Picture: Netflix
The Night Agent will be back for a season 2 on Netflix. The renewal was no surprise in early 2023, with the show becoming one of Netflix’s biggest new series launches in history. Here’s everything we know about The Night Agent season 2 so far, including the latest on production, what to expect from the story, new cast members, and much more.
“Serving as an adaptation of Matthew Quirk’s novel ‘The Night Agent,’ with some expanded and original ideas, the show follows a young FBI agent who answers a call that plunges him into a deadly conspiracy involving a mole at the White House.
The show is produced for Netflix by Sony Pictures Television and showrunner Shawn Ryan, who is behind titles like The Shield and S.W.A.T.
Has Netflix Renewed The Night Agent for Season 2?
Official Renewal Status: Renewed on March 29th, 2023
Netflix officially renewed The Night Agent for a second season and announced the second season would be debuting in 2024 (more on this soon) with ten new episodes.
Shawn Ryan, creator, showrunner, and executive producer of The Night Agent, said on the season 2 renewal:
“The last week has been a whirlwind as we’ve finally been able to share The Night Agent with the world. To see the tremendous reaction to the show has been a great joy and is a credit to our cast, our writers, our directors, our crew and our partners at Sony Pictures Television and Netflix. We couldn’t be any prouder or more excited to get cracking on Season 2 to share the further adventures of Night Action with our newfound fans.”
Shawn Ryan speaks at Netflix Tudum Theater – Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Netflix
Katherine Pope, President of Sony Pictures Television, said:
“We are thrilled to see The Night Agent become an instant global sensation and can’t wait to continue telling this story with our remarkable cast, creative leader, Shawn Ryan and our wonderful partners at Netflix.”
Jinny Howe, Vice President of Drama Series at Netflix, said on the renewal:
“We’re proud to see The Night Agent deliver a breakout performance and become instantly embraced around the world. Shawn Ryan has created a spy thriller sensation that viewers cannot get enough of, with a stellar cast featuring Gabriel Basso, Luciane Buchanan and Hong Chau, and we’re here to bring them more of the action and suspense they love.”
Picture: Netflix
As we’ve covered previously, renewals all come down to the numbers. As we’ll cover below, The Night Agent pulled in some big numbers for Netflix, and that, combined with the fact the completion rate looks to be high and the show’s budget (which is reportedly between $2-$3M per episode – up to $30M total) made it a no brainer.
Shawn Ryan, ahead of the renewal, implied that there’s room for more story talking to Deadline, saying:
“I certainly have some ideas; I probably want to keep those to myself until the time comes. What I will tell you is that the initial pitch for this show that we sold to Netflix was that each season would tell its own, mostly self-enclosed, a beginning, middle and end story, and any future seasons would include a few but not most of the characters that we saw in the previous season.”
How well did The Night Agent perform on Netflix?
The Night Agent has quickly become one of Netflix’s top performers, with multiple stats backing this up.
Every Tuesday, Netflix releases 40 hourly statistics for their biggest shows and movies, and their data shows that The Night Agent had a huge debut on Netflix.
Per Netflix’s press release for week 1, “the action-thriller ranks #3 for premiere week of viewing across all Season 1 TV and appeared in the Top 10 in 93 countries.”
The show ultimately featured in the Netflix global top 10s for ten weeks in total, picking up 776.62 million hours watched.
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 19th, 2023 to March 26th, 2023 | 168,710,000 | 1 | 1 |
| March 26th, 2023 to April 2nd, 2023 | 216,390,000 (+28%) | 1 | 2 |
| April 2nd, 2023 to April 9th, 2023 | 130,480,000 (-40%) | 1 | 3 |
| April 9th, 2023 to April 16th, 2023 | 90,040,000 (-31%) | 1 | 4 |
| April 16th, 2023 to April 23rd, 2023 | 56,650,000 (-37%) | 2 | 5 |
| April 23rd, 2023 to April 30th, 2023 | 37,680,000 (-33%) | 4 | 6 |
| April 30th, 2023 to May 7th, 2023 | 26,880,000 (-29%) | 5 | 7 |
| May 7th, 2023 to May 14th, 2023 | 20,340,000 (-24%) | 6 | 8 |
| May 14th, 2023 to May 21st, 2023 | 16,800,000 (-17%) | 8 | 9 |
| May 21st, 2023 to May 28th, 2023 | 12,650,000 (-25%) | 9 | 10 |
Those numbers place the show in the list of most watched shows and movies on Netflix of all time, but given the recent changes in Netflix methodology, it either ranks fifth or sixth depending on the metric you use:
- Based on the first 28 days metric, it is the fifth most-watched show of all time with 626.99M hours
- Based on the first 91 days, it’s the sixth most-watched show of all time, with 803.70M hours watched (98.20M CVE viewers)
If we break down the hour data into CVE (Complete Viewing Equivalent – taking the length of the show and dividing by the hours), we can see it outperformed Keep Breathing and 1899 but was shy of The Watcher.
