The Night Agent Season 3 Review: Brilliant performances anchor this deep-state thriller

The Night Agent Season 3 Review:

Characters with a conscience and a plot with complexity are a combination that makes a spy thriller succeed more often than it doesn't. The Night Agent, in all three seasons, is as much personal as it is grander. The series never took the easy way out of forging an external enemy with the intention to topple the US government. Also, the deep state is never an evil monolith but a complex web of flawed people with plenty of compromises either for their personal gain or to rise in power, jeopardising the sovereignty of the US. Add to this someone like Peter Sutherland Jr (Gabriel Basso), who, since seeing his father (Sebastian Roberts), also a spy, arrested on charges of treason by the FBI as a child, keeps walking on eggshells. It would be natural to expect him to toe the rules and turn a yes-man of the system to save him from the familial disgrace. But Peter, as taught by his mother as a kid, strives to do the right thing, especially when it's hard. For the third time.

The third season begins one year after the events of the second season, with Peter still waiting for the call from this enigmatic The Broker Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum), who helped in preventing the terrorist attack at the UN headquarters, as leverage for something in return from Peter. Wrestling with the toll of moral ambiguity right from his childhood, Peter finds himself in a position he dreaded most. He loses sleep and decides to part ways with his lady love, Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan, noticeable by her absence), to somehow get to the other end and put everything else to rest till then. He gets a call after the downing of the Pima 12 flight, carrying 157 American citizens.

Cast: Gabriel Basso, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Louis Herthum, Suraj Sharma, Genesis Rodriguez

Directors: Adam Arkin, Paris Barclay, Hiromi Kamata, Guy Ferland, Billy Gierhart

Streaming platform: Netflix

With glimpses into his childhood episodes and their connection to the events Peter currently faces, a deeper, personal, and vulnerable side of him is revealed. The creative decision to lay this bare at the juncture of Peter promoted as a full-time Night Agent by the American President is brilliant. As he doesn't have the luxury of making many wrong moves, the professional and personal stakes rise correspondingly, making up for the initial stutter in the season. The series has thrived by revealing another side to people, good or bad, not in a hurried, dramatic manner. The moral greyness is heightened by the fact that justifications for actions aren't flimsy here.

The performances were top-notch. With the stakes getting high and Rose, his love interest and emotional support, not being around, Peter gets more vulnerable. Basso, playing a character who is broken but has no time to express his brokenness, has done a fantastic job. In the select few moments, like being threatened by The Broker to set Rose's house in California on fire, Basso quickly switches back and forth from the tough agent to a pained human. The series, when it got tiresome as it loops itself between the whistleblower Jay Batra (an aptly cast Sooraj Sharma), the Broker, who kidnaps him, and Peter, who tries to protect him, enters Chelsea Arrington (an incredible Fola Evans-Akingbola). Chelsea, who is at the President's security detail, adds to the tension of the plot and saves the season from dipping. All thanks to the tight-chested-yet-smiling Evans-Akingbola. This is by far the best season she has had. She carries her role with more flair as Chelsea gets romantic with Theo Miller (Zach Appelman), a White House press team member. These spaces quite compensated for Peter and Rose. 

It was quite evident that the cases dealt with by Peter and Chelsea would eventually converge. But the connection between the two cases is easily established, so much so that the evidence that could incriminate the POTUS and FLOTUS surfaces with minimal resistance. This choice also hastily forms Peter and Chelsea as a team. What becomes of the plot after the two join, and how they deliver a riveting finish, is a totally different thing altogether. The stunt pieces were well choreographed and looked sleek, but a story that deals with money laundering, shell companies, terror funding, and deep state required more brain than brawn.

Flaws aside, the third season of The Night Agent still retains the thematic intrigue of human machinations and the obscurity of good and evil that it provided in the first and second seasons. It is so because it still offers a lot of drama in blurring the lines between an ally and an enemy, a national hero and a traitor, and patriotism and blind servitude to the system. Endless stories from these themes can be churned out. Ironically, the assassin encourages his inquisitive son, while the new agent Adam (David Lyons) is ordered to follow the rules with no questions asked. Somewhere in the befuddled kid who wonders why he is being told to be obedient but also ask questions, we find Peter, who continues to be rattled by his father's treacherous past but never stops asking questions. On to the next for more questions.