Ahead of The Hunting Party Season 2 finale, executive producers JJ Bailey and Jake Coburntold TV Insider that the cliffhanger wouldn’t be the same as Season 1’s. That’s true. We know who’s dead at the end of the May 7 episode. But as Bailey noted, “We open things back up at the very end, sending our team in a new direction,” and Coburn added, “the dynamic of the show and the world of the show is going to shift a little.” That definitely just happened. Warning: Spoilers for The Hunting Party Season 2 finale ahead!
Bex (Melissa Roxburgh), Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), and Shane (Josh McKenzie) track down serial poisoner Xander Wax (John Corbett, who, like the show’s other killer guest stars, seems to have fun in this role) as he’s targeting investigative journalists who appear to be working on a story that would expose The Pit and everything/everyone involved. (Previously, his victims had been random, and he’d left neurotoxins on everyday objects like elevator buttons and sugar packets.) The theory is that Lazarus (Kari Matchett) sent him after them, which means she could’ve also alerted him to the team’s presence. When Bex talks to the victim’s colleague, she learns he was reading Deviations from the Normal by Philip Beaumont, the same book she’d found in Lazarus’ apartment. Beaumont ran a think tank, the Institute for Human Consciousness, which has hands in government projects like The Pit. He may have created the top-secret prison.
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When the team captures Xander, they get him to talk by threatening to use his own neurotoxins against him. Ever since the blast, Lazarus had been looking for an exit strategy and cut a deal with a foreign government — but he doesn’t know which — for a safe harbor for herself and a handful of her “most prized” inmates she believes can become the next graduates. Bex comes up with a plan to hand Xander over to Mallory (Zabryna Guevara), not Lazarus … but she doesn’t know that Lazarus has already gotten to Mallory, who’s been badly beaten. When the team shows up to hand over Xander, they’re horrified to find that Mallory is dead and Lazarus takes control, throwing Bex and Hassani into cells alongside the inmates she’s been taking from the black site, including Amanda Weiss (Elizabeth Gillies) and Dr. Malak (Kevin Corrigan). Morales (Sara Garcia) overhears on comms and mobilizes a QRF team, convincing Peck (Luke Forbes) to help them get inside in exchange for letting him go.
Lazarus brings her son, Shane, to another room and tells him that the life she had pre-Pit, pre-Lazarus pales in comparison to the one she has now; she thinks that his does to what it could be, too. She wants them to have a future together, seeing herself as proof that the graduate program works. They wanted to erase that program, and she refused to allow it. She was the one to blow up the Pit, though she didn’t act alone.
Explosives are attached to the cells, with Lazarus, refusing to go back into a box, planning to make her escape with the inmates and Shane and leave Bex and Hassani behind. Shane fights back, and Morales, watching once Peck gives her access to the cameras, is able to open the cell doors. With the inmates free, a fight breaks out between them, the guards, and the team. Lazarus runs, and Bex follows.
During the ensuing gunfight, Bex goes down, and angry, Shane aims his gun at Lazarus. His mom refuses to go back into a box and encourages him to pull the trigger. He insists he’s not a killer like her. She brings up his military record, suggesting that killing comes naturally to him and it’s who he is. She thinks he’s thinking about killing her, hating her for taking his “sweet Bex.” But he fires into the air instead. Then, Bex reveals she’s alive, and when Lazarus picks up a gun, she shoots her. The QRF team enters and takes control of the scene.
Bex is going to be fine — she just got shot in the arm — and as the team waits to hear what’s next, she checks on how Shane’s doing. Ask him again tomorrow. Hassani, meanwhile, is distracted by the photo he took of a news article on the journalist’s wall when they found Xander in her home: Civil Health Fund Announces New Medical Supply Push. The photo, as is obvious from the moment he stares at it, is of his wife.
But then he quickly has to forget about that when Philip Beaumont enters the bar. The team sits down with him, and he tells them he’s been watching them and seeing where their allegiances lie. Now, he knows. He was the reporters’ source; he blew the whistle on himself. Leaking the story was a desperate attempt to do the right thing. He tried for years to have The Pit shut down, put an end to the secret experiments and graduate program, and now, with Lazarus gone, he can ensure they have everything they need to finish recapturing the remaining inmates — and with Lazarus and Mallory gone, Bex is the one in charge! They’re also going to be busy because it’s a long list. “The Pit wasn’t just treating serial killers,” Beaumont explains. “They were creating them.”
With that, we have to wait to see if there will be a Season 3 that dives into that, what could maybe develop between Bex and Shane, other parts of the program, and other loose threads.
So, for now, what did you think of The Hunting Party finale, both as a season and a potential series ender? Let us know in the comments section below.
The Hunting Party, Seasons 1-2, Streaming Now, Peacock
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