Who you gonna call? Admittedly, “the night agent†doesn’t have the same ring, but Netflix viewers spent 168 million hours last weekend watching square-jawed FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) go on a thrilling adventure after sitting at a desk and waiting for the phone to ring in The Night Agent. Of course, when that phone rings (Warning: Deep spoilers for The Night Agent lie ahead), the most covert agents in the deepest of trouble are on the other end. Bombings are thwarted, traitorous operations are discovered, presidential daughters are kidnapped, and a wig-fed Hong Chau bosses up as Diane Farr, the White House chief of staff, in a breakneck narrative that culminates in action-packed final episodes. A second season, which was just announced, was inevitable, leaving viewers to wonder about the ultimate fates of these characters at the end of this season and where they could go in the next.
So what happened at the end of The Night Agent this season?Â
The finale gets all of the still-living good guys, bad guys, and in-between guys to Camp David, of all places, where the totally corrupt vice-president, Ashley Redfield (Christopher Shyer), has put in motion a plan that includes the death of President Travers (Kari Matchett). Turns out the veep was also behind the train bombing, hoping to assassinate a suspected terrorist named Omar Zadar (Adam Tsekhman) along with hundreds of innocent people. Everything gets crazy at Camp David: Farr gets shot, Arrington thwarts a bomb attempt in the lodge, and Sutherland stops another bomb from detonating on the president’s helicopter. In the end, a few people die (R.I.P. Almora), a shocking number of double agents on the veep’s payroll are revealed, and Peter learns the truth about his father’s history as a night agent.
Okay, but where’s Gordon Wick?
As the bodies fall in the finale, it’s worth noting that the super-slimy Gordon Wick (Ben Cotton) is not one of them. Wick is a businessman involved in all of the traitorous activities overseen by Redfield, including supervising the assassins who killed Rose’s (Luciane Buchanan) relatives and having a hand in the initial train bombing. He is a puppet master at the highest level, even bossing Redfield around when he threatens to reveal the truth after Maddie is kidnapped. He has no loyalties, and, somewhat surprisingly, he doesn’t get his comeuppance. Wick is gone when the dust settles on the finale, but the president insists they will go after him. What kind of power does Wick maintain after such a disaster? It’s hard to say, but he seems to thrive in the shadows, and someone who can threaten the vice-president most likely has a few more options for masterminding chaos around the world. It seems unlikely we’ve seen the last of him.
What happens to the VP now?
Nothing good, considering the treason charges. Redfield leaned so far into the traitorous activities that he eventually tried to kill the president of the United States. Not great! Redfield’s attempt to kill Zadar (and Sutherland’s initial heroics) sets off a chain reaction of events, including the deaths of Rose’s aunt and uncle (who uncovered the truth), Maddie’s kidnapping, and the multiple assassination attempts. By the end, Redfield has bombs planted both in the Laurel Lodge at Camp David and on the president’s helicopter. It’ll be hard to come back from planning (and failing) to kill so many people. That said, will the American people ever know the extent of his scheme? Probably not, but he’s bound to be punished with no allies left to protect him.
What about Farr?
After discovering that Wick and Redfield were behind the assassination attempt on Zadar, Farr agreed to work with them to protect her boss and BFF’s political agenda. So she’s definitely a mole or double agent but with more morally upstanding reasons for doing so. Still, she’s got some answering to do, which is made all too clear when Rose pushes a couch pillow into Farr’s gunshot wound in their final encounter. Farr’s fate is an interesting question mark given her relationship with the president and the fact that she eventually does help Rose, Peter, and Chelsea save the day. Will Farr get scapegoated for everything? That could happen. Series creator Shawn Ryan implied as much recently: “We can safely assume that Diane Farr has a very difficult criminal trial in her future after probably a difficult hospital stay. Her life is about to get decidedly worse.†Anything seems possible for this character. (It might also depend on the Oscar-nominee’s availability.)
Where is Peter going now?
The immovable hero of The Night Agent has come full circle by the finale, going from agent to phone operator and back to agent again. As a mournful cover of “Heroes†plays over the final scenes, Sutherland becomes a night agent (hey, that’s the name of the show!), the one who calls instead of the one who answers. In a bittersweet revelation, he also discovers that his dad was a night agent. Peter’s upset to learn that his dad sold government secrets but tried to atone by becoming a night agent before getting killed in the role. Now Peter steps into his dad’s shoes, more aware of his role in the legacy of the Sutherland name. What’s the next mission? It’s important enough that he gets the information on a tablet and isn’t even allowed to start reading it until he’s out of American airspace. No word if it self-destructs Mission Impossible style when he’s done.
Will he reunite with Rose?
Peter and Rose share a great kiss in the finale, but Peter picks country over romance, leaving Rose on the tarmac as he takes off on a mission. Will she wait for him? Will another mission bring her into the mix? It seems very unlikely that The Night Agent wouldn’t find a way to get Rose and Peter back together, especially after ending on such a wistfully romantic note. Still, it will be interesting to see if the writers can find a believable way to do that without killing more of the poor girl’s relatives.
Will Maddie ever live a normal life?
The prize for The Night Agent’s worst parent has to go to Redfield, who was not only emotionally abusive to his daughter, Maddie (Sarah Desjardins), from a young age but also eventually put her life in jeopardy with all his domestic terrorism and assassination attempts. So what now for Maddie? She declines the protective detail now that Dad is not in office, hoping to go about her life as an ordinary young woman. Best of luck to her!
What does Chelsea’s future hold?
Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola), Maddie’s tough-as-nails protector, ends up playing a crucial role in saving the lives of Maddie and the president. With Maddie off on her own, Arrington needs a new gig, and she’s offered protective detail for the president, which is an obvious role for her to play in season two. It’s easy to see her being brought in to back up Sutherland on whatever mission involving the most powerful people in the U.S. government.
How do you top trying to blow up POTUS at Camp David?
Could the second season be a victim of the scope of the first? 24, an obvious inspiration here, struggled in later seasons by trying to top the twists and chaos of the previous ones. The first season’s massive conspiracy and assassination attempt plot wasn’t exactly subtle, so does that leave season two nowhere to go but bigger and more complicated? It might be wise to go in the other direction and tell a story that’s a little more behind the curtain. Or maybe they’ll just try to kill the president again. It certainly worked the first time.