From The Night Agent to The Recruit, Netflix has no plans of slowing down the expansion of its library of spy adventure shows. As the Noah Centineo-starrer returns with season 2, we bring you The Recruit season 1 recap to refresh your memory before you go on a whirlwind journey with CIA’s young lawyer Owen Hendricks (played by Centineo).
The Recruit season 1 was released on Netflix in December 2022. The official green light for a second season came in 2023 and two years later, it is set to premiere on 30 January 2025. Created by Alexi Hawley, The Recruit revolves around Owen Hendricks, a recent law school graduate, hired by the CIA.
Owen is assigned the job of reading through the graymail the CIA receives. One instance catches his attention when a former CIA asset, Maxine ‘Max’ Meladze (played by Laura Haddock) sends a graymail threatening to expose confidential secrets. The more he investigates her matter, the more he gets entangled in massive international conflicts, the Russian mafia, office politics and deceit.
If you are one of those who made it to the end of the first season’s chaos, suspense and high-octane action, you know things ended on a major cliffhanger. As we await season 2, here’s a look back at the dangerous world of espionage we were introduced to in The Recruit season 1.
The Recruit season 1 recap: Things to remember about Owen Hendricks and Max Meladze ahead of season 2
Owen Hendricks follows a graymail threat and helps rescue Max Meladze
During the first week of his job at the CIA, Owen’s co-workers Violet Ebner (played by Aarti Mann) and Lester Kitchens (played by Colton Dunn) put him on a graymail that Max has sent. She is serving a sentence in prison in Phoenix for killing a truck driver named Salvatore Kwitney. However, Max is eager to return to her hometown.
If not set free, she threatens to go public with some classified state secrets and illegal activities related to PW Butcher and Selby Shaw.
Owen decides to follow up on her threat, and eventually, CIA general counsel Walter Nyland (played by Vondie Curtis-Hall) assigns him the mission. Owen reaches out to another lawyer, Janus (played by Kristian Bruun), for more intel. He finds out that PW is the country code for Belarus, Butcher is the code name of a clandestine operation and Selby Shaw is the code name for case officer Dawn Gilbane (played by Angel Parker) who operated in Belarus.
Owen visits Belarus and meets Dawn to confirm his findings. When he realises Max is indeed a valuable CIA asset with contacts in Russian intelligence at a high level, he decides to probe further.
The young lawyer visits Max in prison and promises to free her in exchange for her silence. However, things are far from smooth for Owen Hendricks. At one point, he ends up killing a person, which deeply affects him. He even considers leaving the CIA and returning to his apartment with his ex-girlfriend Hannah Copeland (played by Fivel Stewart) and friend Terence (played by Daniel Quincy Annoh).
Max Meladze and her mission
The Recruit season 1 presents one of the boldest and most daring characters in the thriller series — Maxine Meladze. The first episode establishes that she is a Russian hired by the CIA due to her close ties with high-ups in the Russian mafia network. She used to supply essential information to the American agency in Belarus. However, when her cover blew, she was moved to Phoenix where she lived before killing Salvatore Kwitney (remember the one who came after Cora?)
Things become tricky when Owen learns that the agency plans to send Max back to the field in Belarus. However, this also means the CIA would try to kill her outside of US soil. Fearing for her life, she urges Owen Hendricks to save her as he is the only person she feels she can trust without hidden motives.
Owen tries to understand what information Max Meladze has that the CIA is trying to protect, and this endeavour opens up new threats for the lawyer.
Who is Not Bob?
In The Recruit season 1 recap, we must look into Not Bob.
Before he leaves Phoenix, Max reveals to Owen that her handler is Not Bob. Back at Langley in his office, Owen digs up about Not Bob with the help of Janus and finds he is a retired CIA legend who helmed some of the most dangerous operations and retired as the division chief. However, what raises eyebrows is the fact that assets like Max are not supposed to know the agency nickname of case officers, especially when Not Bob is the Chief of Staff for the President of the United States.
This brings Owen to a crossroads at Langley as he begins to doubt everyone around him. This job is a lot and Owen is only getting a view of the tip of the iceberg.
Xander Goi and more revelations
A flurry of events and days of research later, Owen learns about a case officer named Xander Goi (played by Byron Mann) who worked with Max in Belarus. Before leaving for Vienna to meet Xander, he teams up with another CIA agent Amelia Salazar (played by Kaylah Zander) to take Max’s case federal so that the murder charges against her are dropped leading to her release.
