‘The Recruit’ Creator Alexi Hawley Previews ‘Big, Fun Ride With High Stakes’ for Season 2 (Exclusive)

Season 2 of Netflix action drama The Recruit is finally releasing this Thursday, and creator Alexi Hawley spoke with PopCulture.com about what to expect. Premiering in December 2022, the series follows Noah Centineo’s Owen Hendricks, a CIA lawyer who becomes involved in massive international conflicts with dangerous parties after an asset tries to expose her relationship to the agency.

It’s been an awful long time since the first season dropped, which left on quite the cliffhanger that left Laura Haddock’s Max Meladze, a former CIA asset, dead and her daughter coming back into the picture. With things likely getting much more intense and a lot more complicated, there is no telling what will happen, but Hawley revealed what’s in store and what the aftermath of the cliffhanger will look like. (Interview has been edited for length and clarity).

PopCulture: What can you preview for the second season of The Recruit?

Alexi Hawley: It’s a big, fun ride with high stakes. Season 1 basically saw Owen Hendricks, this young lawyer, first job, way in over his head. And Season 2, he’s trying to learn from his mistakes, but, you know, gosh darn it. His instincts are always jumping in the event. So, I thought that was a fun turn on the characters, to see a guy struggling to do things through official channels and then ultimately being like, “I can’t,” because he wants to help somebody and the building wants to protect CIA. Again, that’s those are two different points of view.

PC: Kind of going off of that, in the Season 1 finale, Owen killed someone. It was quickly clear that he regretted it, even if it was the only choice. How will that affect him moving forward?

Hawley: He definitely comes into Season 2 feeling the emotional repercussions of that. His goal, honestly, at the top is just to quit, to get out. And, “This is not the job for me,” only to quickly realize that you can’t get out. Otherwise, you’re gonna get blamed for everything. Everything will be hanging on around your neck. So the only way to really successfully extirpate himself would be to get a win, but it’s hard to get a win when you’re being blamed for basically a potential national security disaster. So that’s the final sort of launching pad, the stakes for him. And then, ultimately, in Season 1, he was very invested in Max Meladze’s struggle, her journey. He felt bad for her with the experiences she had had, and only to come to a realization that her sort of final instinct to become a survivor meant that she was irredeemable.

But at the end of the day, he couldn’t really help her because she would pick surviving over everything, including what’s best for her. And so coming into Season 2, we wanted to give him a case, a journey that of somebody doing something that was noble even though the way they’re wrong about doing it was a threat to the United States and the CIA.

PC: Season 1 also ended on a pretty surprising and intense cliffhanger with Owen and Max getting kidnapped and Max getting killed by her own daughter, who is not dead. What will that aftermath look like?

Hawley: There’s definitely the fallout from that. Owen goes from caring about this woman to then ultimately realizing that she was toxic to then having to go through that moment. Nichika, who is the daughter, ends up becoming a big part of Season 2, partly because Owen wanted to get a win, to recruit her, or at least have her recruited by the CIA as a potential asset. But a lot of it is him trying to navigate how much to invest in Teo Yoo’s character and the storyline in Season 2, knowing how painful what happened in Season 1 was for him.

PC: What can you tease about her and her role in Season 2?

Hawley: It’s interesting because part of the discussions going into Season 2 were being very specific about Nichika was not Max or is not Max. Because we didn’t wanna just replicate mother or daughter, because Laura Haddock did such a brilliant job playing Max, and she was such a unique character. We didn’t just wanna duplicate that. So what I liked about Nichika is this idea that she’s very mercenary.

So, she has no interest in being recruited as an asset to the CIA until Owen mentions money. And then she’s like, “How much money?” Like that. And so that is sort of a character driver, in some ways makes her like her mother, but also not. So she’ll be a bit of a foil for the season, but she’s also got some leverage over Owen, which she’s not afraid to use, which means he’s gotta navigate her while he’s navigating everything else. Nothing’s easy in a good way.

PC: What’s it been like seeing the fan reaction since the series premiered, especially with the twist in the Season 1 finale?

Hawley: At the end of the day, shooting Max was our boldest story. You know how to do that. I go through this on The Rookie, have gone through this on The Rookie as well. We’ve actually killed off a few series regulars over the years. And the stakes of that, the realization by an audience that you’re willing to go to those places, I think, really gets them invested and afraid. And afraid is a hard thing to do these days in television. Audiences are super smart.

They watch a lot of stuff. Unexpected is very difficult, and worried about characters is also really difficult. Because, for the most part, if you’re on the poster, you’re fine. Right? And so it’s really important that stakes have to matter and have to win. And it’s a dangerous world. I mean, there was a moment in Season 1 in the pilot where you first meet Owen and Noah was so f—ing charming and you’re having a great time with him. And then he shows up in Yemen and ends up assaulted and a fingernail pulled out. And the audience is sort of real-time with your leads going, “Oh, s—. There’s stakes in this show,” which was great.

I think it really got the audience to lean forward. And so, you know, shooting Max at the end of the finale was one of those moments where I don’t think the audience saw that coming. As long as it’s organic to the storytelling, which it was, you kinda have to hold your nerve and jump into the deep end.

Season 2 of The Recruit releases this Thursday, Jan. 30 only on Netflix.