Noah Centineo’s CIA Lawyer in Korea: A Review of ‘The Recruit’ Season 2 on Netflix

Let’s get this out of the way: The Recruit is a very silly show. Its first season, which debuted way back in December of 2022, proved that Netflix can have a hit with a comedic action-thriller that essentially feels like a network show with a little more cursing involved. In the show’s second season, Noah Centineo’s CIA attorney Owen Hendricks finds himself in Seoul.

Opening Shot: “OSTRAVA, CZECH REPUBLIC.” In a dark underground tunnel, CIA lawyer Owen Hendricks (Noah Centineo) is in a physical altercation with russian spy Nichka Lashin (Maddie Hasson).

The Gist: Nichka is the daughter of Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), the asset Owen was working with, but was killed in the botched Prague operation. He keeps telling her that things won’t go well with her bosses if it’s revealed that her mother was a CIA asset, but all Nichka just thinks she needs to kill Owen and it all goes away.

After one of Owen’s colleagues, Amelia Salazar (Kaylah Zander) is tipped off by, of all people, Owen’s ex-girlfriend Hannah Copeland (Fivel Stewart), Dawn Gilbane (Angel Parker) is sent to rescue Owen, now seen as “a problem” by the agency. They grab Nichka, and Dawn momentarily thinks of killing Owen, but Owen tells her they know too many secrets about each other. She hands Owen off to his lawyer handlers, Lester Kitchens (Colton Dunn) and Violet Ebner (Aarti Mann). Hannah finds him on the tarmac back in the States and tells him she’s moving out, tired of him running into operations where he’s way over his head.

Owen’s boss, Walter Nyland (Vondie Curtis-Hall), incensed over Owen’s maverick behavior in Prague, benches him while the investigation continues. This means he sits in his office with nothing to do, but of course Owen can’t sit still like that. When a letter comes into his office addressed to his now-dead predecesor, it turns out to be a greymail note with a code. When he tries to get it decoded, alarms go off.

The code refers to an old operation in South Korea. Owen convinces Nyland to send him to pursue it, thinking if it goes wrong, he’s already “radioactive,” in his words. Nyland reluctantly agrees, but to keep him in line, he orders the ever-angry Janus Ferber (Kristian Bruun) to go with him; Janus tries to get out of it by saying he has a sick cat, which of course doesn’t exist.

In Seoul, the NIS is suspicious of Owen and Janus’ arrival, and they send agent Kim Jang-kyun (Teo Yoo) to watch them. Owen, who knows Seoul because he lived there when his father was stationed there, looks up an old friend, Yoo Jin-lee (Shin Do-hyun).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The comparisons we made between The Recruit and The Rookie during the show’s first season still apply; Alexi Hawley, who created The Recruit, was a writer and showrunner for The Rookie.

Our Take: If you’re excited about the return of The Recruit, then you’ve completely bought into how Centineo’s character Owen Hendricks gets into these dangerous espionage situations and how his bosses and handlers can’t seem to control him. While there aren’t many shows that give a realistic view of how the CIA works, The Recruit is pure fantasy, given how many scrapes Owen seems to get into in various world hotspots.

We bet what drew you into the show is what drew us in: Centineo’s charm as the reckless but effective Owen, and the generally comedic vibe the show projects. That vibe continues. There are some dramatic moments, like when Owen finds Jin-lee and tells her how she saved him when he lived in Seoul and didn’t know anyone — this might end up being a new love interest for him, for all we know. But for the most part, the episodes are full of fight scenes, shootouts, and Owen blithely being a spy when he’s not actually a spy.

While Owen may not stay in Seoul for the entirety of the season, it’s a good location for the story to center around, even if the circumstances that brought him there are ridiculous. We like that he’s paired with the perpetually-pissed and paranoid Janus, who would rather have “me time” and a bubble bath in the hotel than pursue a lead. At this point, we know who is on Owen’s side and who isn’t at the agency, and seeing all of them having to deal with whatever blowback he creates will be fun to watch.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, though of course there are always going to be shots of Centineo with his shirt off.

Parting Shot: After Jang-kyun bails Owen out of a scrape at a night club, he sprays Owen with a knockout agent. As Owen passes out, he realizes who the greymailer is.

Sleeper Star: Once again, Kristian Bruun is hilarious as Janus. His anger and distrust of Owen is now earned, but it’s not like he was a clam guy to begin with.

Most Pilot-y Line: Amelia is talking into a camera to someone named Anderson (probably Anderson Cooper) when Hannah calls her. After fielding the call, she says to the camera, “I’m a little fucked, Anderson.” Did this go out live?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Because The Recruit is at its heart a silly action series, its success really leans on Centineo’s charm and the comedic vibe of the show’s writing, and that continues in the second season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.