Forget 'The Night Agent,' Netflix's 14-Episode Spy Thriller Remains a Great Weekend Binge
Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter.
She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven.
The CIA probably has plenty of lawyers who'd rather spend their working hours behind a desk. Owen Hendricks (Noah Centineo) isn't one of them, though he certainly hasn't volunteered for the alternative. In The Recruit on Netflix, a newly appointed lawyer faces the unpleasant possibility of threats from a former CIA agent who's picked up a lot of knowledge along the way. Owen finds himself forced to make deals with offenders, travel around the globe to gather the necessary information, and get beaten by professionals in the field of investigation.
Created by Alexi Hawley, the mind behind the television series The Rookie, this Netflix show premiered in December 2022, with the second season released in January 2025. However, the show was canceled in March of the same year after 14 episodes were produced. For viewers looking for something like The Night Agent, The Recruit proves appealing, especially for anyone who likes watching a young lawyer make things worse.
'The Recruit' Starts With a Stack of Threatening Letters and Gets Much Worse
Owen's first week at the CIA is already going badly when his colleagues, Lester (Colton Dunn) and Violet (Aarti Mann), decide to make the new guy responsible for sorting through graymail. The letters come from people threatening to expose government secrets, and most of them are apparently not worth worrying about. One exception is Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), a former CIA asset sitting in an Arizona prison for murder. She claims to possess information that could expose American operatives in Russia and Belarus, and she wants the agency to arrange her release.
Owen is tasked with figuring out whether she is telling the truth. A reasonable assignment for a lawyer, perhaps, if it didn't involve Max knowing things she has no business knowing. Her connection to the agency runs deeper than he initially realizes, and the more he investigates, the more people take an interest in what he has uncovered. Owen then goes to Yemen to investigate Max's past acquaintance, not fully aware of the perils involved — all after being beaten up, losing a fingernail, and realizing that arranging diplomatic immunity is worth it before arriving at a location like this.
Max, meanwhile, is hardly a helpless prisoner waiting to be rescued. She has her own agenda, and her dealings with Owen are shaped by the fact that neither can fully trust the other. Their arrangement becomes one of the series' most interesting relationships, particularly as Owen learns how much information she's been keeping from him.
Noah Centineo's Unlikely CIA Rookie Is the Best Part of the Show
Centineo's casting is one of the more interesting things about The Recruit. Having gained great popularity through Netflix's To All the Boys I've Loved Before movie series, he gets the chance to play a character who faces much bigger problems than romantic dilemmas. Owen keeps his relatable, slightly awkward personality, but this time he has to learn very different skills to cope with a new situation. He isn't particularly convincing as a hardened operative, at least initially. His instinct is to talk, negotiate, and improvise, even when the person standing across from him has made it abundantly clear that conversation is no longer the priority. Sometimes it works, but other times, he gets hurt.
Kristian Bruun is particularly entertaining as Janus Ferber, an anxious CIA colleague whose paranoia about agency operations is not always misplaced. Vondie Curtis-Hall plays Walter Nyland, Owen's boss and the agency's general counsel, who has the unenviable task of managing a new employee who seems incapable of keeping a low profile. The office scenes give The Recruit a personality that isn't always present in more conventional spy dramas.
Owen's education moves on in the next season as the story shifts to South Korea, and the South Korean National Intelligence Service enters the story. Teo Yoo joins the cast as Jang Kyu, a South Korean intelligence officer, while Owen navigates another challenging set of relationships with people who may be working toward the same goal.
By then, he is much more at ease outside the CIA office than before, but that doesn’t mean he's become a seasoned operative overnight. He is still as hasty as he used to be, still ready to risk it all, and still has a tendency to disregard orders. Nevertheless, he now knows more about the world he has come to, though he can still become problematic in some situations. His willingness to get personally involved is particularly important. Integer agencies value discretion and emotional distance, neither of which is Owen's strong suit. He gets attached to people who would normally be regarded as expendable, which makes him hard to control. It also gives him a reason to doubt his superiors' decisions.
Why 'The Recruit' Deserves a Spot on Your Netflix Watchlist
The comparison to The Night Agent is particularly intriguing because the two series share much more than their streaming home. Both shows feature government secrets, dangerous political situations, and protagonists who face circumstances beyond their original responsibilities. Hawley even mentioned that The Recruit was once called "The Chaos Agent" but changed its title because Netflix was also preparing to launch The Night Agent at the same time.
Still, the characters in the shows are different. For instance, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) is an FBI agent, while Owen is a lawyer with no experience as a field agent, which is one of the cornerstones of the comedy in The Recruit.
For those who have seen all the Netflix spy thrillers, Owen's sad journey into CIA life is a great choice. Just keep in mind that if people start throwing a pile of threatening letters your way, maybe this kind of work should go to somebody else.
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