Warning: finale spoilers for The Night Agent season two.
When Netflix renewed The Night Agent for season three ahead of season two streaming, it gave the show the chance to tell a longer continuing story. Season one, adapted from Matthew Quirk’s novel of the same name, had been a mostly contained plot, and very few of its supporting cast recurred after the finale. Many of season two’s new characters, however, will be back next time because their story is only just beginning.
Chief of those new characters is Jacob Monroe, played by Westworld’s Louis Herthum. The shadowy intelligence broker has been illegally trading information, having people assassinated by his fixer Solomon Vega, and generally pulling important global strings for years. Now, he’s just weeks away from having a US president and a Night Action double agent in his pocket. What’s his game and what will it all mean for Peter Sutherland?
Who is Jacob Monroe?
Chronologically, the earliest we see Jacob Monroe in The Night Agent season two is in the eight-years-ago flashback that opens the finale. At an event to mark the opening of a new building that Monroe funded (but, preferring to remain behind the scenes, chose not to have named after him), he’s approached by Richard Hagan, the populist politician whose nomination President Travers declined to endorse.
Hagan, the series makes quite clear, is a douchebag and a racist whose red-hat wearing supporters share his unenlightened America-first views (see the rally scene in which Noor cleverly weaponizes their bigotry against Muslim men like Javad in order to escape him). To Monroe, Hagan bemoans the Asian surname on the new building and is coldly reminded that the philanthropist it belongs to is American born and bred.
Jacob Monroe therefore, is not a racist asshole. Neither, it turns out, is he a bad boss. When his fixer Solomon asked for a 10% raise and haplessly negotiated that down to 3%, Monroe happily gave him 15% and a promotion. Unfortunately for them, Night Action’s Catherine Weaver negated the good news when she killed Vega – news that Monroe was visibly upset by hearing.
So, Jacob Monroe is capable of fairness, affection and has the same distaste for soon-to-be US president Richard Hagan shared by every other right-thinking person in The Night Agent. All of this is worth establishing because everything else we know about Monroe tells us that he’s basically the devil.
President Hagan
Over the last eight years, Monroe has fixed three elections for Hagan, smoothing his path to the Oval Office. Most recently, he leaked documents that incriminated Hagan’s opponent Knox and forced him to drop out of the presidential race.
If Monroe hates Hagan, then why? Because having the president of the United States in his control will make him more powerful. Monroe’s business is intelligence brokering. He sources national secrets and sells them on, regardless of the risk to life and national security this may cause. As Catherine Weaver explains to Peter in the season two finale, Hagan’s isolationist policies will actively help Monroe’s business. When international cooperation breaks down, the demand for intelligence sky-rockets. With access to every classified file that passes through the president’s desk, Hagan will be the most powerful man in the world.
What drives him? At this stage, it’s hard to say. Monroe seems to be an extreme pragmatist who’s able to compartmentalise feelings of guilt or empathy in order to continue accruing leverage, money and power. He sold the information leaked by the CIA’s Warren Stocker about the Foxglove chemical weapons project to a USA-hating terrorist hell-bent on getting revenge on America for a past wrong. He sold a list of the names and addresses of Iranians who’d escaped Iran’s oppressive Revolutionary Guard and were living under asylum in Europe straight back to the IRGC. He had apparently no misgivings about allowing a fearsome chemical agent be released in Manhattan or the many deaths he ordered Solomon and his goons to commit.
Peter the Double Agent
A pet US president isn’t the only thing Monroe gained in The Night Agent season two; he also took control of Peter Sutherland… or so he thought. Realising how much Peter cared about Rose Larkin, Monroe manipulated him into committing a criminal act in exchange for information that would lead Peter to rescue Rose. He did it so that he could make use of Peter at a later date and have something over him to ensure his cooperation when the time came.
To save Rose, Peter broke into the UN building in NYC and stole a classified file. Monroe then used his connections to wipe all trace of Peter from the UN building’s security systems, but could use the footage to expose Peter’s crime at any time. Peter’s now on the hook to Monroe and has to answer his call whenever it comes.
However, Peter Sutherland and Catherine Weaver have struck a deal: Peter will be pardoned for letting suspect Solomon Vega out of custody, in exchange for becoming a double agent, just like his dad planned to before he was killed. When Monroe does call, Peter will answer, and then he’ll secretly infiltrate Monroe’s group and report everything back to Weaver in order to – in Weaver’s words – expose and destroy.
Did Monroe Make Peter Sutherland Sr. a Leak?
Here’s a theory: when Peter’s dad was first approached to leak government secrets for money, was Jacob Monroe behind it?
It’s a good fit for Jacob’s MO, and narratively, would give even more significance to Catherine Weaver having been on the Night Action mission that investigated Peter Sutherland Sr. in the first place. Consider all the parallels too, between Warren Stocker and Peter’s father – both were agents and family men targeted by Monroe to sell secrets, and after Solomon shot Warren, both left behind a single son.
We know that Solomon can’t have been Peter’s dad’s murderer, but will something in season three throw up a connection between his ignominious end and Jacob Monroe? How would Peter react to finding that out? That’s a confrontation we’d all like to see.
The Night Agent season two is streaming now on Netflix.
The post The Night Agent Season 3 Theory: Has Jacob Monroe Been Pulling Strings From the Start? appeared first on Den of Geek.
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