Netflix The Night Agent season 1 recap guide: All 10 episodes explained

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 basement. 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!

Spoilers ahead for The Night Agent season 1 on Netflix

Add The Night Agent to your Netflix watchlist!

The following episode guide contains heavy SPOILERS from 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 through The Night Agent is 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

The Night Agent episode 2 recap: Redial

The Night Agent episode 2 takes us back three months before the events of the first episode when Rose was still running a high-profile cybersecurity company. Someone hacks into their system and causes an issue with one of their clients. The hacker demands millions in bitcoin, and Rose is concerned with what’s happening with their hardware. As we know, Rose later goes bankrupt and loses her company. This inciting incident is probably the start of her downfall.

In the present day, Rose lies to Farr and Hawkins about what she saw the night her aunt and uncle were killed. We know she saw the assailant’s face, but she tells them she only saw his “figure.” To Peter, Rose admits she doesn’t trust anyone in the White House right now. If the people who are after her know she can ID them, then that will only make things worse for her. For all she knows, Hawkins and/or Farr are the people Henry and Emma were referring to as untrustworthy.

Peter takes Rose to a hotel room protected by Secret Service. Farr calls him into a debriefing session with Hawkins and several high-level White House workers, like Secret Service handler Ben Almora (Enrique Murciano). Hawkins wants to continue interrogating Rose, which makes Farr and Peter suspicious of his intentions, even more so when Peter starts digging through old case files on the Campbells and learns Hawkins was their former handler in the FBI when they worked in counterintelligence, a little fact he neglected to mention to anyone.

That night, while working the night action desk, Rose calls Peter. They flirt and bond over the phone. Mainly, Rose is bored and lonely, cooped up in her hotel room. She and Peter agree to meet at the hotel for breakfast the following morning.

We catch up with the male and female assailants, Dale (Phoenix Raei) and Ellen (Eve Harlow). After their suburban robbery, they retreat to a motel room. Ellen can’t resist peaking into the bag to see what their boss is after. It’s a nanny cam, but they don’t have the tools to watch whatever footage is on it. Later, Dale and Ellen are having sex when they get a call from their boss advising them to prepare to go after Rose again. Apparently, intimacy has been a point of contention between the couple lately, and this is just the start of their weirdly domestic plotline that carries through the season.

When Peter gets to the hotel the following day, he’s disturbed to find that Rose’s security detail is gone, leaving her defenseless. He quickly goes to her room to check on her just in time for Dale and Ellen to catch up to them, and an intense chase sequence ensues.

Once Peter and Rose are in a safe spot at a local clothing boutique, Peter calls Farr and demands to know what’s happening. Farr questions Ben since keeping tabs on Secret Service is literally his job. Ben claims he doesn’t know how someone managed to pull Rose’s protection detail, but some digging reveals that Hawkins was behind it.

Farr offers to send someone to pick them up, but Rose doesn’t trust her, or anyone from the White House for that matter. Instead, they go to Rose’s aunt and uncle’s old cabin in the woods to stay off the grid and look for the mysterious hard drive she recalls her aunt mentioning the night they were killed.

They find the hard drive at the cabin, but it’s too heavily encrypted for Rose to glean much information from it. However, one thing Peter does notice is that the hard drive contains a file with the number “2781,” which happens to be the number of the metro train Peter was on when he stopped the bombing. What were Emma and Henry Campbell doing investigating that?

Peter contacts Farr again. She’s in the middle of a field somewhere amid an investigation into another death. Someone murdered FBI director Jamie Hawkins.

Written by Maddy Lennon

The Night Agent episode 3 recap: The Zookeeper

Everyone is a suspect at the start of The Night Agent episode 3, which takes us back one year earlier to just after the metro bombing, showing when and how Diane Farr recruited Peter for night action. That little snippet helps explain why Peter trusts Farr so much and is willing to vouch for her even though Rose thinks Farr could be a mole, just like Hawkins.

They put Farr to the test. Peter calls her, and only her, and then he and Rose camp out in the woods to surveil the cabin. If Farr is the leak, then the assassins can track her phone and find them. At first, it looks like Rose worried for nothing, but then, sure enough, Dale and Ellen arrive at the cabin to kill them. Thankfully, Rose and Peter are one step ahead, so they escape before they get shot and even use their headstart to get the license plate on the killers’ car.

Farr meets with President Travers and several other executives at the White House. They discuss the case as it stands. Basically, they have nothing. They don’t know how Hawkins was connected to the Campbell murders and have no suspects. Travers is also concerned by Peter still being on the field with Rose, but Farr notes that it’s hard for her to act accordingly because she doesn’t entirely know what’s going on and what the Campbells were working on at their time of death. Travers finally fills her in.

Across town at a college campus, we meet Chelsea Arrington (Fola Evans-Akingbola), the head of the Secret Service detail for Vice President Ashley Redfield’s daughter, Maddie Redfield (Sarah Desjardins). Chelsea gets a call from Ben regarding the status of one of her agents. He’s out, and Ben is sending in a replacement, an old-school guy who used to be on the Secret Service for the former President, Erik Monks (D.B. Woodside).

