It’s been almost two months since Season 3 of The Night Agent was released, and if you’re beginning to feel an itch for a spy thriller, I don’t blame you. There’s just nothing better than investing in a convoluted yet fascinating plot with twists and turns and great action. Therefore, if you’re willing to enter a darker world of assassins, special agents, and morally dubious interests, The Day of the Jackal needs to be your next binge.
Based on the 1971 book of the same name written by Frederick Forsyth, the series features a mysterious yet highly skilled assassin only known as The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) who pursues his target while the law attempts to foil his plan. However, the TV show updates the tale to the modern day, with Redmayne’s character now being paid to kill an Elon Musk-type billionaire. While both The Day of the Jackal and The Night Agent will have you on the edge of your seat every episode, there are key differences in how the formerpresents its morally complex protagonist and antagonist compared to the latter’srelatively straightforward morality that will make this a comforting yet unique experience.
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‘The Day of the Jackal’s Titular Character Is Not a Good Guy Like Peter
When one thinks of The Night Agent, the thing that comes to mind immediately will most likely be Peter’s (Gabriel Basso) unwavering morality. His determination to protect Rose (Luciane Buchanan), even when it means disobeying some of the most powerful people in Washington, is what makes him the kind of lovable hero we can support from the very first moment we meet him. Even in Season 2, when his isolation pushes him to the brink of what he is willing to do, he never physically crosses the line of torture or putting innocents in danger.
If you think The Day of the Jackal will have a protagonist such as this, you’ll need to severely adjust your expectations. Even the word “antihero” is arguably a stretch too far to describe The Jackal. Redmayne’s cold performance, which can switch to incredibly charming when necessary, along with the character’s skill in covert killing, makes him both frightening and enjoyable to watch. When we are introduced to The Jackal, he assassinates a far-right politician with a record-breaking sniper shot from a gun that we see him assemble from a suitcase before putting it back together and calmly walking away, leaving a bomb for the police. Through this scene, our perspective of The Jackal is established. His ability makes him impressive, while his composure tells us he has no moral compass guided by social norms, and the fact that his victim is not particularly moral in and of himself permits us to enjoy this act of violence.
The contrast between the two leads is striking, but this also affects their mode of operation. The Jackal is typically in control of the situation, whereas Peter is consistently on the back foot in terms of resources and assistance. While Peter’s underdog, never-say-die attitude is easy to root for, there is something intensely satisfying about watching The Jackal operate. The more nuanced exploration of the kind of people who exist in this world in the shadows is arguably more realistic and keeps us guessing about who we want to succeed.
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The Jackal’s Mysterious Past in ‘The Day of the Jackal’ Serves a Different Purpose
Eddie Redmayne as The Jackal stands in the desert dressed in a military uniform in The Day of the Jackal.Image via Peacock
For both Peter and The Jackal, their pasts are incredibly key to the narrative told in TheNight Agent and The Day of the Jackal, respectively. However, the way these protagonists interact with and acknowledge their backstories is fascinating for the impact it has on how we perceive them. In The Night Agent, Peter’s past, with his Dad accused of being a traitor and everybody believing he’ll turn out the same, is something he feels he must work to shrug off.
This gives him a sense of urgency, and with that urgency comes the possibility that it will be used to insult or manipulate him, as it is multiple times throughout The Night Agent. In comparison, The Jackal’s past is a central subplot of the show, with the slow discovery of how he became the heartless hitman he is today only increasing our fear and respect for him. Since The Jackal is spending the entire show ignoring his past while others are trying to resurrect it to learn his identity, the mystery presents him as a specter-like figure with no beginning and, therefore, no end.
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Lashana Lynch’s Bianca Pursues Justice in a Darker Way Than ‘The Night Agent’s Peter
Lashana Lynch as Bianca Pullman resting her hand on her chin, looking at monitors in The Day of the Jackal.Image via Peacock
A more equivalent character to Peter in terms of someone who works to stop criminals is LashanaLynch‘s Bianca. She is an MI6 agent and weapons specialist, which means she has a way to identify where The Jackal gets his custom-built weapons, and she defies superiors in her pursuit of bringing the assassin to justice. However, that isn’t to say Bianca is the automatic “good guy” in this battle. Bianca is obsessive and regularly ignores the lives of her family to focus on her work. While there is the argument that she is still, at the end of the day, trying to do the right thing, the fact that she uses innocents to get the information she wants, even getting someone killed at one point of the series, drastically complicates our relationship with her, and we go back and forth between despising her and praying she’ll catch The Jackal.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Overall, the main difference between The Night Agent and The Day of the Jackal is that the latter is far more morally complex than the former. There isn’t anything wrong with The Night Agent‘s clear divide between heroes and villains, but The Day of the Jackal does slightly more interesting things with its protagonist and antagonist in terms of their morality and presentation, which makes it a show that has you constantly developing your relationship with the characters.
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