The Night Agent is exactly the right show to break the Netflix season two curse
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The spy series had a relatively obscure cast and a pulpy story – yet it became one of the streamer’s most watched shows ever. Louis Chilton thinks it might have what it takes to avoid disappointing its audience this time around. Cancel those weekend plans and plump up the sofa cushions: one of Netflix’s biggest ever hit series is back. By this, I don’t mean Squid Game, the inventive Korean thriller that returned for season two at Christmas. Or Wednesday, the teen-focused Addams Family adaptation due to release its much-anticipated second season later this year. I don’t mean Ryan Murphy’s Monster, either – another streaming phenomenon that recently came back for more. No, I’m talking about The Night Agent, the pulpy spy series that debuted in March 2023 and became the streamer’s sixth-most-viewed series ever. Strangely, amid a sea of constantly replenishing “content”, The Night Agent may turn out to be one of the few shows whose return doesn’t disappoint.
For many TV series, the second go-around – what American pundits sometimes refer to as a “sophomore season” – has proved a difficult nut to crack. The aforementioned Squid Game, for instance, failed to recapture the zeitgeisty buzz of its first season, which cut through pop culture like a thunderbolt during the tail end of the Covid pandemic. So, too, did the juggernaut hit Tiger King when it returned for a redundant season two. This isn’t a problem unique to Netflix, of course – acclaimed shows on traditional networks, such as True Detectives or Yellowjackets, have been completely derailed by an errant season two. But it’s a predicament that Netflix finds itself in particularly often, thanks chiefly to the sheer volume of content being churned out, and the considerable, pressure-inducing audience size for any one hit.