Erik rather famously took a bullet for the President during an assassination attempt. During his recovery, he got addicted to painkillers and was sent to rehab. He’s clean now but still getting tested weekly for drugs. Chelsea isn’t thrilled to have him on the team because he’s a recovering addict and does things differently than her. She’s worried about anyone messing up this operation for her now that she’s been running it for so long.

As a young black woman in the Secret Service with an important op to herself, it’s understandable why she would be prickly about a newcomer who could disrupt things, especially a recovering addict. To Monks’s credit, he seems willing to play by Chelsea’s rules, even if it might take him some time to acclimate.

Chelsea has been working with Maddie for a long time now, and she also looks young enough to blend in seamlessly on the campus. Maddie trusts her. It’s a good gig that could help her get promoted. Monks could threaten all of that for her if he messes up.

Despite the cabin incident, Peter still doesn’t think Farr betrayed them. Rose points out that even if Farr is clean, clearly, someone she’s working near isn’t and has access to her call log, meaning it’s still dangerous to talk to her or be in the same room as her for the time being.

Rose and Peter devise a plan to go back to the White House and use Peter to distract Diane, allowing Rose to infiltrate the back room to hack into the hard drive and copy the contents onto a separate disc to keep it from Farr. But Farr is more intelligent than they realize, and once she sees the hard drive has been wiped clean, she realizes that Peter is trying to pull one over on her.

Farr and Peter face off, as Farr now thinks Peter is hiding something. Once Peter explains what happened with the phone call and the cabin, Farr believes that he’s innocent as Farr swears she had nothing to do with that and agrees to check her phone for tampering or a hacker.

Elsewhere, Chelsea and Monks accompany Maddie to a bar that night. She gets into an altercation with a guy who attempts to assault her because he hates her father. Monks intervene, but not quickly enough, and the guy gets a good grip on Maddie’s hair. Ultimately, Monks puts the man and his friends down, but it still causes a significant incident at the bar. Chelsea is not happy.

Debriefing with Ben, Chelsea reveals Monks should have defused the situation but made things messier than needed. Ben wants Chelsea to keep him on the team as he has a past with Monks. They used to be partners. He thinks Monks is an excellent asset, and as long as Chelsea keeps an eye on him and lets Ben know how he’s doing, things should be fine.

Chelsea is apprehensive but has no choice since Ben is her boss. However, she contacts a friend and asks him to look into Erik Monks. Why would a man once hailed as a hero for protecting the President be willingly assigned to the most thankless job in the Secret Service?

Then there’s Maddie, who has something going on with her much older art professor, Paulo. It’s sketchy, as confirmed by a text thread between Paulo and an anonymous person on the other end. The teacher says he’s “close” to convincing Maddie of something. He receives a text back saying, “they need to move faster.”

We then find out that the man Paulo is texting is Matteo, the bomber with the rattlesnake tattoo! It cannot be a good sign that Paulo is courting the VP’s daughter on behalf of that man.

Once she’s alone again, Rose goes through the contents of the hard drive and sees an old interview clip from a man named Omar Zadar, the former leader of an extremist group known as the People’s Independence Freedom (PIF) who was believed to be responsible for the metro bombing because of past incidences where they’d done similar things. Zadar denies having anything to do with the bombing.

She also finds blueprints from a café and, after adjusting the contrast on the computer screen, notices a secret address hidden in the background. Rose writes down the address so she can look into it further. But her research is interrupted by Peter, who brings Farr along with him. Rose isn’t happy to see Farr, but Farr says she can tell Rose who her aunt and uncle really were and provide more information on what they were working on.

This episode also has a C-plot focusing on Dale and Ellen. Ellen has dreams and aspirations of her and Dale living a normal life with the perfect house and white picket fence someday. They sneak into an empty house with a for sale sign and take a bath together, imagining what their life could be like once they’re done being murderers, I guess? Honestly, I don’t know what the point of this sub-plot is as these characters don’t have much plot relevance beyond being standard fare henchmen types.

Written by Maddy Lennon

The Night Agent episode 4 recap: Eyes Only

It’s time to learn more about what happened to Erik Monks to get him relegated to one of the lower-stakes Secret Service details. The Night Agent episode 4 takes us back two years to the day Monks took a bullet for the President. It’s a short scene that establishes Monks’s competence at his job, even if Chelsea has doubts.

In the present, Chelsea and Monks come to an understanding regarding his status on her team. She doesn’t fully trust him because she’s had bad experiences with recovering addicts, but as long as he does what he’s told, she’s willing to give him another chance. Not that she has much choice in the matter.

Farr, Rose, and Peter come to an understanding regarding the hard drive’s contents and the next phase in their plan. Farr reveals that President Travers is the one who created the night action desk, and she specifically requested Rose’s aunt and uncle for their mission. But Rose is mistrustful and would rather keep working with Peter and Peter only.

Farr vouches for the President, but Rose is adamant. However, she does mention that she found an address on the hard drive that might be worth investigating. Farr agrees to let Peter and Rose go to the address. In the meantime, she’ll look into “Osprey” since Rose brings up the code name she heard her aunt mention.

