The Night Agent Recap: Treachery

Poor Noor. She keeps looking for someone to trust, someone who can offer the best possible deal to her family, but she keeps picking the wrong people. To be fair, there’s not really a right person to consult in these circumstances; basically everyone in this cast has failed her, and it’s hard to imagine a version of this story where she actually gets everything she wants. That’s part of what makes Noor a sympathetic character. We understand where she’s coming from, even when it’s a miscalculation.

At this point, you can’t really blame Noor for not believing Sami actually has her mother safe in New York, even though Peter and Rose are telling the truth. Rose just lied to her again about the nature of Farhad’s injuries, so why should she listen to anything she says, especially when nobody can actually get Azita on the phone? Even Peter’s story about the circumstances of Farhad’s death — he shot at Sami first — sounds like an impossibility from her perspective. Noor has a natural inclination toward denial, and she hasn’t seen her brother in a while. At some point he became a man capable of real violence, and she doesn’t know that side of him.

In “Tilt,” Javad finally gets unambiguous proof that Noor is up to something fishy, watching her leave the meeting spot at the same time as Peter and Rose. During their confrontation at the mission, she makes a valiant attempt to amend her story, claiming that Peter is a spy who has been pressuring her to give over files. But Javad sees right through her, and he gets her to admit to the truth about approaching the Americans herself for a deal. This is the scariest and creepiest we’ve ever seen him, between the cruelty of his words (“Farhad died thanks to your treachery”) and his physical gestures: turning her chair to face him directly, for example, or tightly pressing her hand to his face as he reflects on the future he imagined for them.

Despite witnessing this frightening new Javad — a part of him that was always there beneath the surface of their warm flirtation, of course — Noor chooses to trust him over the man who killed her brother, offering up Peter instead of meeting Sami and her mother at the meeting spot. It’s another exciting turn, putting arguably the season’s two most important characters at cross purposes.

Outside of the mission, this episode follows two threads that remain intertwined throughout: While Tomás pulls off multiple heists with his cousin to assemble a chemical weapon and prove himself to Daddy War Criminal, Night Action works on getting answers from Solomon and preventing an attack.

This is the first time Tomás is really getting his hands dirty, and he’s fully committed, gunning down a security guard at the second location while Markus handles the other two. But we only really learn what the men are up to through other characters. Solomon tips Catherine off to the existence of a chemical compound called cyanogen, which happens to have been stolen from a plant in Pennsylvania that very day. She and Peter know the thieves are most likely the same men behind the mobile lab theft, so it’s clear what they’re intending now. The only question is which deadly chemical agent they’re making.

To answer that question, Rose pays a visit to Dr. Wilfred Cole, a chemistry professor at Columbia whose name was on the Foxglove brief. Cole has no interest in being associated with the project, but hearing about the plot to build a weapon is enough to galvanize him. In his basement study at home, he digs up some old files and offers some crucial information: Viktor Bala, Tomás’s father and the leader of some fictional country, used a chemical weapon on protesters after a corruption scandal, claiming he got it from the U.S. The victims faced symptoms similar to those he and his fellow scientists had detected in Foxglove.

But it’s too late to stop the thieves from getting all the materials they need for the weapon. They’ve already stolen oxamyl, another chemical compound, which narrows the list of weapons down to a blistering agent called K.X. And they’ve already stolen hydrazine-BH. They even have someone in mind to build the weapon for them: Wilfred Cole himself. When Tomás and Markus bust into Cole’s house and find the family hidden downstairs, Rose keeps herself alive by arguing that they need her for the construction of the weapon, just in case Cole doesn’t make it.

All of this should significantly accelerate the timetable of the operation, but Catherine is still insistent on Peter staying put without even talking to Solomon. Solomon’s words about Peter’s handler not valuing him properly get in his head, especially when he reminds Peter that he has the ability to stop all of this by meeting with Jacob to learn who exactly is building the weapon. Peter can’t resist the idea, and in the closing moments of the episode, we learn that he has busted Solomon out of captivity.

“Tilt” is another exciting, satisfying episode of The Night Agent, especially with so much interaction between the different sets of characters — and so much more conflict to come. The stakes are higher than ever, and most refreshingly of all, the convolution levels are very manageable right now. I had some concerns early on, but I think it’s safe to say the season is really taking off.

Classified Information

• I really didn’t intend to confine practically every opening flashback to the end, but I suppose that’s a reflection of their relevance. This one is pretty good, though, showing Solomon and Jacob’s meet-cute on the side of the road six years ago. Jacob hired him as a driver after leaving him some valuable information in a folder on his car: the details of the man who hit Celeste with his car and never got caught.

• Some other helpful information: Solomon bought intel from Warren at the CIA and Jacqueline Laurent at the DGSE, so he must have a contact at the FBI who gave him decryption keys to access the Night Action radio channels. That’s how he was able to sabotage Alice in Bangkok and Catherine last night.

• Hating herself for lying to Noor, Rose is again talking about taking Catherine up on her offer and heading back to California. Give it up!

• Peter accidentally confirmed Night Action’s existence while threatening Celeste, so that’s an oopsie. I’m kind of assuming Solomon will not survive this season, though, so it might not be an issue long-term.