Shocking Twists Revealed: The Hunting Party Finale Leaves Viewers on Edge
NBC’s drama The Hunting Party delivered shocking revelations in its season finale, closing some storylines while teasing new ones for season two. This episode featured the team’s frantic search for escaped criminal Jenna Wells, a dangerous chemist obsessed with Bex Henderson.
It also uncovered crucial details about James Whitmore’s experiments at the Pit, exploring the drug GWB-45, which alters empathic responses and could have military applications.
Additionally, the finale revealed surprising backstories for team members, particularly Shane’s mysterious connections to Colonel Eve Lazarus. With two squad members fighting for their lives and numerous plot twists, fans are left eagerly anticipating what comes next.
Finally, Uncovering The Truth Of The Pit
The finale picks up where the last episode ended. Oliver introduces Bex to his contact, Colonel Eve Lazarus. Lazarus warns Bex not to get too close to James Whitmore or his company before revealing the truth.
According to Lazarus, what Whitmore was studying at the Pit was treating serial killers by curing what was a lack of empathy. The majority of subjects lacked sufficient empathy for them to be human. Whitmore felt they could be repaired and rehabilitated with proper care.
Whitmore invented a drug called GWB-45 that had the potential to heighten empathy within patients,” Lazarus explains in the episode. “But the drug might also be used to reduce empathy levels.”
It was this dual role that piqued the military’s interest. It was a way of numbing soldiers to the horrors of the battlefield, they argued; it had the potential to prevent trauma and PTSD. The military had a vested interest in developing soldiers who could still act without compassion, and Whitmore’s drug made this a reality.
Whitmore resisted when the military attempted to control his research. He had achieved great success with his drug and wanted to continue his work on his test subjects. This encounter caused the tactical team to enter Silo 12 and to die, and the detonation at the Pit that opened the season.
An Alyce Enjoys Dangerous Hunt For Jenna Wells
Another escaped prisoner from the Pit – chemist Jenna Wells, who became one of the most prolific killers after being born with no empathy – alerts the team. What’s different about her case, however, is that the pattern of her killings has changed dramatically. Jenna became the ultimate test subject for Whitmore’s drug to increase empathy because her starting point was none.
Though the drug worked too well, her empathy reached dangerous levels. Instead of simply feeling compassion for others’ emotions, she believes she is them. This delusion makes her kill people and then assume their lives.
After killing two women, Jenna goes after a caterer at a party Whitmore is throwing. She breaks up the event and poisons all the guests. With a poison patch affixed to the back of his neck, she kills Whitmore himself. Amid the chaos, a shootout occurs between Whitmore’s bodyguards and a team led by one of Bex’s operatives, Hassani, resulting in the latter being critically injured.
Their inability to intervene when Jenna murders several people at the party causes Mallory to put a kibosh on their operation. She will be bringing in a new team because she doesn’t think Bex’s group is up to the task. Now, Jenna has her new target in her sights—Bex Henderson herself.
Brokers’ Personal Lives Shatter the Team
The finale brings several personal bombshells that alter viewers’ perceptions of significant characters. When Hassani is shot and taken for surgery, Bex learns that his wife died two years before — an omission he had been keeping from the team.
A search for his mom takes Shane Florence to the brink. He has been on a personal mission for a good part of the season, though he hasn’t shared it with most of the team, except to get support from Tara, daughter of Dr. Dulles. Dr. Dulles was Shane’s therapist when he was a child and related to the Pit.
Respecting neither woman, Shane asks his colleague Jennifer Morales, an emerging expert in audiovisual analysis, to analyze an audio recording of his mother’s voice (without explaining why) because he hopes she knows something more than he does.
As the team contends with Jenna Wells, and the shutting down of their operation, Morales continues the search and makes a jaw-dropping discovery — the voice belongs to Colonel Eve Lazarus.
Meanwhile, Tara has called Shane to alert him that her father has woken up for a moment and might be able to ID the woman in the video. When Shane doesn’t arrive (opting instead to assist his colleagues), Tara plays the video for her father herself. He explains that the woman “is not in the Pit anymore because she graduated.”