The address in question supposedly leads to an engineering company. During the drive, Rose asks Peter what he knows about Omar Zadar and the People’s Independence Freedom group. Peter comments that although the PIF initially took credit for the metro bombing, Zadar later denied it. There was never any evidence that he was connected to it. But since he has a file on the hard drive, Rose wonders if her aunt and uncle might have found something.

The address in question turns out to be an isolated house in the middle of nowhere belonging to a former civil engineer named Lorna, an old friend of Emma and Henry’s who knew Rose as a kid. Lorna reveals they were looking for blueprints and schematics on specific buildings to gather intel on power and gas lines running through Washington, D.C.

They go to the area in D.C. that Emma and Henry were focused on and stop inside a café to look at some maps. While there, Peter goes into the bathroom and notices that you can feel the rumbling from the metro train, meaning it must run directly underneath them. That might explain why this specific café was on the hard drive Rose found. With Peter out of the room, Lorna suggests that Rose be careful about trusting him, considering who his father was, and advises her to look and see if he has a file on the hard drive. He doesn’t.

Once Peter realizes the train runs right through there, he returns to the table with a map and points out that he stopped the bomb from going off a few blocks away, but if he hadn’t stopped it, the bomb might have gone off near a gas line. According to Lorna, that would have taken out over two city blocks. The bomber may have had much grander plans than they initially thought. If they want to figure out what the traitor in the White House is planning, they need to uncover what they failed to accomplish a year ago.

From there, Rose and Peter get a motel room to regroup. They continue bonding, and Peter tells Rose more about his ex-fiancée and why things didn’t work out between them. Farr contacts them to inform Peter that he was right; someone did install spyware on her phone. She tells him to switch burners after their phone call.

Accessing surveillance footage on the hard drive, they see a video of Chelsea Arrington sitting in the café they were at earlier, seemingly observing something, and Peter recognizes her. Now we know there is a potential connection between the metro bombing and the storyline involving the VP’s daughter. It gets further complicated by a final reveal that Vice President Ashley Redfield is the man who hired the assassins, seemingly making him the primary antagonist and traitor in the White House. He’s been working with Gordon Wick, who hired Ellen and Dale to do their dirty work.

And speaking of the assassins, they track down Lorna and interrogate her to learn more about Rose and Peter’s whereabouts. Sadly, Lorna doesn’t make it out alive, and the assassins bury her in the woods. The VP is aware of all of this, and even though he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty, he also tells his minions not to leave loose ends, so Lorna’s blood is on his hands.

Speaking of Maddie Redfield, things have gotten progressively steamier between her and her art professor. They make out, and he asks her to ditch her Secret Service to meet up with him alone. Maddie says she knows how to make that happen, although I presume that’s not a good idea!

Written by Maddy Lennon

The Night Agent episode 5 recap: The Marionette

Fresh off the intel that Chelsea Arrington, the Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Redfield’s daughter Maddie, was in the café the day of the metro bombing, The Night Agent episode 5 opens with a look at Chelsea being sworn in as a Secret Service agent four years prior. Almora delivers a speech about the zero-fail policy and how an agent’s mistake could change the course of history.

Now on the job, Chelsea overhears Maddie arguing with VP Redfield about taking a semester to study art in Italy. She’s upset that her father turns down her interests, but she turns on the charm when her fellow students want a photo op with the veep. Back in her dorm, Maddie opens up to Chelsea. It’s clear that they have a close bond.

Peter and Rose show up on the Georgetown campus to talk with Chelsea. They tell her they suspect Maddie could be a possible target of an assassination attempt. She won’t tell them who she was assigned to protect on the day of the metro bombing.

Chelsea checks in with Almora, who’s tensed at Peter’s mention of Farr and instructs Chelsea to shut down Maddie’s involvement in the so-called assassination attempt. Almora confronts Farr, and they lock horns over Peter sniffing around Georgetown without anyone’s knowledge. Farr tries to contact Peter, but she doesn’t have his newest burner number. The president wants Peter and Rose back at the White House.

After Chelsea shuts them down, Peter and Rose head to the library where they research the ring and discuss retracing Hawkins’ steps back to the White House. They agree to divide and conquer, with Rose staying put at the library to research and Peter visiting Hawkins’ widow. Before he leaves, Peter receives a call from Chelsea again shutting down Maddie’s involvement. Peter’s mentions of “coffee shop” and “Osprey” appear to trip her up.

Peter visits Mrs. Hawkins, and even though she initially refuses to open up to him about Hawkins, she cools when Peter shares the story of how his father’s accusation has left a shadow on his life. She says Hawkins was close with Rose’s aunt and uncle as their handlers. He had picked up on inconsistencies while working on the metro bombing case and believe someone interfered with the FBI’s investigation. When he looked back at the case files, he found they pointed back to a government contractor called Turn Lake Industries. Hawkins met with them the day of his disappearance.

Rose’s research in the library sends her to the spooky stacks, and she fears the assassins have found her. (They haven’t… yet.) She cracks one mystery and discovers the Pavelić family crest on the ring. There’s a connection with the disappearance of the Serbian assemblyman and a police sketch of the suspect: Dale, the male assassin.

