The Recruit: Everything we know about Owen Hendricks' CIA job role, explored

The Recruit Season 2 premiered on Netflix on January 30, 2025, and Noah Centineo is back as Owen Hendricks, who was introduced in season 1 as a CIA attorney. However, as the season progressed, his job role was not confined to being just a lawyer and often led him into life-and-death situations.

As said by Centineo told Tudum in 2022,

“He thinks he’s working as a lawyer — the truth is you’re never just a lawyer at the CIA. There’s so many more things going on, and that’s the world we explored with The Recruit.”

The Recruit is based loosely on the real-life story of Adam Ciralsky, who used to be a CIA lawyer, and because of its original character inspiration, a lot of the unbelievable things that go on in the show, like a mere 24-year-old Owen Hendricks getting recruited at the CIA are true.

Let us now explore Owen Hendricks’ role in The Recruit and how the real-life inspiration of Adam Ciralsky helped to ground the character in reality.

Owen Hendricks was hired as a CIA lawyer in The Recruit

Officially in both seasons of The Recruit, Hendricks is a CIA lawyer in Washington D.C. Now, his job role should not technically entail him getting entangled with CIA’s on-field operations as he belongs to the Office of the General Counsel and that department rarely overlaps with CIA.

However, The Recruit shows Hendricks getting constantly involved with high-risk operations and does not perform many legal duties, which is his actual department.

His colleague, Amelia, however, is a better example of an attorney as she never goes out on the field and her duties only require her within the D.C. office. Therefore, it is only Henricks who gets hired as a lawyer but eventually becomes a CIA operative who does not have much training.

Both in season 1 and season 2 of The Recruit, Hendricks finds himself in similar kinds of dangerous situations where former CIA assets go rogue and threaten to leak confidential information. Season 1 had ended on a cliffhanger and season 2 picked up right where the first season had left off.

As told by showrunner Alexi Hawley to Tudum,

“This show lives in propulsion. So we immediately throw Owen in the deep end, which is where he’s the most fun. It seemed like a great way to start Season 2 — and then we just never let our foot off the gas.”

Owen Hendricks' character is loosely based on a real-life CIA lawyer in The Recruit

As mentioned previously, the experiences of Adam Ciralsky, a former CIA lawyer, inspired the show. While talking to Tudum, Ciralsky confirmed that though the position of a CIA lawyer is somewhat unusual and little known, they do exist and at times travel as well.

Before The Recruit was aired on Netflix, Ciralsky had arranged a meeting between real-life CIA agents and Centineo at the CIA Headquarters in Virginia. While talking about this “homecoming” experience to Vanity Fair in 2022, Ciralsky mentioned,

“It was that weird feeling of life imitating art imitating life,” Ciralsky said. “It had all the trappings of the CIA that I remember, but it’s a totally different institution.”

Centineo, who is not only the protagonist of the show but also serves as an executive producer had first brought the script to Netflix as Ciralsky's real-life adventures had caught his attention.

The Recruit Season 1 and 2 can be streamed on Netflix.