Fantasy fans may not be particularly enthused after being left on the outside looking yet again, but those who binged their way through all 10 episodes of The Night Agent as quickly as possible were over the moon that The Shield creator Shawn Ryan’s espionage action thriller landed a renewal for a second season.
What makes it all the more impressive is that Netflix pulled the trigger on a sophomore run of episodes less than a week after the first batch dropped, but it’s easy to see why. In racking up 168.71 million viewing hours in its first four days of availability, The Night Agent became the streaming service’s third most-watched original show ever behind only Tim Burton’s Wednesday and Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer.
However, Ryan has revealed to Deadline that the company almost said no, which could have ended up with NBCU swooping in to develop The Night Agent as either an NBC or Peacock exclusive. Suffice to say, it wouldn’t have garnered anywhere near the same viewing figures had it ended up anywhere other than the market-leading on-demand platform.
One of the conditions of Netflix coming aboard was the proviso that Ryan made a handful of significant changes to the pilot script he’d been shopping around town, which ultimately proved to be for the best. While it isn’t the greatest example of its genre that you’re ever likely to see, The Night Agent still ticks all of the expected boxes when it comes to glossy, high-end entertainment designed to be devoured in no more than a couple of sittings.
And to think, Netflix almost gave it the hard pass before finally relenting.