In our top 10 report for the first week, What’s on Netflix contributor Frederic said the show had the “second-best launch for any series released on a Thursday, just behind The Watcher, which ended up being renewed (a feat for a limited series at the time).”
Using CVE, we can see that after 14 days, the show was one of the top-performing debut English language series, only behind The Watcher and Wednesday.
Renewed Netflix Shows vs Canceled Netflix Shows in CVEs (First 14 days performance)
Nielsen numbers also showed the series performed well, specifically in the United States (on connected devices), featuring in the Nielsen top 10s for seven weeks, clocking up 173.50 million hours.
What about external factors? The show rocketed the ranks according to TelevisionStats.com, measuring from sources like Wikipedia, Google Search, Reddit, and IMDb. As of March 25th, it’s the number 1 show on the internet, beating out South Park, Daisy Jones & the Six, Yellowjackets, and Love is Blind. It performed well against The Diplomat (also renewed for a season 2) but didn’t have the same legs as a show like Ginny & Georgia.
TelevisionStats.com graph of popularity for The Night Agent vs The Diplomat and Ginny & Georgia
How about critical acclaim? Audience scores have been outpacing critics’ scores thus far, but it’s mostly positive all around.
On RottenTomatoes, as of March 29th, the show holds an 82% score from audiences and 69% from critics. The series holds a 7.7/10 based on over 12,000 reviews on IMDb, and on Metacritic, it holds a 68 rating.
Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023
What to expect from Season 2 of The Night Agent
Warning: spoilers for The Night Agent season 1 are ahead.
While The Night Agent season 1 certainly answers the most prominent questions by the end of episode 10, there’s still a lot to be learned.
By the time the credits of the final episode roll, we’ve learned that Diane Farr, the president’s own chief of staff, is the mole and worked with Vice President Redfield and Gordon Wick to plan the metro bombing. As a result, The Night Agent wraps up relatively nicely, but there’s still plenty to be explored potentially. After all, Peter ends the season by jetting off for his first mission.
As Ryan mentioned in the aforementioned Deadline interview, he suggested that if they’re “successful enough that Netflix wants more seasons, I think there’d be a whole new world in which you would see a limited number of characters from this current season going into that. ”
Ryan also covered some of the biggest questions Season 2 would have to seek to answer, including:
- What does it mean that Peter would be a night agent?
- Where is Peter going next?
- With Rose heading back to California, where does that leave Peter and Rose?
Additional snippets of information came from Ryan in a ComicBook.com interview where he revealed season 2 would not be taking place in Washington DC, saying:
“We’ll be in a different part of the world exploring different characters than we had in Season One. And we’re determining who from Season One might appear in Season Two. But essentially we’re going to be telling a whole brand-new story, which is exciting and scary.”
Where is The Night Agent Season 2 in production?
No filming has yet to take place, and production on the second season has been severely impacted due to the Hollywood strikes that saw writers put their pencils down in May 2023 and the actors following suit from July 2023.
Work did begin on the scripts for season 2, but all of the writers on the show have been striking since May 1st, 2023.
Shawn Ryan notably posted on X on May 5:
“I’d rather be writing Season 2 of #TheNightAgent for Netflix
rather than picketing them, but all writers need a fair deal before we can resume our work. We create the TV shows and movies that drive billions in profits. Writers deserve their fair share.”
The Night Agent writers, support staff, first AD Marijke, Peter Sutherland stunt double Matt and Erik Monks are on strike
The writer’s strike notably ended in late September 2023, and showrunner Shawn Ryan spoke to Variety about the show’s current status on October 12th. The interview states that writing on season 2 was “more than halfway done” before the strikes began in May.
Ryan also confirms that the writing staff has been working on the show since October 2nd but states some production preparation has occurred over the summer.
The SAG-AFTRA strike will need to be resolved before any filming can commence. There’s hope this can occur before the end of 2023.
Celebrating my birthday with writers, producers and staff of @swatcbs and The Night Agent. Blessed to be working with all these talented people. @TNAWriters pic.twitter.com/Uk27CaqyrX
— Shawn Ryan (@ShawnRyanTV) October 12, 2023
Netflix first confirmed the series was filming on February 5th, 2024, with a slew of social media posts. The filming for some of the shows will take place in Thailand before they return to New York.