Earlier in the episode, Maddie leaves Paulo a note in art class. He brings it home and tells Matteo that she’s coming over tonight without her protective service. Paulo has doubts, but Matteo assures him it’s “for the greater good.” (There’s also something romantic happening between Matteo and Paulo.) Chelsea helps Maddie get ready for the art show, giving her the necklace she holds dear to wear (the one she wore the day of her swearing in) with the dress. Chelsea gives Erik the night off, making Maddie’s plan to escape with a lipstick note on the bathroom mirror and a ditched cell phone all the more morally compromising.

When Peter and Rose reunite, they compare notes. Turn Lake Industries is the obvious overlap, as Rose’s research into Andrej Pavelić’s disappearance unearthed details of him (prior to his disappearance) talking about an American defense contractor “conducting shadow ops in the Balkans.” Turn Lake Industries! Peter checks in with Farr and delivers their latest findings. Meanwhile, Rose discovers a lot of Turn Lake’s money went to VP Redfield and he was tight with CEO Gordon Wick.

The assassins tracked Peter and Rose to Georgetown, and they talk about the prospect of kidnapping another baby. (That’s really unimportant to the plot of this episode, but wishing them the best with their family!) There’s a tracker on the back of Peter and Rose’s car, meaning they will be following them all the way to the White House.

As Erik and Chelsea connect the dots to the art professor, Maddie shows up to Paulo’s apartment without Chelsea and without any device tracking her whereabouts whatsoever. They start making out and taking off their clothes. He tries to slow down and talk to her, but Matteo enters. Paulo insists “she’ll say what we need her to say” just before Matteo shoots him dead. He drags Maddie out of the apartment kicking and screaming. Erik and Chelsea arrive at the apartment, but they’re too late.

Written by Reed Gaudens

The Night Agent episode 6 recap: Fathoms

Following the pattern of several previous episodes, The Night Agent episode 6 starts with a flashback to two years earlier. This time, to check in on the assassins and how they began working together. We see their first kill, with Dale teaching Ellen how to dispose of a body.

Returning to the present, Peter and Rose discuss the possibility of Vice President Ashley Redfield legitimately being involved in the grander conspiracy. Given the circumstances, Peter feels uncomfortable bringing Rose to the White House. Even if Redfield is involved, he doesn’t have the clearance to have pulled her Secret Service detail, so they still need to watch their backs.

Instead, Peter plans to go in alone and meet with President Travers to determine a protection plan. In the meantime, he brings Rose to his friend Cisco’s house to keep an eye on her, leaving them his car if they need to make a quick exit.

All hell has broken loose at the White House after Ben informs the Vice President of Maddie’s kidnapping. Monks and Chelsea are devising a plan to find her, starting with investigating the professor’s apartment. When Ben arrives, he blames Chelsea and tries to take her off the case, putting Monks in charge. But to Monks’s credit, he comes to Chelsea’s defense. Ultimately, Ben agrees to let them stay on the case as long as Monks takes the lead.

At Cisco’s house, we get a bit of backstory regarding his and Peter’s friendship. They were roommates at Quantico, and he assumes Rose and Peter are on their way to romance. Rose sets him straight, though it’s obvious Cisco is correct. The fact she knows about Peter’s dad and his ex-fiancée Zoe is a big deal, Cisco says, since that’s considered “major sharing” for Peter.

Let’s take a second to catch up with the damn assassins because, for some reason, they have a whole relationship arc unrelated to anything else in the show. Despite Dale’s previous misgivings, he is now considering having a baby.

But he misunderstood Ellen because she doesn’t want to conceive a child. She only wants a baby if they steal it since she doesn’t think they deserve to be parents. Then she disparages Dale, saying, “you can’t even f**k me properly, and now you want to impregnate me?” Honestly, I don’t understand the writing in this scene or the intention of including the Dale/Ellen stuff.

Chelsea and Monks search the professor’s art room at the university, finding several paintings, including a portrait of the tattooed guy, Matteo, that kidnapped Maddie. They move to Maddie’s room. Chelsea remembers that Maddie has a secret stash hidden in a loose ceiling tile and finds a box containing a brochure for an environmental protection group called New Leaf. They track down the New Leaf Instagram. In one post, they see the tattooed man from the paintings.

When Peter gets to the White House, he meets with Farr to inform her that he and Rose believe Turn Lake orchestrated the bombing and allowed People’s Independence Freedom to fall for it. Turn Lake CEO Gordon Wick is friends with Redfield, as demonstrated by several photos of them online. The data on the hard drive suggests that the metro bombing was an assassination attempt disguised as a terror attack. Is it possible they could have been targeting Maddie?

Peter agrees to bring Rose and the hard drive in as long as they do it discreetly, but then Farr tells Peter to have his “trooper friend” bring her in. The thing is, Peter never said which of his friends Rose was staying with! In a twist, it’s revealed that Farr is a traitor after all and has been working with Redfield this entire time.

