‘The Night Agent’s Gabriel Basso Reacts to Those Shocking Season 3 Deaths and the One Character Who Can’t Die

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[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 3 of The Night Agent.]

Summary

Season 3 of the Netflix series ‘The Night Agent’ reveals The Broker’s past but keeps him ominously unknowable.
Peter Sutherland, played by Gabriel Basso, questions everyone as he deals with the loss of someone close to him.
Peter confronts power and seeks balance as he works to get answers.

From creator/showrunner Shawn Ryan, Season 3 of the Netflix series The Night Agent follows Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) as he is sent to track down and keep safe a Treasury Agent named Jay Batra (Suraj Sharma) who fled with sensitive government intel after killing his boss. Things quickly become way more complicated once The Broker, aka Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum), gets involved, drawing in a dark money network, an assassin (Stephen Moyer), and a journalist (Genesis Rodriguez), whose connection to the mission goes far deeper than she initially lets on. As they work to uncover who’s responsible for everything that’s happening, it raises the stakes and the consequences and makes Peter question everyone’s motives.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat one-on-one with series star Gabriel Basso about all the twists, shocking moments, and surprising deaths in Season 3. During the interview he discussed getting some answers about The Broker, the dynamic between Peter and Isabel (Rodriguez), what losing Catherine Weaver (Amanda Warren) means for Peter, facing off with Moyer’s assassin and having a moment to bond with his son, his favorite fight scenes, getting to tell off the President of the United States, how he felt about Adam (David Lyons), whether Peter might ever see Rose (Luciane Buchanan) again, and what kind of partner he thinks could make an interesting pairing.

Collider: I really enjoyed this season. A lot of things happened, and a lot of things came together this season.

GABRIEL BASSO: Yeah. I’m glad you liked it.

Season 3 of ‘The Night Agent’ Provides More Insight Into The Broker and His Motivations

“Who is this guy?”

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland sitting next to Louis Herthum as The Broker in The Night Agent Season 3

This season really digs into The Broker and tells us more about who he is, his history, and everything he’s been doing. After building up that character last season, what was it like to actually get some of those answers for yourself and see how Peter played into all of it? How did you feel about the answers to those questions?

BASSO: It’s always tricky answering things that people might not even be asking to begin with, like, “Who is this guy?” Part of what makes The Broker interesting to me was, “Who is this guy?” The risk is answering those questions and removing that element of, “Oh, I wonder how he got started? And who is he?” I thought they did a good job there, but I didn’t necessarily have those questions going into it. I always thought it was more interesting for me, at least for Peter, to not have those answers, to not have a face to the name, to not have any idea of who he is and what he’s out to get, ultimately. But I thought (creator) Shawn [Ryan] and the writers did a good job of giving us information. It felt additive. It didn’t just feel expository for no reason.

I thought it was a really interesting choice to introduce us to Isabel and let us get to know her this season before revealing who she really is and what her connection is to The Broker. That really gave us, as viewers, time to know her, to like her, to maybe even trust her a little bit, rather than just automatically being suspicious about her. How did you feel about that character and how that dynamic evolved? It’s so interesting to watch Peter and Isabel together because they have very different skill sets.

BASSO: It’s funny how Peter finds these women that are information specialists. By nature of her being a journalist, I think it puts her in an interesting position, a similar position that Peter was in, in Season 1, when finding the truth condemns someone in your life. To find the truth for this journalist, for Isabel, she has to go against her father, who she might not like anyway, but that she has love for and that she’s now complicit in destroying. I think that’s a cool dynamic for a journalist.

Gabriel Basso as Peter, Amanda Warren as Catherine and Albert Jones as Mosley in The Night Agent

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I really like that Peter has quite a few women in his orbit who are smart and capable, who he can work with, who he doesn’t have to just swoop in and save.

BASSO: Yeah.

It’s particularly interesting with the First Lady because she’s not just doing things because her husband tells her to. She’s evil because she’s chosen that path for herself. Because of these strong female influences on him, especially with the absence of his father, what was it like to lose Catherine Weaver? How hard was it to know that that character and Amanda Warren is not going to be there for him anymore?

