“The Night Agent” showrunner breaks down burning season 2 questions, teases season 3

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Night Agent season 2.

Peter Sutherland is a night agent no more.

In the nail-biting season 2 finale of The Night Agent, Gabriel Basso's rookie operative is tasked with going even further undercover to work as a double agent. But that comes after meeting several new characters, including Peter's handler Catherine (Amanda Warren) and Iranian spy Noor (Arienne Mandi); a terrorist plot involving a dictator's dysfunctional family and chemical weapons; and what seems to be the end of Peter and Rose's (Luciane Buchanan) relationship (we know, we're heartbroken, too).

Peter's new mission also happens to be his ticket out of prison time after he broke into the U.N. and stole information for "intelligence broker" Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum) that ended up swinging the presidential election in Governor Hagan's (Ward Horton) favor. His task: Wait for Monroe to call, do whatever he says to earn his trust, and then destroy his organization from the inside out.

Related: The Night Agent season 2 finale ending explained

Entertainment Weekly caught up with Night Agent showrunner Shawn Ryan to answer our questions on season 2 and hear what's to come in season 3.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So, Peter's back to waiting for a phone to ring. He's not in a basement this time, but he's back to where he started. 

SHAWN RYAN: The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

He's now following in his father's footsteps as a double agent, and we've always seen him willing to go against authority if he thinks it's right. What does he think about this double agent thing? Is his father's shadow over him? 

I think the shadow is still over him to some extent, as we saw with his interrogation in episode 2 of this season with the guy who had passed on the information. I think he's determined to ultimately take a different path than his father took. I think his father didn't have the same reasons as Peter did for doing what he did. Peter was trying very hard to save lives, was trying very hard to find where that mobile lab was, where Rose was, to try to find those cancers before they were utilized. So I think his conscience is probably pretty solid on that front. But in that final episode, as he referred to when he finds out what some of the unintended consequences were of his actions, I think he feels a great deal of guilt and responsibility that I think will carry us into season 3 for him to try to make up for that.

Do you think he's learned his lesson? We saw Catherine getting so frustrated with him for going AWOL multiple times. Do you think there's still a chance he could go rogue again?

"Rogue" is a tough term, because rogue can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. I think one of Peter's great superpowers is his conscience, his ability to know the difference between what's morally right, morally wrong. That became more difficult in season 2. Season 1 wasn't that morally difficult for him; it was logistically difficult. But in season 2, we endeavored to make things more and more morally difficult for him. So he's someone, especially with Rose's help and his conversations with her, who's trying to figure out what you do when there's no good choice. Do you go with the second-worst choice? Do you try to come up with a third way? Do you give up on the game? But he's also someone that doesn't tend to give up. So I think he's trying to figure out what kind of person he can be and [whether he] can maintain his moral center doing this kind of work. And I think that's where he arrives at the end of season 2, and it'll be his starting point, I think, for season 3.

Speaking of Rose, they have what seems like a pretty legit breakup scene. Is this really the end of Rose and Peter's relationship?

I would say that nothing is ever really the end on this show, for sure. One of the great things I love about television shows is that they are a living organism and that while the people have enjoyed the first season and now they get to watch the second season, we still don't know how many seasons we can make. I would say that that moment, that breakup scene, felt true to us, the writers, as we were crafting the second season. That they live in two very different worlds, that he wants to be in this world that's dangerous, that she doesn't particularly want to be in a world that's dangerous, and yet they have this incredibly strong connection forged over living through and helping each other through these traumatic events. So there's always going to be this incredible connection between the two. What that will mean for their onscreen pairing I think is something that we continue to talk about and will figure out.

So, I don't know yet, because we haven't definitively decided what it means for the characters. I will just tell you that we love the character of Rose. We love the character of Peter. We love Luciane and Gabriel as actors. I think they're tremendous together. When we started to work on season 2, I came back to the writers with what I felt were strengths of the show from season 1, and the very first one I wrote down was Peter and Rose together. So we don't take that lightly. At the same time, we don't want to craft something that feels inauthentic just to be a fan service, to keep them together in ways that might feel unrealistic. So that will be the responsibility and the struggle of the writing staff and myself as we craft further seasons.

Related: The Night Agent: Gabriel Basso is on the dangerous hunt for a mole in action-packed season 2 trailer

Do you think that Peter will ever learn to compartmentalize in the way he needs to, now that he's even further undercover than a night agent? Something tells me he might not. 

That, probably, is not one of his superpowers, but I think the fact that he's trying to be a good person while doing this job is admirable, because the job is very morally queasy and you have to take shortcuts. Sometimes you've got to deceive people. Sometimes you've got to utilize parts of your personality that you might not necessarily be proud of for some greater good. So no, I don't think Peter will ever completely be able to compartmentalize. He just cares too much, which I think is one of the things that makes us care about him.

Is this the last we’ll see of Noor? 

We never know when the last we'll see of somebody is. For instance, we loved the character of [Secret Service agent] Chelsea [Arrington] in season 1 and Fola [Evans-Akingbola] who played her, and I had to call her at one point and say, listen, we're breaking season 2, and I don't think there's a storyline here for you, and it has nothing to do with your ability or what you did on the show. And then right at the end, we found a place to put her in, and now I believe she'll be a part of season 3. So I never want to speculate too much about what the future holds for any of these characters because there's always a possibility that we come up with a lightning strike idea. Noor was conceived as a character that would have this certain beginning, middle, and end. I think Arienne, who plays her, was tremendous. All my writers came back from set just raving about the job she did, and so I'm certainly open to more of Noor.

Why did Noor never consider that her brother might not want to leave Iran?

That's a good question. I think she was more afraid of the mandatory army conscription than perhaps he was. I think she's been away on this job for a while and may not have realized that her 17, about to turn 18-year-old brother was evolving in ways. I also think it's possible that a woman might look at that sort of society and have a different point of view of it than a man might. And so I think one of the things is that we all have blind spots. We also tried to sort of seed in the idea that Farhad [Kiarash Amani], her brother, has this girlfriend now, and I feel like that was a relatively new relationship, and he was kind of deep in that first big love thing, and Noor may not have been completely aware of that. She probably knew that he was seeing a girl, but might not have understood the depth of those feelings. If you think about the first person you ever fell in love with and the idea of being torn apart from them and going to another country, it's certainly enough to make him reconsider things in ways that she didn't totally understand.

How afraid of Hagan should we be?

Well, that's one of the things that we're deciding as we write season 3. I think the idea that somebody could come into power and be beholden or owe somebody like Jacob Monroe [Louis Herthum] is a scary proposition. I think it's something that we've seen in other countries and that we worry about in this country. Is the leader of our country somebody who's in it for the right reasons, or is it somebody that's made some sort of pact with the devil to sort of get there? I think that's something that we all worry a little bit about. So knowing the nature of this show, you should probably worry a little bit.

Related: Brittany Snow goes undercover in The Night Agent season 2 photos (exclusive)

What can you tell me about season 3? You were going to do some filming in Istanbul and in New York. Where in production are you right now? 

We have written most of the season. We still have a little bit more writing to do, so I'm always reluctant until that's all done because things could always change. But we did do, I think it was 13 days of filming in Istanbul in December and one day in November. We've got some really amazing stuff. We introduce some new characters. We bring back some returning characters, and we filmed a car chase I think is going to be probably the most spectacular stunt sequence we've ever done on the show.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Season 2 of The Night Agent is streaming now on Netflix.

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