Picture: Netflix
The budget for the new season is reportedly somewhere between $2 and $3M an episode, with numerous filming codenames for the series including TNAS2, OSPREY, and OSPREY 212.
In late March 2024, the team behind the show celebrated the first season’s first anniversary with a slew of new photos from the set of season 2.
Filming on season 2 of The Night Agent is scheduled to wrap on June 7th, 2024.
Episode Titles, Writers, and Directors for The Night Agent Season 2
Through multiple sources, including looking diligently through the likes of Instagram, we’ve put together the current list of writers, directors, and any episode titles we’ve found for the show so far.
Writers on this season of The Night Agent include:
- Imogen Browder
- Shawn Ryan
- Tiffany Shaw Ho
Directing on this new season includes:
- Guy Ferland
- Adam Arkin
- Ana Lily Amirpour
- Nina Lopez Corrado
Episode Titles
These will be updated as and when we learn about more!
- Episode 201
- Episode 202
- Episode 203 – GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
- Episode 204
- Episode 205
- Episode 206
- Episode 207 – TILT
- Episode 208
- Episode 209
- Episode 210
The Night Agent Season 2 – New And Returning Cast Members
Pictures via IMDb / Getty Images
Gabriel Basso and Luciane Buchanan are the two most prominent returning cast members confirmed for the second season.
Through several waves of announcements (primarily exclusively reported by Deadline), we’ve got big new cast coming up in season 2 of The Night Agent.
In December 2023, Amanda Warren (The Burial) was the first to be announced to join the cast as the series’ regular role-playing Catherine Weaver. She’s a seasoned case officer and veteran FBI agent with a sharp mind and a critical eye who doesn’t suffer fools. Handles herself well in the halls of power in DC and in the field.
Then, in January 2024, the next wave of series regulars and recurring roles were announced.
The new series regulars were:
- Berto Colon (Power Book II: Ghost, Orange Is The New Black) – Solomon Robinson – former Marine turned right-hand man fixer for powerful businessmen.
- Louis Herthum (Westworld) – Jacob Monroe – International businessman with powerful connections
- Arienne Mandi (Tatami) – Noor Kabiri – Low-level aide in the Iranian mission to the UN in New York.
The two recurring roles were:
- Brittany Snow – (X, The Good Half) – Alice Leeds – Peter’s partner and mentor as he joins Night Action.
- Teddy Sears – (Raising the Bar, Masters of Sex) – Warren Stocker – High-level intelligence officer and the subject of a Night Action investigation.
Picture: The Night Agent on Instagram
Then, in March 2024, Deadline revealed three guest roles for season 2:
- Marwan Kenzari (Black Adam) – Reza – Decorated soldier court marshaled.
- Elise Kibler (The Sunlit Night) – Sloan – Glamorous British socialite.
- Dikran Tulaine (The Blacklist) – Viktor – Former leader of a country but since convicted of war crimes.
Further casting for season 2 includes:
- Michael Malarkey (The Vampire Diaries) as Markus, a military chief and loyal nephew to a dictator newly convicted of war crimes by the Hague.
- Navid Negahban (Alladin) as Abbas the U.N. ambassador for Iran.
- Keon Alexander (The Expanse) as Javad – “oversees security for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations and monitors the loyalty of its employees.”
- Rob Heaps (Station 11) as Tomas, the elitist son of the deposed dictator, who is keen on restoring his family to power.
nightagentnetflix / Instagram
During The Night Agent’s birthday celebrations, the show’s Instagram account confirmed that Kylo Freeman had joined the cast.
Other roles Netflix was casting for in season 2 include:
- Braden
- Members of an international crime crew run by a dangerous businessman (stunt-heavy roles) – Ben, Neil, Jeff, Dani.
When will Season 2 of The Night Agent be released on Netflix?
Despite our original prediction that a 2024 release date may be hard to achieve because of the strikes, Netflix is still very optimistic.
We say that because The Night Agent 2 was part of the 90+ roster of shows, it confirmed at the Next on Netflix event that it would be returning in 2024.
Given the production wrap is scheduled for early June, we’d guess a November-December 2024 launch is most likely but also don’t be surprised if it gets knocked into 2025 either.
While waiting for The Night Agent season 2, Matthew Quirk has plenty of other novels to read. Other Quirk novels like Hour of the Assassin, The Directive, Cold Barrel Zero, Dead Man Switch, or Red Warning
All these books are also ripe for adaptations and not necessarily as part of The Night Agent because, as the author explains on Twitter, “they’re mostly standalones.”
Matthew Quirk’s most recent book, Inside Threat, was released on June 13, 2023.
Are you looking forward to watching The Night Agent season 2 on Netflix in 2024? Let us know in the comments below.