Once Peter realizes Farr’s slip-up, he immediately calls Rose and Cisco, telling them to run and meet him at the pier. Then he escapes the White House before Farr can arrest or isolate him. Farr calls Redfield in a panic to inform him that Peter is onto him. She’ll do what she can to keep him in holding while also giving the green light for the assassins to go after Rose again and finish the job.

Since the assassins put a tracker on Peter’s car and Peter left it behind for Rose and Cisco, they have to use it to leave Cisco’s apartment. Cisco realizes they’re being followed and devises a plan to drop Rose off so she can run to the meeting place while he misdirects the killers in the car. Unfortunately, his plan doesn’t work because Dale notices Rose exit the vehicle. Ellen crashes into Cisco and finishes him off with a single gunshot to the head.

As for Rose, she makes it to the pier but not in time to outrun Dale. A violent fight ensues as Dale tries to strangle her. Thankfully, Peter arrives just in time to stop him. With Rose’s assistance, Dale and Peter fight until Peter can pull a gun on Dale. But Dale antagonizes Rose, and she attacks him again, forcing Peter to kill Dale rather than arrest him. And yes, Ellen finds Dale’s dead body at the end of the episode, which undoubtedly means she will be hellbent on seeking revenge.

Peter and Rose hide out on a boat belonging to his godfather while they recover and patch up their injuries. While there, they listen to the news via a radio broadcast. That’s how they learn of Cisco’s death and a chilling turn of events. Farr’s new plan to isolate Peter is to blame him for Maddie’s kidnapping. She gives Redfield a statement to read. He goes on national television to tell the country that Peter Sutherland is now a prime suspect in his daughter’s disappearance.

Written by Maddy Lennon

The Night Agent episode 7 recap: Best Served Cold

The Night Agent episode 7 once again opens with a flashback, this time to 14 years ago. Maddie plays with her little sister Sarah in the backyard while her father talks on the phone. When they argue over a toy, Ashley yells at Maddie then continues his phone call in the house. Maddie leaves the situation and Sarah drowns in the pool, which he blames on Maddie. In the present tense, Matteo has Maddie chained in a room, and he takes a photo with her holding up the day’s newspaper.

On the run in his godfather’s boat, Peter throws the troll doll in the ocean (RIP Kevin!). He’s defeated from everything they have been through, especially now that Farr has turned on him and made him the prime suspect in Maddie’s kidnapping. Rose convinces him to keep fighting and not give up on finding the truth. Finally, they kiss! Peter and Rose continue their romantic moment by presumably having sex in the cabin of the boat.

Chelsea and Erik are part of the team searching Peter’s apartment for evidence. They’re coming up short until Erik pokes around Peter’s books and finds birthday cards from someone named Jim. Even with that minor lead, Erik and Chelsea still doubt Peter’s involvement. Erik suggests working the investigation from more than one angle, leading to the New Leaf pamphlet.

President Travers visits Farr to chat about Maddie and the Peter situation. When the president presses on what went wrong with apprehending Peter, Farr lies through her teeth. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss to the bitter end, I guess! What does she have to lose? Well, it seems like her good standing with the President. Travers tells her to take a step back from the case.

On their own hunch, Chelsea and Erik stop by New Leaf. They talk to an employee named Dylan (played by Virgin River guest star Markian Tarasiuk), who identifies Paulo Bonetto and explains Paulo had been planning for Maddie to record a plug for New Leaf. Dylan also confirms Peter wasn’t involved with New Leaf and IDs Matteo. He says Matteo was dating Paulo but hasn’t been around for weeks.

While hiding out in the boat, Rose asks Peter about his dad. He explains classified documents were leaked that compromised US defense strategies around the world. The breach was traced back to FBI counterintelligence division, for which his dad was section chief. Peter Sr. died before they could charge him, meaning no evidence was made public. Peter was inspired to join the FBI to clear his dad’s name. In order to clear his own, they have find a smoking gun.

Matteo records a new hostage video and sends a message, giving Redfield two days to confess he planned the metro bombing and covered it up. He has to name his accomplices or Matteo will have Maddie spread the news before he kills her. While reviewing their options, Farr is being tough because Redfield wants to play ball. To talk him off the ledge, Farr shows him that Maddie was going to release video of him abusing her as a child.

In her cell, Maddie kicks hole in the wall, realizing she can find some clues as to where she is. After talking with Matteo, she gives him the address to find the nanny cam video of her father being abusive. Later, Matteo informs Maddie that a woman was murdered in the house and they found a kidnapped baby — the house the assassins burgled in the first episode. She tries to appease him with mutual hatred for her dad, and when he leaves, she loosens the springs under her mattress.

Peter and Rose look further into the 12 suspects Hawkins was investigating before he died. After narrowing it down to two suspects, they discover Colin Worley died two days before the FBI was to interview him. Without a cause of death listed, they wonder if someone tampered with Colin Worley’s file to keep him from taking the fall as the bomber and unraveling the VP’s mess.

When Erik and Chelsea suggest investigating Matteo, Farr has a meltdown, and Almora is suddenly on Farr’s side. They have to keep Erik and Chelsea on Peter’s trail to serve their false narrative. Farr immediately calls Wick about adding Matteo to the hit list. Later, Ellen holds a knife to Wick’s throat. He makes a deal with her to kill Matteo in exchange for Peter’s location.

