‘The Recruit’ Season 3: Will Netflix Renew Or Cancel? Future Looks In Doubt

Picture: Netflix

After 776 days (2 years and a month), The Recruit finally returned for its second season, albeit with only six episodes. Season 3 is definitely on the cards after that cliffhanger ending, but will it come? Viewing figures aren’t particularly promising three weeks in. Here’s everything we know so far.  

The series returned amongst a busy January slate with two shows that could be argued to be working in favor of The Recruit (or against it, depending on your view). We’re referring to The Night Agent, which aligns with the same genre as The Recruit, so the thesis would be that audiences would bleed from one to the other. We’ve also had the return of XO, Kitty, which saw Centineo reprise his role from the To All The Boys movies, which would’ve put the actor freshly in the mind of most Netflixers when The Recruit’s poster popped up.

SPOILER: Season 3 is a must, given the explosive ending of another Nichka committing the shocking murder of CIA agent Dawn Gilane this season, having previously murdered her mother in season 1. 

The Recruit Season 3 Renewal Status

Official Renewal Status: Not Yet Renewed

Our Renewal Prediction
Leaning Cancelation

Unlike some other shows in its position, The Recruit wasn’t awarded a dual-season renewal after season 1 (The Night Agent and The Diplomat were), so the show will need to pull in good viewership numbers. As we dive deep into below, they’re leading us to believe the show is currently on the way to cancellation unless viewership picks up.

Showrunner Alexi Hawley has suggested that he’s “super optimistic” about the future, telling Deadline, “There’s a lot of goodwill inside Netflix towards the show and towards Noah [Centineo]; I think they very much feel like Noah is a homegrown star, which he is [having started on the streamer’s teen romcoms].” Hawley also confirmed that no writer’s room had been established yet, so he is awaiting good news on the viewership front. 

How well is The Recruit season 2 performing so far?

Using various sources, we can check exactly how well The Recruit season 2 is performing, and it’s not looking good. Netflix is so far happy with the global top 10 viewing hours and views data following its release, saying on its TUDUM site that the show “hits its mark,” but does that tell the whole story?

Unlike Forbes, who falsely claimed that we don’t have viewership data for season 1, we do. Let’s chart season 1 vs. season 2 so far and compare it against other season 2 viewership numbers for their first weeks to see how the series stacks up. It is important to note here that the runtimes of the two seasons are substantially different, which works highly in favor of season 2.

In week 1, season 2 still clocked in less (5.9M views vs 7.3M) than season 1. Viewing hours are also substantially different, with season 1 pulling in 52.3M hours vs 31.8M, but that doesn’t take into the runtime. The show has featured in the top 10s for three weeks thus far:

Stacking that against season 1, you can see the show is really having trouble keeping up. In week 2 of season 1, the show saw a notable 83% bump in viewing numbers, but the same has not happened with season 2. 

In our top 10 report for the week ending February 2nd, our data expert Frederic said, “The verdict seems clear: if The Recruit wasn’t renewed for two seasons right after its first one (and it appears it wasn’t), then it’s goodbye—since the renewal threshold is around 10M CVEs in 4 days.” That was followed up a week later comparing the show against all other season 2s and it continues to find itself in hot water:

Picture: Netflix n Chiffres

Our only optimistic data point so far is that season 1 returned to the global top 10 for three weeks, suggesting that people are either revisiting (unsurprising given the length of time we’ve had to wait) or discovering the show for the first time. 

How is season 2 performing across the world? Let’s take a look at the Netflix top 10 data first:

How about other data sources? FlixPatrol data states that season 1 peaked in the top 10s with 770 points (if a title features in an individual country’s top 10, it picks up points depending on its position), whereas season 2 looks to have already peaked with 654 points. The show performs best on Netflix in the Nordics, Africa, Australia, and Southern and Eastern Europe. For Google Trends, we plotted The Night Agent (Red) against The Recruit (Blue), and it looks like The Recruit is seeing a decline slightly less here than The Night Agent, which has suffered a significant drop in viewership and interest. 

Are you hoping Netflix gives the green light to The Recruit season 3? Let us know in the comments.