The Night Agent Stars Talk About Peter's Huge Lie At End Of Episode 5 — And The 'Heartbreaking' Aftermath
The following contains spoilers from Episode 5 of The Night Agent Season 2; all 10 episodes are now streaming on Netflix.
Man, did anyone else wanna hide behind the couch on behalf of Peter Sutherland, when at the close of Season 2, Episode 5, he made the choice — and it was quite a choice — to flat-out lie to Noor about how the extraction of her mother and brother from Iran went?
One main gist of the early Season 2 episodes involved Noor (played by The L Word Generation Q's Arienne Mandi), a low-level aide in the Iranian mission to the UN in New York, and how she had access to critical, presumably explosive documents that were in the hands of Abbas, the ambassador to the UN.
Once photos of said documents were taken using Noor's phone, she leveraged the desperately needed intel to get both her mother and her brother discreetly flown out of Iran. Their backs against the wall, Catherine (Amanda Warren) and Peter (Gabriel Basso) enlisted Sami Saidi (Marwan Kenzari) to handle the exfil.
Sami ran into complication after complication — tl;dr Noor's brother, Farhad, did not want to leave Iran/his girlfriend for the U.S. — and after getting pulled over by the police whilst en route to an airstrip, mayhem ensued. Sami had to shoot the cops, after which Farhad took a shot at his "rescuer"; the kid missed, but Sami did not when returning fire.
Sami then left dead Farhad on the road, and proceeded to the airstrip with Noor's very shook mother.
That night, when Noor rendezvoused with Peter, Catherine Rose in their secret meeting place, Sami called with the bad news, before boarding a plane with the mother. Peter processed the update, then assured Noor that both mom and brother were A-OK. So... she can now fork over the documents. Nothing to see here!
Reflecting on Peter's morally iffy call, Night Agent lead Basso told TVLine, "Lying is not good. And the weight of that decision is not lost on him — that he lied, and then expected Rose to lie for him.
"That's a very unfair thing to do to someone," Basso continued, and for Peter and Rose, in the episodes that follow, "it drives a fissure in their relationship."
As with many of the audibles Peter has called in the wake of partner Alice's murder, lying to Noor in that moment falls under "the right thing done in a wrong way," Basso contends. "He got the documents, but he did it by lying. But in the business of liars" — meaning, the intel community — "is he really a bad person? Or is he doing what the job expects of him? That's an interesting question."
Ehhhh, Noor probably won't find it terribly interesting, when she eventually learns the cold, dark truth.
Previewing her character's reaction, Arienne Mahdi tells TVLine, "I am absolutely distraught by the whole situation. And the way it all unfolds, you just can't even believe it.
"I remember reading the script and being, 'Oh my gosh, is this really happening right now?' It was just heartbreaking, even though Noor was able to find some comfort in Rose."
Will telling this whopper come back to bite Peter in the butt, once Noor learns of his deception?
"It might, it might.... I might," Mahdi quips. "Noor might bite him in the butt!"
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