Diksha Sundriyal
In its eighth episode, NBC’s ‘The Hunting Party’ mixes things up by focusing on the exploits of a serial killer who finds a unique way to finish what she started. The conflict in the show started with an explosion at the top secret prison called the Pit, which houses the deadliest serial killers in the country. The explosion opened the window for a lot of them to escape and wreak havoc by increasing their body count. This week’s case, however, is different because the killings are happening while the serial killer is still behind bars. SPOILERS AHEAD.
A Copycat Killer Picks Up Where Denise Glenn Left Off
Years before Denise Glenn was thrown into the Pit, she was a professor at a university in St. Louis. During the day, she would give lectures about art, and during the night, she would indulge in an art project of her own. Obsessed with the nine muses, she set out to find the exceptional people in their field and then kill them. One of her kills appears in the form of a ballerina whose throat she slits, and then she leaves her hanging by the ceiling in an elaborate dance pose. When she is arrested, she is not distressed but has a smile on her face.
In the present, the killings with the same MO have started again. A cellist is found dead and stuck in a pose where he is playing the cello on a park bench. The details of the murder point towards Denise Glenn, but the problem is that she couldn’t have killed the cellist because she is still in the Pit. Two possibilities arise in this scenario. First, it is a copycat killer. Second, it is someone who escaped from the Pit. Bex Henderson heavily leans towards the second scenario because the timing of the killing is too convenient to be the work of a copycat. Moreover, a signature is left on the cellist’s wrist, which is a detail that was not shared with the public. This confirms that an escapee from the Pit is behind all this, but the question is how could they know such details.
A look into Denise’s time in the Pit reveals that she was allowed to make figurines as part of her therapy. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that the doctors thought that they could treat other serial killers by letting her see in motion. These serial killers were the ones with serious attachment issues, so allowing them to watch Denise gave them someone to project their feelings towards. Interestingly, though, none of them ever had a direct interaction with her, which raises the question of how she got one of them killed for her.
The Explosion Gave Denise an Unlikely Apprentice
From the cellist, it becomes clear that whoever the killer is, he/she is trying to finish Denise’s project of the nine Muses. She had already killed six people by the time she was arrested. That leaves three more to go. With the cellist, the killer has to find and kill two more people to wrap it up. This is the only window within which the team can stop and arrest him, but they cannot do it if they don’t know who he is. Bex and Oliver interrogate Denise to get her to reveal that person’s identity, but she plays games with them instead and tries to manipulate them by picking up on the tension between them.
Eventually, Bex comes up with a way to figure out who her apprentice is, and it turns out to be a serial killer named Martin. He was one of the prisoners who were allowed to watch Denise and develop a fixation on her. He had his own fair share of kills, largely due to his unresolved issues with his mother and the fear of detachment. But it still leaves the question of how he and Denise met. There had to have been a conversation between them because she told him where to find her journal, which is a roadmap to all the killings. It turns out that they met on the day of the explosion. Martin found her unconscious under the rubble and expressed his love and devotion for her. This is why she told him where to find her journal and encouraged him to finish what she started.
When Martin kills another person, Bex and her team are desperate to find out where he will go next. She tries to manipulate Denise into telling them by showing her that Martin is taking credit for all her kills. The murderess directs them toward the university where she used to work but doesn’t entirely reveal what Martin plans to do. Even though they do find him on the college campus, Bex doubts Denise’s words and questions the ease with which she gave up her apprentice. In the meantime, Shane and Jacob track down Martin, who targeted the professor who was hired in Denise’s place.
At first, it seems that the new professor is the target, but then it is revealed that Martin’s plan is to do much worse. In Denise’s journal, they find the plan for the last killing, which involves blowing up the whole place. Given Martin’s history with explosives, Shane and Jacob quickly check for explosives and find the bomb, but they have a very short window to diffuse it and save the entire building from coming down. Shane’s quick thinking saves the day, even if he takes a great risk in doing that. At the end of the day, all ends well. Martin is brought back to the Pit, while Denise’s plan of finishing her Muse project is stopped once and for all.
The Investigation Into Silo 12 Reveals New Players
Once the investigation is wrapped up, Denise Glenn is sent back to the Pit. However, her transport stops midway, and she meets two people, both of whom she knows, but the audience doesn’t know. Interestingly, these people see her as a threat, and she is killed. It seems that she may have had something to do with Silo 12, and Bex and her team will need to figure out its secret fast. Following their sneak peek into Silo 12, Bex, Oliver, and Jacob found a drug that was used on Richard Harris for experimentation. Jacob reveals that it belongs to a company called Whitmore Sciences. They already know that major players from pharma to the military to other security services have a stake in the Pit and other secret projects related to it. But Whitmore Sciences is not a familiar name to them.
Jacob also tells them about James Whitmore, the company’s owner, who is in cahoots with Senator Long of Wyoming and AG Mallory. Bex doesn’t personally know any of them, but we know that Oliver knows and reports to Mallory, although he conveniently forgets to mention it. Jacob, who still doesn’t trust him, also raises questions about how he found out about the breach in Silo 12 and the explosion of the Pit beforehand. More importantly, why did he download terabytes of data while the crisis in the Pit was ongoing? Oliver explains the call as a tip from a contact he cannot reveal and the downloading as the protocol in case of emergencies. He doesn’t mention that he passed that data on to Mallory. When Bex tells him that they have him on tape with the call and the downloading of the data, he claims that Jacob is poisoning Bex against her, which feels kind of unfounded given his own treachery, which is bound to come out sooner or later.
Meanwhile, Shane meets with the real daughter of the man whose son he was posing as. He reveals that the man in hospice used to be his therapist when he was a child. His mother had revealed to him that he was adopted, but he never got to find out who his biological parents were. He hoped reconnecting with his former therapist would give him some answers. The next time Shane meets her, she gives him a box full of recordings with his name on it, which she found in her father’s office. Now, finally, he can figure out where he comes from, who his parents are, and most importantly, what happened to them.