After Peter and Rose steal a car from a valet, she sweet talks her way into grabbing public records for Colin Worley. While he waits in the car outside, Peter’s spotted by some Rome Tome trolls, forcing him to drive off as they approach his car. The Rome Tome guys harass Rose when she leaves the building just as Peter pulls back up. He scares them with flare gun and they drive away.

Meanwhile, Erik and Chelsea visit Jim Wilson, a reporter and Peter’s godfather. Before going into his house, Erik notices a cargo hitch on Jim’s truck. As for why Peter and Jim aren’t tight anymore? Jim reported on Peter’s dad potentially being the traitor who leaked the files, and they haven’t talked for years. Jim tells Erik and Chelsea that Peter cares about people and, more than that, what people think about him. Even so, they press Jim for the locations of his camper and boat.

Peter and Rose pore over Colin’s records, which includes an autopsy indicating no foul play and a history of court-mandated rehab stays. Among his personal effects was a keycard to Allontine Manufacturing, which they discover is a subsidiary of Turn Lake. Peter finds arrest photos, which includes the snake tattoo on his side. They piece together that Colin Worley (whom we know as Matteo) was the bomber, and they believe Turn Lake “killed” him to cover their tracks. Their next plan of attack is going to the PO Box, but Erik and Chelsea find and arrest them before they can leave.

Written by Reed Gaudens.

The Night Agent episode 8 recap: Redux

In The Night Agent episode 8 opening flashback, Peter chases Colin Worley/Matteo on the night of the metro bombing. We finally see where he goes after getting away from Peter. When he returns home, we learn he’s a twin. Matteo, as we know him, is actually Colin. Matteo is his brother, who dies of an “overdose.” After Colin finds him dead, he swaps their IDs and becomes Matteo. (For clarity and ease, we’re going to continue to refer to him as Matteo.)

Peter and Rose try to tell Erik and Chelsea the truth as they’re handcuffed to the pier. After the agents see the picture of Matteo, they warm up to Peter and Rose’s story and send the local police away in order to hear them out. The agents poke holes in their theory about the bombing, but when they notice Matteo’s a twin on his birth certificate, they’ve found their smoking gun. Turn Lake murdered the wrong twin. Begrudgingly, they agree to work together.

Matteo films another hostage video with Maddie, this time putting a two-hour deadline on Maddie’s life. She attempts to win Matteo over with a shared desire to end her father, but he doesn’t buy into it. He’s completely detached from reality and there’s nothing she can say to buy her time.

Farr refuses to show Redfield the new hostage video due to the potential consequences of his emotional actions. They meet with Redfield, and a slip makes him realize Wick knows who has Maddie. He admits it’s the metro bomber and that his team “took care” of his brother instead of the bomber. As Redfield leaves the room, Farr seemingly asks Wick to call a hit on Peter.

Erik and Chelsea leave Peter and Rose in the car while checking up on the next-of-kin PO Box. There’s nothing but a past due notice for a storage unit inside. While they wait for the worker to locate the unit, Erik and Chelsea talk about his life, daughter, and sobriety, helping them bond and see eye to eye more than ever. When they open the storage unit, they bring Peter and Rose on board to help dig through the mess of contents. Rose finds a pay stub, and Erik takes her along to investigate Matteo’s job at Pykemoor Security.

Meanwhile, Maddie digs through the wall, sees “R142” on the other side, and hears trains, giving her some hope as to an escape strategy. She convinces Matteo to record a new video for her father in her own words. Suddenly, she has a plan to outsmart him.

Peter asks Chelsea the truth about who she was guarding the day of the metro bombing. Finally, she admits she wasn’t lying that it wasn’t Maddie. She was guarding Omar Zadar, the leader of the PIF. Chelsea also revealed that Zadar’s codename was Osprey. He was the target of the bombing, but instead of an assassination, they used the bombing as a cover so he was merely another casualty.

After this revelation, Chelsea receives a video of Maddie with a coded message. She sent the video directly to Chelsea, rather than her father as she told Matteo. In the video, Maddie taps on her necklace when she says certain words, giving them the message “train R142.” On instinct, Chelsea wants to call it in, but Peter tells her she can no longer trust the White House.

Back at the White House, the you-know-what hits the fan as the President snubs Farr, shutting her out from the latest meeting about Zadar. Redfield’s against their plans to wave the white flag with Zadar. The President clears the room after his outburst in the middle of the meeting and tells him she’s considering a personnel change in the West Wing. Farr better sleep with one eye open!

Peter discovers R142 is a partial match for the serial number of a freight shipping container, giving them the closest tip yet on Maddie’s location. Out of curiosity, Peter asks how Chelsea found him and Rose, and he’s adorably bummed she bested him based on birthday cards. Because Erik finds that Worley worked as a security guard for three companies, Peter cross references the shipping container number and lands on a match at the D.C. Container Depot. Unfortunately, Ellen is right on their tail.

