The Night Agent showrunner says keeping the Netflix hit on an annual schedule is not difficult – because he once made 44 episodes in a year

Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland in The Night Agent season 3 — (Image credit: Netflix)

The Night Agent season 4 might not have been officially greenlit yet, but a writers room is open – and the showrunner of the Netflix hit says an annual production schedule is no problem.

"Season 4 is not officially picked up yet, but a while ago, in calendar year 2025, they did quietly pick up a writers room," showrunner Shawn Ryan told Deadline. "We've been working for a while on the storyline. We have some scripts, we are breaking stories. I think you know from the tax credit, there's a date by which you need to be filming by; there's time for us at the moment."

"To Netflix's credit, they want to make sure that the creative side of things is always buttoned up before committing that amount of money," Ryan explained. "We're in the story-breaking, script-writing phase, and my guess is, sometime in the next [few weeks, up to a month], they'll make a decision about officially greenlighting season 4, and if and when they do, we'll be ready to go with the scripts so that there's not that much time between season 3 and season 4. I think Netflix cares about their viewers and is looking for ways to minimize the time between the seasons of their most successful shows."

The Night Agent season 3 is arriving just over a year after season 2, a feat which is becoming rarer in the modern TV landscape: Stranger Things season 5 arrived three years after season 4, for example. It's not just a problem limited to streaming, either, with House of the Dragon season 3 landing two years after season 2. If the season 4 greenlight does come sooner rather than later, The Night Agent could keep up the pace, though.

"This cadence is easy," Ryan said of The Night Agent's brisker release schedule. "Compared to all the network stuff I did back in the day, you would have just finished making 22 episodes and before you're even done doing post on that final episode, the writers' room is starting up for the next season. When I was doing The Shield and The Unit, I think I made something like 44 episodes of TV in a calendar year. So this is nothing compared to that."