Nearly two years after its riveting Netflix debut, The Night Agent has finally returned for a second season on January 23, 2025. Bigger, bolder, and more expansive, the sophomore chapter finds Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) on a globe-trotting adventure that begins in Bangkok and ends in New York, with a new conspiratorial web of intrigue involving the U.S. government, the United Nations, the FBI, and the CIA.
While The Night Agent‘s twisty plot can get confusing and downright implausible with its outlandish conspiracies, the series delivers relentless action, visceral shootouts, harrowing fight scenes, and suspenseful rescue missions. To that end, the series shares plenty in common with the underrated and highly recommendable Prime Video original Hanna, a breathless action bonanza sure to deliver the same exhilarating jolt as The Night Agent.
‘The Night Agent’ Is a Hit Spy Thriller on Netflix
Shawn Ryan created The Night Agent for Netflix, an action spy TV thriller based on Matthew Quirk’s novel. The story concerns Peter Sutherland, a naive FBI agent who works in the White House in Washington, D.C., as a “Night Action” telephone operator. What begins as a boring and thankless job babysitting a phone that never rings soon blooms into a vast conspiracy when Peter answers a call one fateful night.
Upon receiving the call, Peter is made aware of Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), a cybersecurity expert whose aunt and uncle were former Night Agents before their mysterious murders. Peter’s main mission is to keep Rose safe while identifying a mole operating secretly within the FBI and linking the mole to the murders. Yet, with vast inter-agency cover-ups, deceitful double crossings, and classic espionage defections, getting to the bottom of the conspiracy is much harder than expected.
With the stakes rising to death, Peter must deal with duplicitous government officials and ruthless assassins out for blood. Eve Harlow and Phoenix Rae play paired assassins Ellen and Dale, who track Peter and Rose with intent to kill. Ellen is particularly savvy with her skills as a professional killer, calling to mind Soarise Ronan’s awesome performance as child assassin Hanna and the 2019 Prime Video adaptation of the Joe Wright film.
‘Hanna’ Features a Super Assassin on Prime Video
David Farr created Hanna for Prime Video, a hardened action-thriller centering on Hanna Heller (Esme Creed-Miles), a 15-year-old girl trained by her adoptive father, Erik Heller (Joel Kinnaman) to be a super assassin. Shielded from the world since her mother’s death and raised in the Polish forest under Erik’s care, Hanna is targeted by rogue CIA operative Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos), a shady secret program leader who defects as an enemy to become Hanna’s ally.
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As Hanna comes of age and experiences the outside world for the first time, her bright-eyed naivety is balanced by her ruthless assassin skills. Hanna and Erik protect each other from Marissa’s cohorts while globe-trotting from Berlin to Morocco, London, Romania, Barcelona, Paris, and other key CIA outposts in Europe. Hanna’s conflict reaches a climactic pitch when she discovers that she has been part of UTRAX, a secret CIA program meant to create a race of super soldiers using enhanced adolescent DNA.
Although Marissa is hired to track Hanna down and shut down UTRAX, her sympathies shift, and she becomes more of a parent figure, especially when Erik becomes endangered. Apart from worldly travels and vast international settings, Hanna’s undying action is some of the best on television and often outshoots The Night Agent with expert precision and lasting aftereffects.
Why ‘The Night Agent’ Fans Must Watch ‘Hanna’
Those drawn to The Night Agent‘s web of deceit, double agents, and vast government conspiracy will get an even bigger kick out of Hanna‘s 22-episode run. Although not quite a spy thriller, Hanna’s brutal action scenes are second to none and often outshine The Night Agent’s rote and routine gunplay seen a thousand times in police procedurals. By contrast, Hanna is an expert hunter and an assassin, frequently using archery skills and hand-to-hand combat to subdue her assailants as a one-person army. Hanna‘s action set pieces are more varied, vicious, and visceral.
Past Hanna‘s superior action, the CIA’s involvement in Hanna and The Night Agent Season 2 links the two series even tighter. The CIA is behind UTRAX in Hanna, with scientists, leaders, and chairmen pulling the strings behind the scenes the whole time. The Night Agent‘s second season begins with a CIA leak from its Bangkok station, resulting in both action series indicting the intelligence agency for being as harmful as it is helpful.
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Outstanding character actors Noah Taylor, Dermot Mulroney, and the late great Ray Liotta play high-ranking CIA officials designing, implementing, and overseeing UTRAX, leading to better acting and more convincing performances than in The Night Agent. Better performances equal greater plausibility, making Hanna more realistic than The Night Agent‘s conspiratorial trappings.
While Hanna reigns supreme in many respects, The Night Agent has been viewed far more often. The Night Agent Season 1 became the seventh most-watched Netflix original TV series of all time (via Netflix). Hanna boasts nowhere near the same viewership on Prime Video despite boasting higher user ratings. Hanna holds a 7.6 IMDb rating and 79% Popcornmeter score compared to The Night Agent‘s 7.5 IMDb rating and 64% Popcornmeter rating. For a show with better acting, more intense action, and a more plausible government conspiracy, Hanna remains a highly underrated TV series that every Night Agent fan should check out as soon as possible. Hanna is available to stream on Prime Video.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