BASSO: With [Diane] Farr lying to him, and him having a distrust in authority figures and in systems, losing somebody who was legitimate and was good is going to be devastating in its own way. He has Mosley now, who I think he trusts and who trusts him. They have that loss in common with Catherine. I think proactive characters are always just more interesting than passive ones anyway. Whether it be Fola [Evans-Akingbola] or [Stephen] Moyer, seeing interesting people have a goal and pursue it is way more interesting than seeing someone, like you’re saying, just get told what to do.

I was surprised by the loss of Catherine. That wasn’t something I saw coming. I figured she’d survive somehow.

BASSO: Yeah, I knew something was going to happen reading it, but I didn’t know who it was going to be. What makes it even more sad is that Peter didn’t want to use Jay as bait. It was their plan. He was trying not to use him. And ultimately, that’s what killed Catherine.

Gabriel Basso Loved Getting To Face Off With Stephen Moyer in Season 4 of ‘The Night Agent’

“For a majority of the season, he’s just chasing me around, shooting at me.”

Stephen Moyer as the assassin kneeling next to a sitting Gabriel Basso as Peter in The Night Agent Season 3

Stephen Moyer’s character is interesting because, while we learn more about The Broker, we never even learn his name. He doesn’t work for one specific person. We don’t know necessarily why he’s doing all the things he’s doing or how he got to where he is. And then, you have the episode together where you’re just in each other’s faces the whole time. What was that like to explore and to find those moments between you?

BASSO: I loved it. For a majority of the season, he’s just chasing me around, shooting at me. He obviously has his whole storyline, but as far as Pete goes, this guy is just chasing him around. So, to have a scene where Moyer and I got to act together was really cool. These two characters who’ve been in perpetual motion the whole season are now fixed to a position literally tied to a chair. That was really cool. Characters like that, in general, are very interesting to me. Like you’re saying, you don’t know their names, and you don’t know what motivates them. In counter surveillance or surveillance and intelligence community stuff, everything is a lie. There are people like that, who are just total non-entities, officially. It’s a cool character to have in the show. I think it added a lot.

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland outside next to a brick wall in Season 2 of The Night Agent

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When I talked to Shawn Ryan about this season, he told me that that episode was one of his favorites of the entire series, and that he thinks it’s the best acting work that you’ve done in the entire show. Especially when it comes to the moments between you and the young actor who plays the assassin’s son, what was that like to find?

BASSO: It’s interesting, I wasn’t that young, but I was a child actor. There’s this sense that you’re out of your depth as a kid, being surrounded by adults and doing something that necessarily is adult. You’re working, and you shouldn’t be working as a kid, I don’t think. Not morally, but you should have a childhood. So, I think a lot of that actually played on screen, with me knowing what that’s like and trying to help the kid out a little bit. Having that relationship or that dynamic on set is always weird, to see a kid there who has to work, who has to go to school as well, who’s being treated like an adult but isn’t yet. I thought Callum [Vinson] did really well. That scene, specifically, was cool to me. I think Peter feels kind of guilty for using him and manipulating him and lying to him, but ultimately, he doesn’t want to destroy the kid. He’s re-instilling his faith in his father, being like, “Hey, you have a good dad.” All that stuff was cool.

He is really the only thing that’s there to humanize his father, who’s this assassin. And at the same time, Peter is manipulating him, but he never really puts him in harm’s way. I just thought all of that worked on so many interesting levels to watch.

BASSO: Yeah, and I think he sees a lot of himself in the kid. The kid doesn’t know what his dad does, and he is a victim of this world that’s beyond him. So, I think Peter is definitely sympathetic to that.

Gabriel Basso Enjoyed Doing the Action Sequences in Season 4 of ‘The Night Agent’

“There’s a lot of cool stuff that we got to do.”

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland in an underwater fight scene in The Night Agent Season 3

You shoot the series across different countries, and you get to do a variety of types of action every season. What was your favorite fight scene or action sequence this season?

BASSO: I loved the driving stuff in Istanbul. I loved the water fight. And I loved the fight in the subway station. There’s a lot of cool stuff that we got to do this season.

