Photo: CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS/NETFLIX
Even early in this season, I’ve wondered how much the finale would choose to resolve. In retrospect, would these ten episodes feel like a complete, self-contained story similar to season one? Or would they feel like a setup for the next season, intentionally bleeding into the next phase of a 20-episode arc?
Now that the season is over, we know the answer: both! The main story revolved around Project Foxglove and Viktor Bala’s plot to carry out a devastating terrorist attack in New York City, an attack that Night Action was ultimately able to avert. But at the same time, the season was sneakily setting up a smarter, scarier threat to deal with next time, a White House–level threat akin to season one’s Vice-President Redfield.
We’ll get to that, but let’s deal with the final downfall of the Bala family first. Once most of the U.N. Building has evacuated, Peter and Catherine team up with the NYPD and U.N. security to deal with the 13 canisters of K.X. loaded into the rooftop HVAC. On their way up, they arrest as many of Markus’s cronies as they can, which adds up to … one? Most of the others end up dead, either at the hands of the police (who take down the guy who holds one of the two remaining canisters) or at the hands of Markus himself (as a way of tricking everyone with the UNDSS uniform he stole). Rose watches the camera feed with Mosley to ID the men, alive or dead, and eventually, the bomb squad successfully disarms the canisters.
Markus has the last remaining canister, which he coincidentally manages to sneak out via the bag of Amélie, the French diplomat with Noor’s list. We learn after the fact that he set the cannisters to release K.X. once the power usage hit 200 kWh, which would’ve roughly coincided with the U.N. Security Council vote on splitting his country in three. So much for that!
Rose uses her tech to find two people who might know Markus’s plans based on Tomás’s recent meetings: the Bala family lawyer and Sloane. Peter and Rose head to Sloane’s penthouse apartment, where Markus already has a gun pointed at her, demanding she get the jet prepared so he can flee the country. In the scuffle that follows, Sloane gets one over on Markus by breaking a vase over his head, but it takes Peter and Rose working together to finally take him down for good (meaning, you know, kill him). After Rose had learned from a maintenance man that the AC was acting up, she found the final canister in the rooftop HVAC set, which was set to release its toxins in eight minutes. From there, it’s just a quick jog over to the glass door of Sloane’s penthouse, where she sees Markus holding a knife to her throat. Rose shoots the door to provide a split-second distraction, Peter shoots Markus, and it’s all over. R.I.P. the Bala family legacy — two different generations of attempted war criminals, but only the boomer could pull it off.
Peter and Rose force-seal the vents of the top four floors by setting off a fire inside with sulfuric acid and hand sanitizer, a little lesson Dr. Cole. From there, the K.X. inside is left to … gradually dissipate, I guess? That stuff is so hyperreactive to the air that I wouldn’t want to stand anywhere near those vents, but I guess they trust the airtightness more than me.
There’s been a thread of angst in the background for Peter and Rose, individually but especially together, throughout this season and this finale in particular. Both are dealing with Trauma™, a subject this show really only explores on a surface level, and both are addicted to protecting each other, presumably because they’re in love. They can’t stop being each other’s knight in shining armor, and it’s contributing more stress than excitement to their relationship at this point. Rose, in particular, can’t seem to decide whether risking her life on a daily basis makes her scared and unhappy or weirdly fulfilled and alive or both, but these days, she’s landing more on the scared side. Being forced to create a WMD and then coming seconds away from unleashing it in a highly populated city will do that.
So that settles it: Rose officially goes back to California after all, starting therapy back up and excelling in her new role at AdVerse while she tries her best to forget her ex-boyfriend rotting in a jail cell. I was never particularly invested in Peter and Rose as a romantic item, honestly, so I can’t say I’m very moved by this breakup, especially because this season barely ever gave them a chance to enjoy spending time together. But I doubt it’s the end for them, either.
Rose had her issues this season, but it’s nice that she at least pays Noor a friendly visit on her lunch break at a library in Chicago, and we get one last update on this season’s most interesting, morally conflicted character. She and her mother were granted asylum and are living relatively peaceful lives so far here, though Azita in particular is still understandably torn up about losing Farhad.
The Night Agent is not exactly a realistic show, and it’s also not a very political show, despite how much of it centers on the U.S. government. It’s enjoyable more for the action and plot than anything substantial when it comes to character or commentary; these recaps are so, well, recap-heavy because a lot happens in this show without much underneath. I do find Noor far more compellingly flawed than Peter or Rose, though, and Arienne Mandi’s performance is a big part of that. The scene of Noor and her mother receiving Social Security numbers is a good capper for the bittersweet story of her journey to freedom in this country. They also receive a check for emotional damages — a little financial apology for Farhad’s death. In Noor’s words, this is what America thinks her brother is worth. “Welcome to the United States of America,” the woman across the desk says.
The rest of this finale hinges on Jacob, the major antagonist (in addition to likely President Richard Hagan), heading into the confirmed season three. The opening scene of this episode shows the origin of the two men’s partnership: a building name ceremony for a “Center for Entrepreneurship” that Jacob mostly funded himself from the shadows. From there, we learn later that Jacob quietly funded and helped Hagan for eight years and won him three elections, presumably by digging up dirt on the competition and perhaps engaging in other forms of subterfuge.
And now, with Patrick Knox dropping out of the race two weeks before the general election, three could become four. It turns out he was the one who signed off on Foxglove and sold the weapon to Viktor Bala, according to an audio recording anonymously sent to the New York Times. Guess who was behind that submission? Jacob, who needed the ICC file brought out of the U.N. archives and published to tie Knox to Foxglove and tank his campaign — and benefitted from the actual K.X. attack in the process.
It already feels like, before long, this arrangement will get complicated, in the same way that Tomás and Markus’s relationship got complicated. Based on Hagan’s increasingly cocky attitude, he’s starting to take his partner for granted. Jacob originally envisioned Hagan as a puppet he could control, but that might not be so easy when he’s actually in the Oval Office. Either way, these are both dangerous men who need to be watched, especially with a political pivot that could make Jacob a more powerful and successful intelligence broker than ever.
Peter, who unintentionally aided and abetted in the swinging of a presidential election, has some shit to atone for. That provides the juicy setup for next season: He’ll be Night Action’s man on the inside, working for Jacob if he ever calls and asks for anything. If he helps expose and destroy Jacob and Hagan, he’ll have a clean slate once again.
I still can’t decide if season two ever quite took off for me in the same way as season one, but by the end it more than justified its existence — and found a credible way to continue this story into three seasons, using an already high-stakes geopolitical conflict as a springboard for another White House-centric story when the show returns (possibly for the last time, based on Netflix’s track record). When it comes to this show, I don’t expect something truly great or even something on the level of Homeland or 24 at their best, and that’s okay. This show is like a fun snack, and after this finale, I feel satiated.
• Good facial acting from Louis Herthum when Jacob gets the news that Solomon is dead. He must have always known this was a possibility, given the nature of Solomon’s work, but you get the feeling he never considered it could really happen.
• I wasn’t even the most massive Chelsea Arrington fan in the first season, but I was unreasonably excited to see her pop up on Hagan’s Secret Service detail anyway. Hopefully this means she’ll be back for some role in season three since Hagan will surely be around.
• Catherine’s history with Peter’s dad doesn’t end up mattering that much, but their conversation about her watching Peter Sr. turn double agent is an appropriate full-circle moment.
• Thanks for reading!
