[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 2 of The Night Agent.]

Summary

Season 3 of the Netflix series ‘The Night Agent’ will be the best yet, with more answers and returning characters.

Gabriel Basso is excited but also nervous for the response to Season 2 while they’re filming Season 3.

In the third season, Peter Sutherland faces personal loyalty challenges and major consequences in the evolving plot.

From creator Shawn Ryan, the second season of the Netflix series The Night Agent continues to follow Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso), who is now a full-fledged agent for the secretive organization where every mission is full of danger and life-or-death stakes. After a covert mission has fatal consequences, Peter’s superior Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren) questions just how much he can be trusted, as he and Rose (Luciane Buchanan) work together again to stop a threat. But unraveling the threads of a looming terrorist plot is made even more challenging when you have to be suspicious of everyone.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Basso talked about how exciting it is that the series has already been picked up for Season 3, that the third season will be their best yet, that Peter is continuing to be tested, and how more answers are coming. He also discussed how Peter grew from who he was in Season 1, what it’s like to lead this series, how it feels to learn what the other characters think of Peter, the evolution of the Peter and Rose relationship, and whether he’s really cut out to be a Night Agent.
Collider: Congrats on the Season 3 pick-up. It’s awesome when that happens before Season 2 is even out. What are you most excited about with Season 3, especially after everything you got to do with Season 2?
GABRIEL BASSO: The biggest thing that I’m excited for is a dynamic that I’ve never had, which is the release of Season 2 while we’re shooting Season 3. That could be a really good morale boost, or depending on people’s response to it, it could crush me completely while we’re shooting and make me not wanna make the show. I’m glad people like it enough for Netflix to greenlight it before Season 2 is even out. I think the fact that they dumped a bunch of resources into me doing that skydiving stunt, and that before the show is out, they’re already greenlighting the next season is a testament to how much they believe in the show, so it does mean a lot. I just hope people respond to Season 2.

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Before you did that skydiving stunt, did you have a moment of regret?
BASSO: Never. So much schooling went into that process and training on the ground that I would have been wasting my own time if I hadn’t done it. I try to make all decisions sober, so there’s no room for regret. And I made that decision stone cold sober, so we’re good.
According to Gabriel Basso, Season 3 of ‘The Night Agent’ WIll Be the Best One Yet

What would you say to tease Season 3 and where things will be going next?
BASSO: I’ll say that, in my opinion, Season 3, so far, is the best season we have, from the writing to the stunts to the side plots. Personally, reading it, I’m very, very excited. And I don’t typically enjoy this business. I don’t like acting all the time, so the fact that I’m excited to make Season 3 is something really cool for me.
When you’re on the show and you could be doing the show for a while, it’s good to hear you say that you think it’s the best season you’ve done because that means you still like what you’re doing.
BASSO: Yeah. They’re making things bigger in the right ways. It’s not so much that the world is at stake and the universe is at stake now, and Peter is trying to stop three nukes instead of one. What’s at stake, the more the seasons go on, is the souls of the people involved. You’ve invested time in all these people, and now you’re seeing the consequences of the decisions they’ve made that you’ve been there for. It’s not a cold reset every season with, “And this season, Peter saves this diplomat.” The throughline is there and they’re testing Peter more and more. They’re putting him through the meat grinder, as opposed to, “Oh, people really love the fact he was heroic. Let’s have him be a hero again.” It’s cool.
That’s what was really interesting about the difference between Season 1 and Season 2. With the first season, he ends up in something that he didn’t know anything about and had to figure out what was happening and where his place was. But then, in Season 2, he’s a Night Agent and it’s more about trying to succeed in the mission. How different did it feel going into Season 2? You didn’t have a novel to draw from anymore. Did that give you a sense of freedom because it could go anywhere, or were you more nervous about living up to Season 1?
BASSO: The biggest difference is that in Season 1, he was very reactive. Everything was happening to him and to Rose. He was running for his life. He was less trying to figure something out and more reacting to things that were happening. And in Season 2, he’s pursuing an end goal. All these decisions he’s making, no one is forcing him to make them. He’s very proactive, as opposed to reactive in Season 1. It’s more engaging to see Peter, the character we like, suffer when he makes decisions.

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Do you feel like you learned anything new about him just from getting that different kind of perspective into how he is dealing with situations now?
BASSO: He values personal loyalty more than he does loyalty to an institution and he realizes that a system cannot have integrity if the people in it have no integrity and here’s no inherent good to a system. Now, he’s making terrible decisions or good decisions to try to find the people that he trusts to work for, but the problem is that this business is a business of liars. So, he’s struggling to find out who he who he trusts.
Season 2 goes bigger and raises the stakes. Did it feel bigger in the day-to-day during the shoot? Did you have to pace yourself differently?
BASSO: I’m not good at pacing myself at all. I’m not a man of half measures. If I’m gonna do something, I do it completely, as much as I can, to my own detriment, a lot of the time. I also think the time frame of the show happens in a couple days. We might be shooting for six months, and [Peter] might be exhausted, but he’s not redlining like I am because it’s only been three days. Keeping everything fresh and new and energized and desperate is tough sometimes, but it’s the job.
Gabriel Basso Loves the Opportunity To Collaborate on ‘The Night Agent’