I love fights where you just have to grab at things to fight somebody. I always find those moments more fun because, as a viewer, they’re the type of fight that you could imagine finding yourself in, in real life.

BASSO: Yeah. Josh [Fried] and Chris [Cenatiempo], the stunt coordinator and the fight choreographer, are very adamant that we use the environment in the fight because otherwise it feels lifeless. It feels sterile. Of course, you would pick up a bottle or a bar or a hammer if it’s there. We were very deliberate about involving the environment in a lot of ways.

As the season goes on, we learn that the First Lady is shady, and even the President is shady. In episode nine, there’s something that’s that feels satisfying about Peter saying to President Hagan, “With all due respect, sir, fuck you.”

BASSO: Yeah.

Is it fun to have a moment like that? In that moment, do you think that the president just doesn’t understand who and what he’s dealing with when it comes to Peter?

BASSO: I think ultimately, on principle, that’s where that line was motivated from. It was like, “Dude, I’m so sick of all of this. I’m just sick of being lied to. I’m sick of all of you thinking you’re above the law, that you’re not accountable, and that you can just tell me to stop.” That sort of disgust with a system has been culminating since Season 1. I think he’s just so sick of it all. And now, it’s like, “No, I’m going to destroy you, and I’m going to enjoy it.”

Most of us have probably had an authority figure in our lives that we wished we could say something like that to. It doesn’t matter if it’s the President, if they’re being that person. That moment felt much more human than trained agent.

BASSO: Yeah, definitely. It’s from human to human. He’s still on business and calls him, “Mr. President.” But genuinely, from human to human, it’s like, “Dude, fuck you.”

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland leaning on a wall outside in Season 2 of The Night Agent

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After everything with The Broker and everything we now know about Jacob Monroe, how did you feel about the way things ended with him? What was your reaction to learning that it would be Adam who killed him, and that he would lie and say he shot himself? How did you feel about learning how that would all play out and come to an end?

BASSO: I loved that. I loved how anybody could do it. I remember reading that and being like, “Oh, my gosh! Adam, no!” That’s why I love this show. Anybody can die, except Peter, seemingly. Anybody can be victimized by motives that are beyond them, that they were ignorant of. That’s the scary thing to me.

It’s an interesting moment because you build up The Broker all season, and then he’s just gone and that’s it.

BASSO: Yeah, and it comes from someone who’s so close to Peter and who Peter trusted. It’s definitely a cool moment in the show. It’s one of my favorite moments.

In the finale, Peter talks about trying to find a work-life balance, which is not easy for anyone to find, but especially not someone in his position. It also feels like that could open the door to him seeing Rose again. Would you still like to see Rose come back, possibly in Season 4? Does that still feel unresolved old for you, or do you feel like he just needs to let her go?

BASSO: I do think Peter loves Rose, and still loves Rose, and she is a presence in his life. What I don’t want to do is repeat the steps of foot in, foot out. I think if he were to pursue Rose or have Rose come back into his life, it would have to be very clear about how the dynamic is now and it’s not, “I don’t want to put you in harm’s way.” “Well, then, why did you call me?” I don’t want to do Season 2 again. Ultimately, if he were able to find her again, it would have to make sense, for her and for him.

There is also the talk in the finale about the possibility of Peter getting a partner, which I would imagine would take some of the pressure off of him. Obviously, that didn’t work out so well with Adam this season.

BASSO: Yeah. I loved Adam.

Gabriel Basso Thinks It Would Be Fun To See Peter Sutherland Team Up With a Hardcore Partner in ‘The Night Agent’

“Having someone there that’s willing to push him further would be cool to see.”

Would it be interesting to see him with a real partner? What kind of partner do you think would work best alongside him?

BASSO: I’m not sure about work best, but I would love to see Peter with someone who’s more hardcore than he is. Having someone there that’s willing to push him further would be cool to see. Everybody in his life up to this point, even Adam, is always like, “Hey, man, you need to find some balance. You need to find some balance.” It would be cool to see someone be like, “No. No, we’re not having balance. We’re this now, dude.” To be around somebody who’s willing to push you even that much further, that would be interesting.