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One of the best cast and most anticipated series of 2025 just ended with a bang. The Season 1 finale of “The Agency” had everything fans of espionage thrillers could ask for — explosions, a high-stakes mission, heated interrogations and double crossings galóré.
Wondering how this first season came to an end? Here’s what to know.
“The Agency” Season 1 Ending
The Season 1 finale of “The Agency” belonged to three agents: Danny, Coyote, and Martian. As is always the case with this tense show, there are a lot of moving parts, so let’s start with the easiest story. Did Danny ever make it to Tehran?
Most of Season 1 was a push and pull between Danny’s ego and the wisdom of Danny’s case officer, Naomi. While Danny insisted she was ready to go out into the field, Naomi consistently held her back, testing her ability to keep calm during high pressure situations and quizzing her on the most minute details of her cover.
Fassbender plays a man initially known only as “Martian.” A deep-cover operative, Martian has spent six years in Ethiopia when he’s very abruptly pulled out of the field and sent back to London, forcing him to ditch the married woman, he’s bedding. Was it a fling? The job? Or was he in love?
In London, Martian has to get used to a “normal” life that isn’t really that at all. His apartment is bugged. He’s got agents tailing him everywhere he goes. He has a teenage daughter (India Fowler’s Poppy) who has rather mixed feelings about his long stretches of abandonment.
All of that hard work was put to the test when Danny actually attempted to enter Tehran, presumably as a geophysics graduate sent as part of an exchange program. She barely touched the ground before an officer drug her to a room and screamed at her, accusing her of being an agent. But all of Naomi’s testing paid off. Danny was ultimately released and allowed to enter Tehran.
It isn’t completely clear why Martian was yanked, or why he’s back. But his expertise is helpful because a deep-cover operative in Ukraine has vanished and nobody is sure if he was taken out or flipped — which is causing all sorts of consternation for the station chief, his second-in-command and the operative’s handlers, past and present. Meanwhile, Martian is asked to lend a hand in training Daniela, a new agent on the verge of being sent to Iran.
Making everything more complicated is the arrival of Dr. Rachel Blake (Harriet Sansom Harris). She’s been sent over from Langley to evaluate mental health across the board, though Martian assumes that she’s actually there to check up on him.
You know the plaque/apron/throw pillow saying that goes, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps?” The Agency is You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Work Here, but It Helps: The Series.
On to Agent Coyote, who had the biggest action set piece of the season. Originally, the plan was to establish a kill zone at the clinic in Russian-occupied Ukraine where two Ukrainian ops were working undercover. As General Volchok, handed over Coyote to the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Chekhov, the CIA was supposed to swoop in and rescue him. But at the last minute, Martian learned that Volchok would be bringing more troops than anticipated. A motorcycle-bound Martian told Coyote’s case officer Owen to move the kill zone up 300 meters seconds before he was hit by a car.
That accident left Martian in a tight spot, but his advice served Coyote well. Sasha, a Ukrainian operative, shot Chekhov, a move that ended in his own death and the clinic descending into chaos. In the ensuing drama, Dr. Charlie Remy, and the other Ukrainian operative set off a grenade in Chekhov’s helicopter, which ensured that if Chekhov survived, he definitely wouldn’t be able to escape.
If the CIA’s kill zone was still at the clinic, they would have likely been so overwhelmed with this disorder that they may not have been able to extract Coyote. But because of Martian’s tip off, the mission worked. Using guerilla tactics, the team killed dozens of Russian troops before they ever entered the clinic, saved Agent Coyote and secured Dr. Remy and a Ukrainian operative for good measure.
The day was saved all thanks to Martian, who was sent to the hospital after his motorcycle accident. James an MI6 agent made Martian a deal: he and the British government promised Samia’s safety if Martian agreed to work for them as a secret agent. Basically, Martian was forced to hand over the country he loves to regain the woman he loves more. He agreed.
“I want you to leave here, live a long, happy life, see Samia and your lovely daughter Poppy,” James tells Martian. “All you have to do is keep a secret.”
Is “The Agency” Season 2 happening?
Yes, the Showtime original has already been renewed for a second season.
Series creators Jez and John-Henry Butterworth confirmed to TheWrap that all of the major cast members will be returning for this upcoming season, and they’re already working on the new installment. Season 2 is expected to focus more on Martian’s new role as a double agent in what Jez Butterworth described a “kaleidoscope of deceit.” It will also focus on Martian’s evolving relationship with Samia.
It’s such a great cast that when Dominic West appears in a couple of scenes via Zoom, it’s just like, “Sure, why not?” It’s such a great cast that I was mostly willing to ignore how many scenes involve British actors doing so-so American accents either listing things or correcting British slang.
In contrast to the meticulously directed first episode, the second is chaotic. A single mission, related to the Ukraine thing, again tells you about the actors and characters based on how they behave under pressure. I like the idea a lot! There’s torture and interrogation and … it turned out to concentrate on none of the things I liked about the first episode. But it did it breathlessly. I just didn’t care very much.
So is The Agency the show from the first episode? The show from the second episode? Or the show from the third episode? Having demonstrated that it can do mood and pace and theme, but only separately, is it a show that can bring all these facets together? Is it a show that cares about relationships? About psychology? About process? Again, it’s proven the ability already to be about those things in bits and pieces, but not to connect them together. What’s good here has bought the series some patience. What’s unformed and ungainly here makes that patience finite.
Season 2 will be released by Neubauer Studios and Paramount Pictures on Showtime.
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