Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of NBC’s ‘The Hunting Party’ presents a host of new challenges for Bex Henderson and her team. While the primary mission is to catch all the serial killers who escaped the Pit after the explosion, there is also the question of the people working behind the scenes who have somehow been involved in it. One of the most mysterious figures in the show so far is Col. Eve Lazarus. While she was introduced in the previous season and has taken over the charge of Bex and her team, there is next to nothing that anyone knows about her. This shroud of mystery makes Bex and the other even more adamant about finding out who she is and what she really wants. Bex finally sees a part of the story when she stumbles upon something truly shocking from Lazarus’ past. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Eve Lazarus’ Past Reveals a Shocking Truth
When Col. Eve Lazarus reveals that she is taking over the command of the mission from Mallory, everyone is not only shocked but also concerned. Not trusting him at all, Bex and her team decide to look into her. Bex doesn’t mention that she’s met Lazarus before, through Oliver, and Morales doesn’t mention that the audio file she scanned for Shane actually had Lazarus’ voice on it. When they sit down together to discuss the matter, everyone decides to try and find something about their new boss. Shane discovers that Lazarus has an impeccable military record, including the fact that she could run a mile in five minutes. Hassani adds that apart from this, there is nothing else to reveal her history before her time in the military. This means that someone has gone through quite a lot of trouble to make sure her past remains hidden, which makes the team even more curious.
Bex, however, finds her way in through Lazarus’ running time. Having experience in keeping records of track runners, she knows exactly where to look to find out who Lazarus was in a previous life. It turns out her name was Caitlin Taylor, and the reason her history was deleted from all records is that she was convicted of murder. Pair this information with what Shane found out in last season, and it becomes clear that Caitlin Taylor had left quite a lot of blood in her wake, which is why, when she was convicted, she was brought to the Pit instead of just being left in prison. From the words of Dr. Henry Dulles, we also know that Lazarus graduated from the Pit. This means that whatever therapy was used on her actually worked. She was treated and found well to the point that she was not only allowed to go back into society, but also became a high-ranking official in the military, such that she is now leading the operation concerning the Pit.
The rechristening of Caitlin Taylor into Eve Lazarus also says a lot about her. The use of the name “Eve” suggests that she was perhaps one of the first, if not the first, person to graduate from the Pit. Because she was treated, the psychologists at the Pit must have assumed that the others could be treated too. She set a benchmark in what was possible for the world, a precedent set for other patients to follow. What makes it even curiouser is that if there is an “Eve,” is there also an “Adam”? And if Eve is Shane’s mother, is Adam his father? In the same vein, the surname “Lazarus” evokes the part about Caitlin Taylor’s death and her rebirth as Eve. This proves that Lazarus is a reformed version of Caitlin. However, it also raises the question of whether the treatment actually worked, or if Catilin found a loophole in the system to make it look like she was treated, but, in reality, she remains the same.
Read More: Who is Jonathan Peck? Who Plays Him in The Hunting Party?
