"The Agency" has really impressed me.
Late last year, we were in a golden age of spy thrillers. There was "The Day of the Jackal on Peacock, which ultimately was one of my top shows of the year. Then there was "Black Doves" on Netflix, which while not quite as good was still supremely enjoyable. And then there was "The Agency," which started slow and was by far a tier below the other two after a few episodes, though I was hopeful things would get better.
That's exactly what they did. This Paramount Plus with Showtime spy thriller gets better with every episode and today's season 1 finale "Overtaken By Events" is the best one yet. If I had to rerank those three spy thrillers now, I might even move "The Agency" to the top, but it's at the very least in the conversation with "The Day of the Jackal." Here's why the season finale just cemented this show as one of my favorites of 2025 so far.
The climactic moment of this season finale gave me literal chills
Spoilers for "The Agency" season 1 to follow
Throughout the season, one of the storylines we've been following is the capture of "Coyote" (Alex Reznik) a deep-cover CIA agent in Belarus. He's ultimately given to General Volchok (Juris Zagars), leader of the Russian paramilitary organization Valhalla. It's been a race against time to free Coyote from Volchok before Volchok can turn Coyote over to FSB Colonel Oleg Dimushenko, who is in Ukraine traveling with the Russian Deputy Defense Minister.
The ending of that storyline is the climactic moment of this season finale and it is spectacular. There's tension building right up until the end, with the show's score even chiming in to turn things up to 11. The powder keg explodes when Sasha, part of a kill team codenamed Felix, shoots the Deputy Minister in the chest and your heart won't stop pounding until the carnage ends—and "Blue team" pulls Coyote from a Valhalla vehicle.
It's an incredible sequence of action scenes on par with anything you'd get in a war movie and by the end, I had goosebumps and chills.
'The Agency' season finale expertly ties up loose ends — mostly
One of the things to keep in mind with "The Agency" is it has a lot of moving parts. This is mostly positive, as one imagines spycraft itself has lots of moving parts. But as a viewing experience, it hurts the show a bit when one of the storylines is weaker than the others.
As I mentioned, one of the season's three main storylines has been freeing Coyote from Volchok. A few episodes back this tied into a subplot about a kill team named "Felix" embedded in Ukraine and by the end of the season those two storylines are firmly tied up together.
Then there's the storyline about Michael Fassbender's Martian and Jodie Turner-Smith's Samia and their relationship while Martian was deep-cover in Ethiopia under the legend (cover identity) Paul Lewis. At the beginning of the season, he's forced to break ties with her but when he learns of a bombing at the University she was supposedly working at, he breaks and contacts her. This rekindles their romance and ultimately, ends pretty disastrously.
That storyline is mostly wrapped up as well, though we won't know for certain until season 2. At the end of the season finale, Martian has agreed to be a double agent for Jim Richardson (Hugh Bonneville) and MI6 in exchange for getting Samia out of a black site prison in Khartoum. Assuming that MI6 is successful in extracting her, that storyline is wrapped up as well, though it launches a new plotline for season 2 about a deep-cover agent turned double agent in the CIA, which is pretty darn compelling.
Then there's the third and final storyline, which follows a new deep-cover agent named Daniela (Saura Lightfoot-Leon). She's being trained by Martian and Naomi (Katherine Waterston) to cozy up with Iranian seismology professor Reza Mortazevi (Reza Brojerdi) who is secretly affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp and the Iranian nuclear program. It's largely been the weak point of the show and still doesn't really tie into the other storylines, even by the end of the season finale.
Except, I think we now have a way to tie everything together. Her mission is vitally important, and probably of interest to the British as well as the Americans. If Daniela's mission can be tied into Martian's new role as a double agent, then I'm very much here for it. But if her storyline remains largely disparate from everything else going on at the CIA's London station, I do worry about how it could impact season 2. After this incredible season finale though, I'm officially willing to give "The Agency" the benefit of the doubt.
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