Peter Sutherland is coming back and heading west. Netflix has ordered a fourth season of the political action thriller starring Gabriel Basso, which will shoot in Los Angeles after two seasons in New York following the Canada-based first installment.
“It’s been a wild ride filming The Night Agent in five countries across three continents to this point and we’re so thrilled that the adventures of Peter Sutherland will continue into Season 4,” series creator, executive producer and showrunner Shawn Ryan said. “Our writers, our cast and our crew stand ready to answer the call to bring our incredible fans even more twists, turns and thrills.”
It is unclear which five countries Ryan is referring to. The Night Agent has actually filmed in six countries so far, Canada (Season 1), U.S. (Season 2 – present), Thailand (Season 2), Türkiye, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic (Season 3). Ryan may be counting countries outside of the U.S.
The most recent renewal comes two weeks after Season 3 was released on Feb. 19. For comparison, the Season 3 renewal came three and a half months ahead the Season 2 premiere. As Deadline reported, Netflix brass this time wanted to see how the new season — the first without Luciane Buchanan as female lead Rose opposite Basso’s Peter — debuts before making a renewal decision. That decision came within the timeframe Ryan projected (In a Jan. 26 interview, he said that he was anticipating it coming in the “next month, month and a half.”)
Season 3’s soft opening weekend raised some concern as The Night Agent took the No. 2 spot on Netflix’s weekly English ranking for the week of Feb. 16 with 8.4M views and no previous seasons reentering the Top 10. That was down from 13.9M (No.1) who tuned in to Season 2 during its first week, with Season 1 at No.4 with 5M, and the roughly 21M views the series raked in for its series debut weekend. (The Night Agent Season 1 remains at No. 10 on Netflix’s list of Most Popular English Show with 98.2M views in its first 91 days of release.)
The 8.4M Season 3 tally was on par with the 8.3M views Netflix’s The Waterfront logged for its opening week last year en route to cancellation.
Netflix brass are said to be high on the current season of The Night Agent, some considering it the best in the series so far creatively. Still, they wanted to see ratings growth after the sluggish start in order to stamp The Night Agent’s renewal passport.
The show delivered some of that in Week 2 with 9.9M views and a return of both Season 1 and Season 2 to the Top 10, at No. 5 with 2.9M views and at No. 8 with 2.7M views, respectively.
That is a nice bump. However, it is worth noting that The Waterfront perked up to 11.6M views in its second week and still got canceled.
Both The Night Agent and The Waterfront come from outside studios, Sony Pictures TV and Universal TV, respectively. But The Night Agent started off as a series under Netflix’s model for moderately budgeted dramas in line with the cost of network one-hours. Additionally, Sony Pictures TV in November received a $31.6M tax credit to move The Night Agent from New York to Los Angeles.
The credit comes with a six-month window to start production, which means that Season 4 should start filming by late May.
That is feasible, Ryan told Deadline last month, revealing that in 2025 Netflix “did quietly pick up a writers room,” which has been working since. “We have some scripts, we are breaking stories,” he said on Jan. 26.
Here are some clues Ryan provided about Season 4 at the time:
After the finance arena-set Season 3, Season 4 will be set in “a world that is present in Los Angeles, it’s not present in New York for the most part; there’s something in the Los Angeles region that exists at a much bigger level than New York.” And no, it’s not Hollywood.
Season 4 will bring back other Season 3 characters besides Peter.
Peter’s new partner is “a new character that we’ve never met before.”
Breaking tradition from Seasons 2 and 3, “at the moment, there is no international location planned at the beginning of Season 4.”
The new season will question the justification of the Night Action program.
In Season 3, Night Agent Peter Sutherland (Basso) is called in to track down a young Treasury Agent who fled to Istanbul with sensitive government intel after killing his boss. This kicks off a sequence of events where Peter, working with a relentless journalist (Genesis Rodriguez), investigates a dark money network while avoiding its paid assassins.
Ryan and Marney Hochman executive produce for MiddKid Productions; Seth Gordon and Julia Gunn for Exhibit A; James Vanderbilt, William Sherak, Paul Neinstein and Nicole Tossou for Project X; David Beaubaire for Sunset Lane Media; Munis Rashid, Paul Bernard, Guy Ferland, and Seth Fisher.
Recent Netflix productions in Los Angeles include Nobody Wants This S2, Running Point S2, The Lincoln Lawyer S4, the upcoming film Animals directed by Ben Affleck, Beef S2, and Monster S4.