The Recruit – Picture: Netflix
Netflix’s new political crime thriller The Recruit is now out worldwide and sets up a second season but will it get it? We’ll assess the show’s reviews and performance, plus look into what we could expect from season 2.
Starring Noah Centineo, the new series sees him play the role of Owen Hendricks, a lawyer who is thrust into a conspiracy plot involving the CIA.
All eight episodes touched down on Netflix on December 16th, 2022.
The show has some excellent pedigree, with Alexi Hawley serving as the show’s creator. Hawley is best known for creating hits for network television, including Castle, The Rookie, The Following, and Body of Proof.
Has Netflix Renewed The Recruit for a Season 2?
Official Renewal Status: Pending
Our Current Renewal Prediction: Likely Renewal
It’s still a little too early to know whether or not the show will return for a season 2 but we’ve heard from production sources in Canada that they are currently planning on moving forward with a season 2.
Netflix hasn’t yet officially renewed or commented.
As you may know, Netflix doesn’t publicly announce the criteria in which its series get renewed or canceled, but there’s plenty of evidence out there on what metrics help renewal choices.
If you’re enjoying the show and want to get it renewed, the best chance of that happening is by you watching to the end and then encouraging others to do the same.
Has any of the cast or crew talked about season 2 thus far? Alexi Crawley has implied that conversations have taken place or at least, a blueprint is there.
In a Collider interview, Hawley talked about his attitude going into season 1 about future iterations, saying:
“I know things about where I would want to take it, and where I’d want to go with it. I mean obviously, you hope for success, but as you could see with that ending, I didn’t plan for failure because I feel like in this day and age you just have to be bold, you have to be dramatic, to the expense of everything else. And you can’t worry about Season 2’s, or Season 3’s, or beyond. You have to go, “What’s the best version of this story right now?” And trust that people will come to it. And then you’ll get another shot at it.”
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Walter Nyland, Noah Centineo as Owen Hendricks – Cr. Philippe Bossé/Netflix © 2022
How well has The Recruit been received?
Let’s break down the review scores for the show thus far (correct as of December 19th, 2022):
- IMDb User Score: 7.6
- RottenTomatoes Critics Score: 75%
- RottenTomatoes Audience Score: 87%
- Metacritic: 60/100
It’s fair to say that reviews for The Recruit have surpassed expectations (at least that I had personally) in that it’s attracting the same kind of audience that made Crawley’s network shows popular.
Review scores for The Recruit
How well is The Recruit performing on Netflix?
We don’t have a full picture on The Recruit just yet, but we’ll be looking at several sources for how well the show is getting on.
Let’s first look at the hourly data released by Netflix thus far.
So far in its first two weeks, the show has accumulated 147.89 million hours between December 11th to December 25th:
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 11th, 2022 to December 18th, 2022 | 52,300,000 | 3 | 1 |
| December 18th, 2022 to December 25th, 2022 | 95,590,000 (+83%) | 3 | 2 |
Weeks 2-3 will be critical so, despite an 83% rise, we’ll be keeping an eye on week 3. If it’s more than a 60% drop, it’s almost certainly lights out.
If we compare it to other shows thus far, it’s tracking below The Lincoln Lawyer (another drama that did get renewed) and two other big hits for Netflix in 2022 in The Watcher and The Sandman.
Looking at CVE (complete viewing equivalents) – we can see how well the show in its opening weekend compared to other debuts in 2022. Any bar below in red means they were ultimately canceled and green renewed.
Netflix has yet to release any official viewing hour stats for the show yet. Its first opportunity to release numbers will be on December 20th, 2022.
FlixPatrol data, which looks at the daily raw Netflix Top 10s, suggests the show peaked in its first three days in the top 10s globally but has held nicely since over the festive period.
Data so far shows that the show is performing best in the United States, Europe, the Nordics, Canada, and Australia.
FlixPatrol The Recruit Data for December 31st
According to TelevisionStats.com, the show had a huge rise after its addition to Netflix, coming from nowhere in the runup to its release. Thus far, the show has peaked as the fourth biggest show in the world, according to their data.
They pull data from external sources (also known as demand sources) such as Twitter, Wikipedia, Google, and Reddit.
The only shows more popular than The Recruit at the time of publishing are The White Lotus at HBO, Wednesday at Netflix, 1923 at Paramount+, and Yellowstone at Paramount Networks.
What to expect from The Recruit season 2
Let’s quickly recap the events of season 1.
In episode 8, titled W.T.F.I.O.H. (it stands for Who the F*ck Is Owen Hendricks?), the mission to get Max home to Russia continues and just as things seem to be coming to a close, complications arise. It also saw the clashing of Owen’s personal and professional life.
Season 1 concludes with a big twist; Karolina shoots Max but is she dead? That will undoubtedly be the cornerstone question that gets answered in season 2.
The ending then sees Owen reaching out to Hannah to meet up abroad which concludes the series.
The RadioTimes speculates that we’ll see the return of Noah Centineo in a second season as well as Aarti Mann, Colton Dunn, and Fivel Stewart. They also predict the same as us in the sense that “Owen Hendricks would be thrown into another high-stakes mission, although this time he could be somewhat more prepared for the experience.”
We’ll update you on all things The Recruit as and when we learn more. Until then, let us know in the comments if you want to see a season 2 of The Recruit on Netflix in the comments below.
