The Recruit Season 1 Series Review

The Recruit is a 2022 Netflix series about Owen Hendricks, a CIA Office of the General Counsel (OGC) recruit who’s tasked with dealing with the legal side of CIA ops. Owen is immediately over his head and has to navigate a slew of dangers including assassination attempts and the deceptions of his first case, a graymail from Max Meladze.

The Recruit Season 1 Review

This post is both a movie review and a summary of The Recruit. That is to say, it may contain spoilers.

Rock and Roll

Owen Hendricks, played by Noah Centineo, is a lawyer who swings first and then deals with the consequences later. He’s a 24-year-old wildcard who’ll do anything for that adrenaline rush, but also to prove to others that he matters. When he gets into the OGC right off CIA 101 (CIA Basic Training), he’s immediately given the sh*t pile of graymail letters that are sent to the CIA. Graymail is mail that is threatening to expose state secrets if a condition is not met, mostly a release from prison or something of the like.

Max Meladze

While going through the hundreds of letters, Owen comes upon one by Max Meladze, a former asset in the Belarussian/Russian mafia who was arrested in the US after murdering a trucker. Max is in prison and attests that if the CIA doesn’t free her, she’ll expose a slew of state secrets that would endanger the lives of CIA assets (spies) in Belarus and Russia.

Owen and Max in The Recruit Season 1 — Owen and Max. Max is a high-level asset who’s graymailed the CIA, asking to be released or spill life-threatening CIA secrets. Source: Netflix.

Hip-Pocket Asset

Max Meladze, played by Laura Haddock, is what is known as a hip-pocket asset, i.e. an asset that has not been vetted or documented officially. She’s a manipulative, tough, and murderous woman who’ll do anything to see herself let free by the CIA. Owen is tasked with handling her case and he has to navigate the madness of doing as she asks, if and when he determines that her threat is credible and that she indeed holds the leverage she claims to have.

Hannah

Owen lives with Hannah, his ex-girlfriend, and their friend Terence. Hannah, played by Fivel Stewart, is somewhat still in love with Owen, even as he gets into a relationship, of convenience, with a colleague Amelia Salazar, played by Kaylah Zander. Hannah cares deeply for Owen even as she, herself, is exploring dating and goes on to date Jeff, “from the White House”. Haha. There’s a joke about Jeff always mentioning that he works at the White House.

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Dawn Gilbane

Owen discovers that he can get some info on who was Max’s handler by going to Yemen to ask Dawn Gilbane, played by Angel Parker. He fails to follow protocol and goes there as a civilian and on getting there, loses a fingernail. Dawn plucks out the fingernail as she tortures information out of him. When she’s comfortable that he’s indeed a CIA agent or “legal counsel” then she frees him and shares what she knows about Max.

Trouble

Max is trouble and she sends Owen on a scavenger hunt to fetch some money she’d kept in a storage locker. There, he comes across two henchmen from the Aquinoa drug cartel who immediately want to kill him and make off with the money. Owen manages to skirt them and stash the money where he’d been instructed to by Max. Turns out that Max owed the cartel money as part of her business dealings. She’d had established a network of safe houses since coming to the US.

Doing Things the Legal Way

Owen manages to find ways to free Max after he ascertains that she indeed has a lot of information that would incapacitate, and even lead to the termination (assassination), of numerous assets in Eastern Europe. She’d been allowed to run her own network of assets out there despite not being vetted. Vetting for the CIA is being brought in as an asset formally and even undergoing a polygraph test to ascertain authenticity.

Taking Her Back

Dawn and her colleague Xander Goi, played by Byron Mann, are grappling with the decision to either get rid of Max or take her back to Belarus and reinsert her as an asset. After she’s released from prison, they head to Europe (Geneva) where they start with recovering some money, to buy her way back in, from a sanctioned Swiss account. That falls through and when Max hands Kirill, a Russian mobster in charge of Geneva, photos of Xander and his wife, Xander is killed.

Employing Other Means

Since they cannot recover the cash in the sanctioned account, they access Max’s deposit box where she recovers the photos and requests that the payout (bounty on her head) that she was to be paid, be forwarded to Lev. Lev is her ticket back into the Russian mafia.

Meeting with Lev

Max arranges a meet with Lev. It goes sideways after Nichka, a Russian mafia enforcer intervenes and a shootout ensues. Lev immediately thinks that it is Max’s doing and starts shooting at her. Owen runs to her rescue and Max ends up taking out Lev because he doesn’t trust her and would make her way back into the mafia difficult.

Nichka is a ruthless enforcer of the Russian mafia who’s out to get Max. Source: Netflix.

The Breakdown

After the incident, Owen is distraught and in a panic. He’d killed one of Lev’s men and was adamant that he’s quitting the CIA. At the same time, Hannah, who’d dragged Terrence to Geneva to follow Owen after he’d been unreachable, follows him to Prague. Owen finally calls her and is going to meet her. While he’s just across the street and about to reach where she is, he’s grabbed and thrown into a vehicle. Max is also taken.

Karolina

The two each end up tied to a chair with Nichka coming in. Max immediately recognizes her and calls her Karolina. Nichka shoots Max and goes to Owen and asks him who he is and why he is running around with her mother. Yes. Max had said she’d had a daughter and Owen had assumed that her daughter is dead. Turns out that this wasn’t the case. The end.

Our Rating

The Recruit is a very interesting, high-tempo thrilling, and hilarious series. It has some really funny scenes that are also terrifying and thrilling. We loved the series and give it an 8.5/10. It has a vibe similar to The Terminal List and gets all those spy juices flowing. Be sure to watch it and enjoy!

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Read our review of The Terminal List below.

FAQ

Is Max Meladze Dead?

The Recruit Season 1 ends with Max being shot by Nichka. We are unsure whether she dies because we are not shown the aftermath of the shooting. Therefore, we cannot say definitively whether Max Meladze is dead.

Who is Max’s Daughter, Karolina?

Max had said that she’d had a daughter, Karolina. According to how she spoke of her daughter and something happening to her, it had been assumed that her daughter is dead. Turns out that that is not the case and Russian mafia fixer Nichka could be her daughter Karolina. Max calls her Karolina as Season 1 is coming to an end.