Owen goes to Vienna to meet Xander who lets it slip about meeting Max although he is the one who told her to flee Belarus after her cover was blown and her assassination was planned. However, Xander held his ground about not knowing her well.
As part of The Recruit season 1 recap, one highlight to remember is that the show gets even more intense when Xander reveals that Max was such a valuable asset that she was empowered to run her own network of assets, meaning she knew almost all American spies in Russia and Belarus. When Max learns about Owen meeting Xander, it is clear the latter had betrayed her previously.
Is Max Meladze released?
Max’s case gets more complicated when an eye-witness emerges who claims to have seen her kill Salvatore. Owen cleverly poses as a court official to record his testimony but is left bewildered when assassins, sent by Max, try to kill the witness. Although he manages to escape, Owen returns to meet Max, who is now in a federal home, and tells her he is infuriated and would not want to work with her.
While she is released that night and taken to her home, Dawn Gilbane and Xander Goi plot against her. Meanwhile, Max escapes from her home and contacts Owen for his help in arranging funds by selling her safehouse business. This way she can get safely into the Russian mob who recently held a meeting with the Chinese, alarming the CIA.
Later, they meet in Phoenix where Max tries to seduce Owen in a luxury hotel suite. She also reveals how she became an asset. She also admits to lying about Not Bob being her handler and says Xander had once told the name while drunk.
Is Max able to join the CIA again as an asset?
As things begin to fall in place with the cartel paying USD 7 million for her business, Max is ready to be reinserted into the CIA. But, Dawn Gilbane urges Walter Nyland to push Owen for a polygraph test as he was getting close to Max, there might be chances he is compromised. Owen passes the lie-detector test and secures a place in Max’s reinsertion operation. Nyland also sends him with Dawn to oversee the whole process and even sends Violet and Lester after them.
However, Max needs another USD 3 million for her passage into Russia, which would be possible by unfreezing her Swiss bank accounts. While they head to Geneva where they meet the newest addition to the operation, Xander Goi, Dawn prepares for the mission in Germany.
More action follows as Owen messes up the time difference between the US and Switzerland and they are unable to unfreeze the accounts, compelling Max to access her safety deposit box which has proof that Xander slept with Russian mob boss Kirill’s (played by Andre Roshkov) wife. Leveraging this intel, Max trades the photographs with Kirill to get the additional money she needs for her entry into the Russian mob. Infuriated by his acts, Kirill sends Nishka (played by Maddie Hasson) to kill Xander.
Who is Karolina?
The Recruit season 1 recap must also delve into the details of Nishka, alias Marta — a Russian spy working under Kirill who tries to hit on Owen at the Geneva hotel. Owen tells Max that Xander was killed too quickly and he feels they are the main target.
Max and Owen meet with Lev (played by Gregory Hlady), who is supposed to reinsert her. However, when Nishka and her men ambush them, Meladze figures that Lev would never trust her and ends up killing him. Owen intervenes and in an attempt to save Max’s life, kills two men which triggers a panic attack in him. While he wants to quit the whole job, she pulls a gun to stop him but he still leaves after giving an emotional speech.
Owen goes to meet Hannah in Geneva but Max tracks him down via a watch she earlier gave him. Just when Owen walks towards Hannah, someone in a black car abducts him. The next scene shows Max and Owen tied up in an unknown location. Nishka comes in and Max mouths “Karolina” realising it is her lost daughter. She says something in Russian but the woman shoots her in the chest. She walks over to Owen and asks, “Who are you, and what the f*** are you doing running around with my mother?”
Is Max Meladze dead?
The Recruit season 1 recap ends with this burning question — Is Max Meladze dead? The cliffhanger ending also raises questions about Katarina’s identity, what happens to Dawn’s mission and of course Owen Hendricks’ future.
Watch The Recruit on Netflix
(Hero image credit: Photo by COURTESY OF NETFLIX – © 2022 Netflix, Inc. via IMDb; Featured image credit: IMD
Frequently Asked Questions
'The Recruit' season 2 will be released on Netflix on 30 January 2025.
‘The Recruit’ season 1 has eight episodes.
At the end of ‘The Recruit’ season 1, Max Meladze identifies Karolina as her daughter. The woman shoots Max and asks what Owen is doing around with her mother.
If you enjoy espionage thriller series with a heavy dose of action and suspense, ‘The Recruit’ should be on your watchlist.
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Trinetra is an ardent foodie and bibliophile who writes about films, travel, food and lifestyle. As a writer and literature student, slam poetry and storytelling are her go to jam. When not working, Trinetra is busy looking for her next place to visit or binge-watching Instagram videos for travel inspiration.
