Why Noah Centineo's The Recruit Was Canceled At Netflix

"The Recruit" is one of several spy adventure series popular on Netflix. It follows Owen Hendricks, played by Noah Centineo, a new lawyer at the CIA who ends up falling down a rabbit hole when a former asset sends in a letter. What is initially meant as an initiation task turns into the job of a lifetime as it takes him across the world and through situations he probably never anticipated when he went to law school. In the second season, Owen heads to South Korea as he becomes involved with an espionage plot, ending "The Recruit" on an intense cliffhanger.

Despite a strong second season performance with an 87% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (which was up by nearly 20% from the first season), "The Recruit" was canceled. Netflix made the decision less than two months after the season aired, not giving the series time to gain more traction or more viewers. Though it may come as a surprise, unfortunately, there are some concrete reasons why the show had to go. Why Noah Centineo's "The Recruit" was canceled at Netflix.

The cancellation of the series was rooted in two things: Netflix has other shows with similar premises to "The Recruit" and it wasn't getting strong viewing numbers when compared to those projects. "The Night Agent," which debuted within four months of "The Recruit," had nearly three times the viewership and was consistently above the latter on the Netflix Top 10 list. For comparison, "The Recruit" had 5.9 million people watching Season 2 in the first four days it was streaming, whereas "The Night Agent" reached 15.2 million people with its second season in a similar amount of time.

In addition to the fact that it had to compete against "The Night Agent" and other shows, there were other early signs that "The Recruit" might not live past Season 2: The initial episode order was downsized from eight to six, giving the creative team less time to tell a complete story. Deadline confirmed that the decision came directly from Netflix. Six episode seasons aren't common when it comes to Netflix, and this move may have hinted that the streaming giant was making early considerations on which shows to renew and which ones to can.

While promoting the A24 film "Warfare," Noah Centineo shared his thoughts on the cancellation of "The Recruit" with The Hollywood Reporter. He's taking the news in stride, saying "it is what it is" and "onto the next, I guess." He acknowledged that there are many factors that went into the streamer's decision to end the series, all of which were outside of his control. "Netflix, they have a certain mandate that they need to fill, and I'm very proud of the show, very grateful to our audience," Centineo said. "We have a pretty strong cult following. And with Netflix, it just didn't really fit what it was that they needed, I suppose."

Centineo went on to reveal that being on the set of "The Recruit" was a real learning experience for him. "I really got to see behind the curtain of how a show gets made, and that to me was probably the most educational part of it, without a doubt," he said. Does this mean he's targeting a move behind the camera in the future? He already made his directorial debut helming the music video for ARTY's "Save Me Tonight," and working on "The Recruit" appears to have sparked an interest in the technical side of Hollywood productions. Either way, the future is bright for Centineo — he has several projects in the pipeline, including the upcoming 2025 film "Our Hero, Balthazar."