online troll website called “Rome Tome” rile him up with provocative questions in a now-viral video.
We learn that Peter’s father was accused of treason. Before he could be proven guilty (or innocent), he died in a car accident. Conspiracy theorists think he committed suicide, but Peter has always remained adamant that his father was wrongly accused. Unfortunately, some of those theorists have set their sights on Peter, believing he might have orchestrated the metro bombing and be a traitor just like his father. Diane advises Peter to get familiar with the phrase “no comment.”
Besides Peter, the other main character we’ll be following throughThe Night Agentis Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a cybersecurity analyst who previously owned her own company before it went bankrupt, resulting in her losing virtually everything and being forced to move in with her aunt and uncle, Emma and Henry Campbell.
Unbeknownst to Rose, Emma and Henry are night agents, and she gets a rude awakening on her first night there. An assassin breaks into the house in the middle of the night, killing them both. Before they get killed, Rose overhears her aunt and uncle discussing a secret hard drive and the code name “Osprey.”
They advise Rose to run to a nearby house and call the night action desk for help. Rose barely escapes from the killer herself, and it’s only thanks to Peter she manages to outwit the assassin after he tracks her to the house. Peter contacts the FBI, and they arrive at the property in time to prevent Rose from becoming the killer’s third victim.
Following orders from Diane Farr, Peter drives to Rose’s location to pick her up, much to the annoyance of Hawkins, who believes Peter and Farr are out of bounds since Rose should be in FBI custody now. Hawkins makes a snarky comment about Peter “making his choice,” seemingly choosing to be loyal to Farr and the White House rather than the FBI.
Once he has Rose, Peter takes her to his apartment so she can get some clothes (Peter has some left over from when his ex-fiancée Zoe was living with him) and pack items for a few days before they leave for the safe house. While there, he takes Rose’s phone to see if they’ve been tracked and sets up some surveillance in his apartment.
In the process of selecting clothes, Rose stumbles upon a binder of newspaper clippings related to the bombing and Peter’s father. On their way out, the pair are accosted by two men who harass Peter because they believe him to be a traitor like his father. After dispatching the two assailants, Rose and Peter drive toward the safe location. Rose questions why the men thought he had something to do with the bombing. Peter explains that even though he was there, he didn’t cause the bombing. He tried to stop it. As for his dad, Peter has always been frustrated that he died before he could clear his name.
During the drive, Peter and Rose are followed by the same guy who killed Rose’s aunt and uncle. Peter is forced to call night action to get assistance. After a deadly shootout and a car chase, Peter and Rose finally make it to the safe house.
Peter checks the live feed at his apartment and notices that several guys are inside, looking for something. He calls Farr, but the two infiltrators are gone by the time her men get there. Using the camera, Peter takes a close-up screenshot of one of the men’s rings and notices a sigil that could be a clue to his identity.
The next day, Peter and Rose go to the White House to meet with Hawkins and Farr. Well, Rose does; Hawkins points out that being in on this meeting is “miles above” Peter’s pay grade. Still, Rose is apprehensive because she heard her aunt say that someone in the White House cannot be trusted.
Across town, the two assailants, a man and a woman, the same two who have been after Rose from the start, arrive at a house on a perfectly ordinary suburban street. Masquerading as a sweet little family (complete with a baby) looking to revisit the woman’s old family home, they manipulate the homeowner into letting them inside.
Unfortunately, the woman makes a fatal mistake in trusting the couple. They soon kill her and ransack the house for a specific bag their boss instructed them to retrieve. They leave the baby behind (a radio broadcast reveals they abducted it from a mother at a nearby mall) and exit the house. The man texts an unknown number saying they’re “done,” and the person on the other line tells them to return to D.C. and “finish what they started,” presumably, kill Rose.
Written by Maddy Lennon
