Netflix Ratings: ‘The Night Agent’s Return Underwhelms, ‘The Hunting Party’ Breaks Out

The Night AgentCourtesy of Netflix

The Night Agent struggled to replicate its early ratings success with Season 3 losing 40% of its Season 2 opening audience.

The Gabriel Basso-led drama series took the number two spot in Netflix’s weekly ratings report with 8.4M views.

While this is a solid number for the streamer in a premiere week, it is heavily down from the 13.9M that tuned in to the show during the first week of Season 2 with a similar release pattern.

All of this comes after Season 1 was a barnstorming hit for Netflix; the show launched in March 2023 when the streamer was still reporting viewership in “hours viewed”. It scored 168.7M hours in its opening week, which roughly translates to around 21M views.

The first season is number ten on Netflix’s Most Popular English TV list, behind Bridgerton, The Queen’s Gambit, Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Stranger Things, Adolescence and Wednesday.

The third season of the series sees Basso’s Peter Sutherland having to live with the consequences of making a deal with shadowy intelligence broker Jacob Monroe (Louis Herthum), getting him intel that saved Rose and thousands of others but likely swayed a Presidential election, handing the victory to Governor Richard Hagan (Ward Horton). Peter’s feeling of guilt only grows deeper as he, along with intrepid reporter Isabel (Genesis Rodriguez), uncover the extent of Hagan and the First Lady’s (Jennifer Morrison) dealings with Monroe as part of a dark money network.

Season 3 of the show introduces its highest-profile new cast to date, with three new series regulars who have led their own shows, David Lyons, Jennifer Morrison and Stephen Moyer. Lyons will play a former spy lured out of retirement, Morrison will play the First Lady, and Moyer will play a top hitman.

The series is produced by Sony Pictures Television and comes from creator Shawn Ryan, who also serves as showrunner. He exec produces alongside Marney Hochman executive produces via MiddKid Productions alongside Paul Bernard, Munis Rashid, Seth Fisher, Guy Ferland, Exhibit A Films’ Seth Gordon and Julia Gunn, Sunset Lane Media’s David Beaubaire as well as Project X Entertainment’s Paul Neinstein, William Sherak, Nicole Tossou and James Vanderbilt.

Elsewhere, NBC drama The Hunting Party scored a decent opening.

The series is clearly on the bubble at NBC, where it the second lowest rated drama series on NBC in linear. But Season 1 just dropped on Netflix as part of a growing licensing drive by the streamer and landed at number seven on the list with 3.5M views. This was particularly impressive given that Netflix only has the U.S. rights to the show.

The Hunting Party, which comes from creators JJ Bailey and Jake Coburn, stars Melissa Roxburgh and follows a small team of investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers our country has ever seen, all of whom have just escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist. Nick Wechsler, Patrick Sabongui, Josh McKenzie and Sara Garcia also star.