The soles of Lazarus’ feet are then shown stamped with the same indentation found on the feet of other prisoners at the Pit as she walks with newfound freedom through the compound where she had been an inmate. This would explain why Lazarus was so keen to protect the project and keep her home—she was a subject of the experiments.
The Urgent Question Hanging in the Balance: Will Oliver Live?
The finale’s most gut-wrenching moments arrive when two team members are threatened with death. After Hassani is shot and rushed to the hospital, Oliver comes under attack from Jenna Wells, who has masqueraded as Bex.
After becoming obsessed with Bex, Jenna enters her hotel room, taking her badge and gun. She reads Bex’s text messages and finds out about her life, including her daughter’s. Convinced she’s Bex, Jenna decides that Oliver is the cause of “her” pain and sets her sights on him.
Bex shows up just as Jenna holds Oliver at gunpoint but won’t pull the trigger. Just before Jenna can kill Oliver, Shane pops up and shoots her from behind. The threat appears extinguished, yet Jenna has already slipped one of her poison patches onto the back of Oliver’s neck — how she executed Whitmore.
The poison works quickly. Oliver starts bleeding from his nose and passes out in Bex’s arms. As she cradles him, Bex tells him she never stopped thinking of him. Shane runs for help, but the episode ends before we discover what happens to Oliver.
Several factors indicate that Oliver might survive. He’s a main character with unfinished storylines and a deep history with Bex that’s never been fully explored. The episode also reveals that Lazarus has gotten a read on the situation from her computer. Since Lazarus had previously saved Oliver from inevitable deaths, it stands to reason that she might do it again.
Unresolved Mysteries Leading Into Season 2
The finale leaves viewers with many questions that will lay the groundwork for an exciting second season:
- Why was Lazarus in the Pit? What crime do you have to commit to be sent there?
- Was Whitmore’s therapy successful in rehabilitating Lazarus, or did Lazarus devise a scheme to game the system?
- How is Shane’s father involved with the Pit?
- Will Jenna’s poison patch be the end of Oliver?
- What will Bex’s team do next after being shut down by Mallory?
- What does Shane do when he learns that Lazarus is his mother?
- How did Hassani deal with his wife’s death, and why did he keep it from the team?
The show has dropped breadcrumbs for those plot threads while tying up enough of the season’s mysteries to leave us satisfied but wanting more.
FAQ
Q: What was James Whitmore doing at “the Pit”?
A: Whitmore was in the process of developing a drug (GWB-45) that would ramp up or slow down levels of empathy. He aimed to rehabilitate serial killers by curing their empathy problems, but the military sought to use the drug to create soldiers who wouldn’t suffer trauma and PTSD once they went off to war.
Q: Who is Colonel Eve Lazarus?
A: It’s revealed that Lazarus is a former inmate at the Pit who “graduated” from the program. Now a Colonel, she runs the project that then ran her. It also reveals that she’s Shane’s mother.
Q: Why did Jenna Wells target Bex?
A: Jenna was heavily affected by the empathy-boosting drug. When she obsessed over someone, she thought she became them. After she learned of Bex’s life, she concluded Oliver was the one inflicting “her” pain, and she hunted him while thinking of herself as Bex.
Q: What is the case about Jacob Hassani’s wife?
A: One answer is revealed in the finale, in which we learn that Hassani’s wife died two years ago, and that’s part of the reason he came back to work in the United States. He concealed this knowledge from his colleagues.
Q: Is There Going to be a second Season 2 of The Hunting Party?
A: NBC has not yet announced an official renewal, but the finale tees up stories for a second season. The show’s future will likely be decided by viewer response and ratings.
Final Words
As the first season of The Huntingends ends, it strikes a good balance between closure and cliffhanger, revealing the purpose of the Pit and Whitmore’s experiments while introducing new, intriguing questions for a potential second season.
Adam’s dual revelation of Lazarus as a former prisoner and Shane’s mother adds depth, while a life-or-death cliffhanger involving Oliver raises the emotional stakes.
His bond with Bex serves as the series’s emotional core. As fans await news on Season 2, they can appreciate the writers’ blend of procedural thriller and character-driven drama, making “The Hunting Party” one of NBC’s standout new dramas.
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