The Recruit – Picture: Netflix
Netflix’s Noah Centineo spy thriller series The Recruit will return for a second season. Filming was originally due to begin in August 2023. However, production has been delayed thanks to the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, which has now concluded, and a new date has been penciled in. Here’s everything we know about season 2 of The Recruit.
Starring Noah Centineo, the new series sees him play the role of Owen Hendricks, a lawyer thrust into a conspiracy plot involving the CIA. All eight episodes touched down on Netflix on December 16th, 2022.
The show has some excellent pedigree, with Alexi Hawley serving as the show’s creator. Hawley is best known for creating hits for network television, including Castle, The Rookie, The Following, and Body of Proof. Starring alongside Centineo (known for Netflix’s To All The Boys) were Laura Haddock, Aarti Mann, Colton Dunn, and Fivel Stewart.
Let’s now dig into season 2 of The Recruit:
Has Netflix Renewed The Recruit for a Season 2?
Official Renewal Status: Renewed
Ahead of the official renewal, we heard positive rumblings from Canada production sources that they plan on moving forward with a season 2 a month after launch; Netflix officially confirmed season 2 on January 26th, 2023.
In a statement on the renewal, Alexi Hawley said:
“I’m thrilled to dive back into the fun, funny, action-packed world of The Recruit. Seeing how invested our audience became in the show’s adventurous take on the spy world and Noah’s turn as Owen has been incredibly rewarding, and I can’t wait to turn it all up to “11” in Season Two.”
Centineo will return as Executive Producer and reprise his role as Owen Hendricks.
Hawley will return as Showrunner with Hypnotic’s Doug Liman, Gene Klein, and David Bartis; Adam Ciralsky (P3 Media) and Charlie Ebersol are also returning as Executive Producers.
Ahead of the renewal, Alexi Crawley implied that conversations had taken place or that a blueprint for the future was in place.
In a Collider interview, Hawley talked about his attitude going into season 1 about future iterations, saying:
“I know things about where I would want to take it, and where I’d want to go with it. I mean obviously, you hope for success, but as you could see with that ending, I didn’t plan for failure because I feel like in this day and age you just have to be bold, you have to be dramatic, to the expense of everything else. And you can’t worry about Season 2’s, or Season 3’s, or beyond. You have to go, “What’s the best version of this story right now?” And trust that people will come to it. And then you’ll get another shot at it.”
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Walter Nyland, Noah Centineo as Owen Hendricks – Cr. Philippe Bossé/Netflix © 2022
We should also note that since the launch of The Recruit, Noah Centineo has launched a production company called Arkhum Productions.
How well was The Recruit received?
Let’s break down the review scores for the show thus far (correct as of January 20th, 2023):
- IMDb User Score: 7.5
- RottenTomatoes Critics Score: 67% (was 75% at launch)
- RottenTomatoes Audience Score: 86%
- Metacritic: 59/100
How well did The Recruit perform on Netflix?
After a month of the show being on Netflix we got a pretty good picture of how well The Recruit was performing on Netflix.
Let’s first look at the hourly data released by Netflix’s top 10 site so far.
So far, the show has been featured in all five weeks since its launch. In total, the show has picked up 228.26 million hours watched globally.
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 11th, 2022 to December 18th, 2022 | 52,300,000 | 3 | 1 |
| December 18th, 2022 to December 25th, 2022 | 95,590,000 (+83%) | 3 | 2 |
| December 25th, 2022 to January 1st, 2023 | 43,360,000 (-55%) | 5 | 3 |
| January 1st, 2023 to January 8th, 2023 | 23,580,000 (-46%) | 6 | 4 |
| January 8th, 2023 to January 15th, 2023 | 13,430,000 (-43%) | 10 | 5 |
As we’ve spoken about before, one possible flaw of the show is that in week 3, it dropped 55%. We’ve observed shows with a drop of over 50% sometimes have difficulty getting renewed.
So, in terms of CVE hours (completed viewing equivalent – raw hour figure from Netflix divided by the show’s runtime), how does it compare to competitors?
According to our top 10 reports for 2022 (with some estimates at play), we can see The Recruit firmly on the cutoff point for cancelations. In the renewal chart below, only Mo had fewer hours and has been publicly renewed.
Netflix 2022 Drama Renewal Scorecard
How well was the opening launch in terms of CVE? The show slightly outperformed The Lincoln Lawyer initially but was just behind The Sandman and Vikings: Valhalla.