Chelsea and Peter enter the shipping yard, and Matteo sees them on his security camera. They split up, which isn’t the wisest plan, but it’s more efficient. Of course, Ellen followed Erik and Rose to the shipping yard, and Erik leaves Rose in the car. Maddie attacks Matteo with the light she broke and escapes the shipping container. He shoots after her, alerting Peter and the agents to her location.

Thankfully, Chelsea grabs Maddie as Peter arrests Matteo. Just then, Ellen shoots at them from above in a tower, successfully killing Matteo. She shoots Maddie in the leg and then hits Erik outside of his bulletproof best. Before Ellen can do any further damage, Rose tackles Ellen and pushes her off the tower, killing the assassin. Erik’s life hangs in the balance.

Written by Reed Gaudens.

The Night Agent episode 9 recap: The Devil We Know

Perhaps the most telling flashback of the series, The Night Agent episode 9 opens with a look at one year earlier, as Farr learns about the metro bombing. Suddenly, Redfield and Wick pull her into the mess, knowing she will do whatever it takes to keep it hush hush because of her loyalty to POTUS. In a moment alone, Farr silently breaks down before rejoining Redfield and Wick and rallying with a game plan to cover up the failed bombing.

Back at the shipping yard, Rose steals Ellen’s phone and answers it when Wick calls. (Girl, why?!) Because her answers aren’t gelling with what Wick knows of Ellen, it tips him off. With the police heading to the scene of the crime, the group comes up with a plan after explaining to Maddie that her father tried to kill Omar Zadar but then blamed him for the bombing when it failed. Peter and Rose leave the scene to search for “undeniable evidence” in order for Maddie and Chelsea to help from the inside.

Farr delivers the news of the shootout at the container depot to Redfield and Wick, also sharing that Maddie was found alive. They are still planning to follow through with the new attack on Zadar as soon as his plane lands. The pressure is getting to them, and the tides are shifting against Farr.

Peter and Rose go to his godfather Jim’s house, and in spite of their estrangement, he lets them right in and offers them hospitality. Rose immediately starts digging into Ellen’s phone before taking a shower. Jim tells Peter the evidence they have is circumstantial, that they need something more foolproof. Naturally, they argue and clear the air about Peter’s dad, which they remain on opposite sides of for now. Rose cracked the phone and discovers photos of agents, the Campbells, the Night Action binder — all taken in the Night Action room. Although they suspect Farr, they need to see the access logs to confirm whose badge was scanned to get into the room. They use Jim’s truck on the next leg of their mission.

While Maddie feels guilty for Erik’s death, Chelsea’s surprised to see Briggs on scene rather than Almora. Sketchy! As she anticipated, Briggs takes Chelsea’s badge, gun, and phone until after-action. They are both understandably concerned about what’s going on. Back at the White House, they plan to steal an old cell phone to warn agents about the upcoming attack on Zadar.

While Maddie’s father exhausts his latest attempt at gaslighting her, Chelsea’s meeting with Willett and Farr leaves Farr doubting her statement on the events. She denies Peter Sutherland’s involvement, and Farr tries to steamroll her to make her narrative work. However, Willett must look further into Maddie’s video and Matteo. It’s all crumbling in on Farr. You love to see it!

As they wait for White House employee Valerie, Peter and Rose talk about what’s next after it’s all over. She wants to go back to California, while Peter dreams of maybe escaping to a cabin in California. It’s clear that they want to be together. Once they stalk Valerie into her home, they force her to send an email requesting the access log for the Night Action room. Peter ties her up with tape and explains to her the truth of what’s going on. (She seems more annoyed than scared, to be honest.) Rose spots an email Valerie sent earlier that day trying to figure out why Farr was barred from the President’s Zadar briefing.

Chelsea does some espionage of her own at the White House and sneaks a look at Almora’s calendar and compares it to Osprey’s (who is, of course, Zadar). Almora’s in Camp David, while Zadar’s at Blair House. The math isn’t mathing for Chelsea. It’s not mathing either for Farr and Redfield, who know Chelsea and Maddie aren’t sharing everything. While sneaking back to her room after grabbing the old phone, Maddie overhears her dad speaking with Wick, mentioning handing out pardons — something only a president can do.

Peter and Rose have the access logs and confirm Farr was taking pictures of the Night Action binder, which they send to Jim as undeniable evidence that links Farr to the murder of the Campbells. While checking in with Chelsea, they realize Redfield and co. are sending Zadar to Camp David with the President. They withheld Zadar’s location from the calendar to keep Farr in the dark. Peter, Rose, Madde, and Chelsea keep connecting the dots until the final dot connects: It’s an assassination of Zadar and the President.

When Zadar lands and gets in the car, it doesn’t blow up. There’s the confirmation that his attack his been rescheduled. Chelsea and Maddie travel with Redfield to Camp David, and Chelsea takes note of new agents she’s never seen before carrying big black briefcases.

Farr returns home from a long day of being shut out by her colleagues to retrieve money and a passport out of her safe. But before she can flee, Peter and Rose appear behind her. They want her to have Redfield and Wick call off the assassination, but she didn’t know anything about the plan to kill Travers. She admits that she knew the attack on Zadar was supposed to happen when his plane landed, but she’s since been cut out. Peter’s not done with her just yet.