Image via Netflix

What has surprised you about what it’s been like to lead this show, to do all the action, to take on all the different things you have to take on, and to learn whatever new skills you have to learn to do this show?
BASSO: I enjoy it a lot. The things that I don’t enjoy about this job are outside this job. Once I’m working, and I’m learning the skills, and I’m dealing with the crew, and I get to talk to them daily and find out where morale is and how we push each other, it’s something I love doing. This is a collaborative art medium. To see something like this show be successful, after so many people have put so many hours into it, it’s just a really cool experience. The more I insulate myself from the process, the less that feeling is there, so I try not to do that. I’m always around the crew and I’m always talking to people, trying to work together as a team to make the thing happen.
How do you find the right balance between telling a story that’s big in scope while also being realistic? Are there areas of the show where it feels like you can stretch or push them a bit to make them more exciting for a TV series and areas that you feel like you can’t do that with because it would be too unrealistic?
BASSO: I don’t know. Reality is stranger than fiction, or however that saying goes. All you’ve gotta do is look back through history and look at the things that the government has classified that you can read about. What we’re doing is tame compared to what has happened in the past.

7:57

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With the first season of a TV series, you’re basically thrown into the deep end and you’re figuring out the character, the dynamics and the world, as you go. What do you enjoy about jumping back into that with those dynamics established, but you’re also constantly bringing these new people in? Has it been fun to get the perspective of your character, from all these different viewpoints?
BASSO: It throws me off sometimes to read the scripts and see what other people are saying about Peter in their scenes that I’m not in. It’s acting, so you know where the story is going. But seeing how other characters interpret how Peter’s behaving is cool to me. You see how his actions have scary ramifications for people above him. Catherine is now accountable to Mosley and all these people that are like, “Peter, what are you doing?” He’s a variable, for sure.
The relationship with Catherine is such an interesting one, especially the moment when he says, “Shoot me or get out of my way.” Do you feel like he gets to a place this season where he’s learned to trust himself and his instincts, even if it gets him in trouble?
BASSO: Yeah. The big problem is that he’s willing to do things to circumvent the typical structure that is in Night Action. Like any military or law enforcement job, they don’t necessarily want you to do things your way. The whole point is not doing things your way. And you have someone that’s been promoted quickly and rapidly. They’ve not had a chance to really vet him. He’s been pushed through this program and now he’s operating in a community where he doesn’t really do things their way yet. There are the growing pains of trust. Peter also has to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around him. I think he’s learning that the hard way. He’s a pre-Copernican man. He’s the main character of his show. He will make decisions so that his friends will survive, consequences be damned. He’s got a lot to learn in the orientation to reality.
Real-World Issues Might Keep Peter and Rose From Romance in ‘The Night Agent’

Image via Netflix

One of the things that I loved about Season 1 was the romance between Peter and Rose, and it seems like it’s harder to have some of that the season because there is tension between them and she’s having to deal with the reality of him being a Night Agent. What was it like to navigate that relationship now? Did it feel like that was a little more sidelined than it had been in Season 1? How did it feel to find the balance of how to explore that relationship still?
BASSO: There are just a lot of real-world issues there, with any soldier on deployment, being gone for 10 months and coming back. There’s the duty that Peter has to his country and what he swore to. He’s a man with an objective in life. Their relationship in Season 1 was by circumstance. I’m not sure they ever would have met outside of him doing his job and her sticking with him when she didn’t have to. So, I think now that they have a chance to look at their relationship objectively and what that means for both of them, there’s the reality of responsibility, of love, of loyalty to one another, but then the reality of, if they find out who she is, her life is at risk. Is Peter willing to selfishly put her at risk, so he can have a girlfriend? I don’t know. I don’t think he’s that selfish, or at least I hope he’s not.
If it takes a certain kind of person to succeed as a Night Agent, now that you’ve played him for two seasons, do you think he’s ultimately cut out for this? Is the jury still out on whether he should be doing this?
BASSO: I think he’s a good fit for the right job. A Phillips head screwdriver is not meant to pound your nails, but it’s still a perfectly legitimate tool. If he’s used right, he can be a very valuable asset. If he’s not, that’s when he gets into danger. His superiors are learning that about him. They can expect something of him, but they need to give him the jobs that fit within that range of abilities.

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It feels like along with the story that you were telling in Season 2, you were also simultaneously setting up Season 3. Even though some things get resolved, it’s clearly not finished. Do you feel like you’re getting any unresolved questions you had from Season 2 answered with Season 3?
BASSO: Yeah, there are answers to things that happen in Season 2. There are also answers to things that have happened in Season 1. There are characters that come back from Season 1 that are in Season 3 a lot more. They’ve done a really good job at keeping things consistent and keeping events that you invested your time in throughout the season relevant to another season. It doesn’t feel like you wasted your time or you’re thinking, “Whatever happened with that big thing?” Everything is constantly relevant.

The Night Agent

Release Date

March 23, 2023

Network

Netflix

Cast

Hiro Kanagawa

FBI Director Willett

Rebecca Staab

Cynthia Hawkins

Stream

The Night Agent is available to stream on Netflix. Check out the Season 2 trailer:

Watch on Netflix