Opening weekend CVE for The Recruit on Netflix
Next is Nielsen data, which tracks viewing minutes in the United States on connected devices. The Recruit ranked for five weeks in their rankings, picking up 73.40 million hours between December 12th, 2022, and January 15th, 2023. That suggests at least 32% of viewing of The Recruit was done so in the United States.
FlixPatrol data, which looks at the daily raw Netflix Top 10s, suggests the show peaked in its first fourth and fifth days in the top 10s globally but has held nicely since over the festive period. The show remained in the top 10 worldwide until one month after its release.
Data shows that the show performs best in the United States, South Africa, Eastern Europe, the Nordics, Canada, and Australia.
FlixPatrol Data for The Recruit on Netflix
According to TelevisionStats.com, the show had a huge rise after its addition to Netflix, coming from nowhere after its release. Thus far, the show has peaked as the fourth biggest show in the world, according to their data.
They pull data from external sources (also known as demand sources) such as Twitter, Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit.
The only shows more popular than The Recruit during the show’s first week on Netflix were The White Lotus at HBO, Wednesday at Netflix, 1923 at Paramount+, and Yellowstone at Paramount Network.
Data as of January 19th suggests the show peaked at #4 but has since dipped below the top 100 shows.
When will The Recruit season 2 be released on Netflix?
As part of the renewal, Netflix confirmed that the series would return in 2024, although they provided no further specifics.
In April 2023, we learned that The Recruit season 2 was originally due to begin filming in Vancouver, BC, starting in June 2023. Production was then reportedly pushed back to August 1st, 2023, and run through October 20th, 2023. Because of the writer’s and subsequent actors’ strike, no production could get underway on The Recruit.
Thankfully, the strikes ended in early November 2023, and as part of Netflix scheduling its restarts for its various shows and movies, it carved out a date for The Recruit season 2.
The Recruit season 2 is set to begin filming on January 4th, 2024, and run for over three months, with the current scheduled wrap date set for March 21st, 2024.
Julian Holmes, who directed episodes 7 and 8 of season 1, is also scheduled to return to the director’s chair in season 2.
According to a report from Figurants (h/t Slyvain of Netflixers), some of the filming for season 2 is set to take place outside of Canada this season, too. They state that three days of filming is taking place in the Northern region of Spain called Basque Country.
Speaking to CNN during the strikes, showrunner Alexi Hawley told anchor Jake Tapper, “For the last 50 plus years, TV has been a training ground for writers, through writer’s room and being able to go to set and learn how to produce episodes. That’s being stripped away. The streaming shows have these mini-rooms that are completely divorced from production, so there’s a generation of writers not learning how to make television, and that’s really what this fight is about…”
The Recruit hits the picket line at Universal pic.twitter.com/h2funXZ0LL
— Alexi Hawley (@AlexiHawley) June 3, 2023
What to Expect from The Recruit Season 2
Let’s quickly recap the events of season 1.
In episode 8, titled W.T.F.I.O.H. (it stands for Who the F*ck Is Owen Hendricks?), the mission to get Max home to Russia continues and just as things seem to be coming to a close, complications arise. It also saw the clashing of Owen’s personal and professional life.
Season 1 concludes with a big twist: Karolina shoots Max, but is she dead? That will undoubtedly be the cornerstone question that gets answered in season 2.
The ending then sees Owen reaching out to Hannah to meet up abroad, which concludes the series.
Picture: Netflix
Per Netflix, the second season will pick up from last season’s cliffhanger ending that found Owen and Max captured with their lives endangered.
The RadioTimes speculates that we’ll see the return of Noah Centineo in a second season, as well as Aarti Mann, Colton Dunn, and Fivel Stewart. They also predict the same as us in the sense that “Owen Hendricks would be thrown into another high-stakes mission, although this time he could be somewhat more prepared for the experience.”
Teo Yoo joins cast of The Recruit Season 2
In December 2023, it was announced that Teo Yoo had joined the second season’s cast. Per Netflix, “Yoo will play a clever and driven South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent, highly skilled with a subversive sense of humor and willing to go to any lengths to protect those he cares about.”
Yoo has over two dozen credits to his name, being involved with the 2023 movie Past Lives, 2022’s Decision to Leave, and 2018’s Leto. He also starred in the series Love to Hate You.
We’ll update you on all things The Recruit as and when we learn more. Until then, let us know in the comments below if you’re looking forward to seeing season 2 of The Recruit on Netflix.