Written by Reed Gaudens

The Night Agent episode 10 recap: Fathers

The Night Agent season finale begins with a flashback to 11 years ago. Peter and his dad are playing basketball in the driveway when agents show up to search their house and take their phones. A teenager, Peter’s understandably furious with the agents being accusatory toward his father. Some things haven’t changed.

Peter holds a gun to Farr as she drives them to Camp David. She assures Peter that she didn’t know about metro bombing until after, when Redfield and Wick pulled her in for the cover up. He’s not buying her excuses. She continues by stating that if Travers hadn’t ordered a Night Action, none of this would have happened. But because the Campbells met with Zadar, they assumed they told Zadar he was the real target of the metro bombing. They needed to shut down the Campbells’ investigation. Peter realizes Farr wanted to use him as her Night Action puppet and fall guy, and Rose calls out Farr for being selfish. It’s a tense car ride.

Chelsea chats with the new agents on the plane, and she’s smart enough to have sussed out that they don’t know their stuff. Something’s off, but something’s always been off — her eyes are just open to it now. Chelsea’s still cut off from comms, but she instructs Maddie to tell Travers she’s in danger during their one-on-one meeting. Unfortunately, Redfield doesn’t take Maddie to see the President. He takes Maddie behind a secret wall into a bunker. Of course, Redfield tries to play up an apology about Sarah, but Maddie’s wise to his tricks.

Once Farr sneaks Peter and Rose past the gate guards by hiding them in the trunk, Farr marches into Camp David and argues with her old pal Almora. While demanding to warn the President, Briggs enters the room and shoots both her and Almora, the latter of whom doesn’t make it. Peter and Rose leave the trunk before they’re told to, leading Rose to get comms back up and running. Unfortunately, with news of their arrival spreading, the clock has been set for the explosion in 10 minutes, after which Wick flees the country. Chelsea attacks the new guard, steals his gun and smartwatch, and searches for the bomb.

Here’s where the finale really goes full throttle! Peter and Sarah make it to the communications building to fix comms, and its agent attempts to kill Peter with a knife. He and Rose fight back and take out the agent. Peter hears word on the dead agent’s walkie that there’s a contingency bomb planned in the event the first one doesn’t take out the targets.

Chelsea locates the case holding the bomb with three minutes to spare and urges those in the lodge to immediately evacuate. Meanwhile, Maddie convinces her dad to let her leave the bunker, unwilling to keep more of his secrets. As Peter takes out Briggs, Rose reinstates communications between the Secret Service, allowing Chelsea to call in the threat, which helps divert the President from the attack. Chelsea rushes back into the lodge to save Maddie just before the explosion.

The Secret Service rushes President Travers into a car, and Peter hears over Briggs’ comms that she’s being diverted to the contingency plan on Marine One. Before the Secret Service can shuffle Travers into the helicopter, Peter grabs her at gunpoint and forces the agents to search the helicopter and turn off the engine. Although he’s holding a gun to the President, Peter insists that he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and that he loves his country. He’s one of the only true patriots in this show, to be honest!

As expected, the helicopter explodes, and Peter’s handcuffed even though he saved the President’s life. When Rose rushes to his side, the first thing he does is ask if she’s okay.

Agents “rescue” Redfield from the bunker, and he plays up the scared and concerned father act really well. But then, boom: Chelsea appears to delivers the news that they’re all still arrive. Maddie struts in to add insult to injury. In the lodge, Rose confronts a wounded Farr. Rose vows to watch Farr clear Peter’s name and expresses her glee for her impending jail sentence and eventual death.

Presumably days or so later, Peter and Rose meet with the President at the White House. The pair appear to be keeping a low profile because of the feared public reaction. Travers wants to be able to publicly thank him and pin a medal on him, but he merely asks for the truth about his father.

Since the attack, Chelsea has been on leave. While talking with Almora’s replacement, she agrees to speak at Erik’s funeral, and she’s offered a position on the President’s detail. Even though she says she needs to think about it, she immediately accepts. After, she meets Maddie for coffee, who has since turned down protection and now wants to learn how to take care of herself. Instead of going back to school, she’s planning to travel through Europe.

In the Night Action room, Peter watches a video of his father’s questioning. In the video, his dad admits that he was offered payment for information, which ultimately led to pentagon breach. In that moment, Peter believes that his dad was guilty. When he leaves the Night Action room, the President explains that his father was cooperating on tape because he had agreed to be a double agent. Peter Sr. was prepping for deployment, but the plan backfired when he was killed by a foreign assassin to stop him from helping the US. The assassin who killed his father was also killed, and Travers insists the public will never learn this truth.

Of course, Peter presses on and asks Travers who killed his father. Sure, there are additional things she would like to tell him because it would put him in a position to help the country. She wants to get him out of the Night Action room and make him an official Night Agent. The episode ends with Rose escorting Peter to his plane on the tarmac, and they kiss before he departs for his first mission. To the tune of “Heroes” by Gang of Youths, Peter reads his mission brief. Off to be an official hero, to save more lives, and to come back home to Rose.

Written by Reed Gaudens

The Night Agent is on the list of the best Netflix shows right now.