Opinion

‘The Night Agent’: It’s Time For Peter & Rose To End Their Relationship — For Good

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Night Agent Season 2.]

Let’s face it: Meeting people in an organic, meaningful way in 2025 that doesn’t involve swiping and emojis can feel like mission impossible. So we totally understand why someone who manages to stumble upon this lost art of love might be hesitant to let it go when it happens. That being said, Peter (Gabriel Basso) and Rose (Luciane Buchanan), the puppy-love partners at the center of Netflix’s The Night Agent, need to let it go.

For those who may be rusty on Season 1 of the spy thriller, here’s a refresher on how these two crazy kids got together. Peter was a low-level FBI agent assigned to answer a secret, solitary rotary phone in the basement of the White House. One night, it finally rings. On the other end is the sound of a panicked woman, Rose, who has been given the number and corresponding codewords by her aunt and uncle just before they are gunned down in their home with her as a witness. Their identities as Night Agent operatives send Peter and Rose barreling into a conspiracy to kill the president, a plot they discover is being orchestrated by a mole stationed mere feet from the Oval Office.

By the end, they have saved the commander in chief from stepping onto a doomed Air Force One, earned Peter a promotion to the Night Agent program, and fallen deeply into a new relationship forged in a hail of bullets. And really, who among us could resist a romance with the person who keeps you from being killed by bad guys and worse politicians? Ultimately, though, Peter accepts his new assignment and is shipped off to parts unknown for training, kissing Rose goodbye on the tarmac, unsure whether they will ever see each other again.

Courtesy of Netflix

Season 2 of The Night Agent, now streaming on Netflix, solves that mystery for them both pretty quickly. After his partner dies during a compromised mission in Bangkok, Peter is on the run in New York looking for answers to who may have sabotaged them. Someone aware of Peter’s connection to Rose (even though they haven’t talked in months) contacts the emerging tech genius in California, hoping to smoke him out (which they do). Unwisely, she sets out to track down the man who ghosted her (admittedly, he was busy!) and finds herself pulled back into thwarting the kind of terrorist plot that already left her with severe post-traumatic stress.

We won’t spoil just how Peter and Rose save the day by stopping the release of a toxic airborne weapon at the end of Season 2, but the aftermath leads directly to him accepting a new off-the-books assignment to infiltrate the inner circle of Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum), a quietly terrifying figure who sells intel to the highest bidder. Ahead of the already-ordered third season, the couple part ways and are given yet another chance to make a clean break — and they should take it.

We don’t say that because we don’t like them together or because we want Rose to leave the show. In fact, when they focus on the mission, they have proven to be effectively well-balanced partners in unwinding the tangled web of terrorist intentions. But realistically, these two are kidding themselves if they think they can make this long-distance-at-best relationship work with zero quality time and the fate of the world constantly bearing down on it.

If Peter was a decade or more into his Night Agent era, when he might more leverage to dictate where he was based or what holidays he gets off, maybe they could make a schedule. But what do these two really know about each other outside of the threat of bodily harm or worse? What would normal look like for these two? Even without the top-secret day job, relationships are hard. As Peter’s ill-fated Night Agent partner Alice (Brittany Snow) plainly tells him, “Relationships are dangerous, even more for normal people, which we are not.” That’s pretty much the number one rule for any spy: A personal life is distracting, and it’s exactly what an enemy will prey upon.

Christopher Saunders / Netflix

While he has natural gifts, Peter has a startling track record of losing sight of his mission any time Rose is in danger, risking countless lives in Season 2 to try and save her. They barely know each other and yet even shadowy middle-man Jacob recognizes her as his weak spot. So when Rose is kidnapped by the terrorists trying to unleash a fatal gas into the United Nations building in New York City, Jacob doesn’t even have to work that hard to entrap Peter into breaking into that same UN building to steal classified information in exchange for Rose’s location. He is blinded by his love for her at the worst possible moment, and sheer luck is all that keeps it from being a fatal move for everyone involved. Even his boss, Catherine (Amanda Warren), calls him out for putting Rose before his job, his duty, the city, and literally everyone else — a charge he can only half heartedly refute. We never want to discourage love in its many forms, but if he is America’s best hope at not plunging into terrorist-induced chaos, we would love for him to keep his eye on the ball and at least consider the many before the one.

In all fairness to them both, Peter repeatedly tries to get Rose to go back to California after she miraculously finds him in New York at the start of Season 2, and she is eventually honest with herself and him that the stressors that come with the spy game continue to trigger her lingering PTSD and moral code. But it’s not until the season finale that they actually do something about it. By then, she is living back in California, while Peter is enduring off-the-books interrogations for the various times he ignored orders to save his girlfriend. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they have finally learned their lesson. And yet, something tells us these two will still be pulled back into each other’s orbit in Season 3 despite his increasingly rigid availability.

In television, there is an often-ignored authenticity to leaving behind the relationships that help us through a difficult time but don’t make sense for the future. It’s natural and a part of life, even if TV writers feel bound to the characters and the stories they have nurtured. The Night Agent has been a surprising addition to the spy genre, but we hope what’s to come includes some much-needed time apart for its central couple. The show is begging for it. Just look at the single episode we got with Alice as Peter’s partner and how thrilling it was to have a new (and appropriately qualified) person at his side. Someone who has more experience, who adds a different energy and chemistry to the life-or-death stakes of his life. Peter can be a natural-born savior all he wants, but even the best can benefit from having a new partner — on the job and in the bedroom.

Should Peter and Rose call it quits on their romance? Vote and sound off in the comments below!

The Night Agent, Season 2, Streaming Now, Netflix