Diksha Sundriyal
The conflict between Bex’s team and Lazarus comes to a head in the finale of NBC’s ‘The Hunting Party’ Season 2. In the previous episodes, the team confirmed that Lazarus has been secretly taking the recaptured serial killers to a new location instead of sending them back to the Pit. This means that she is working on a plan of her own, though the true scale and intention of it remains a mystery still. While Bex and Co. need time to figure out exactly what is going on, they have to keep up the facade of being entirely focused on the job at hand. They have to be particularly careful with their latest target, who kills his victims with rare poisons. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Bex and the Team Chase a Serial Killer With a Strange Connection
When Xander Wax was in college, he got fed up with his roommate and his girlfriend always making out right next to him. To teach them a lesson, Xander poisons his roommate using the poison from a rare frog. It isn’t the death or the pain of it that gives him the high. He relishes the anticipation of his victim reaching for the already poisoned thing waiting for him. While his first kill is out of pettiness, the others are for pleasure. By the time he is arrested, he is believed to have had over 40 kills to his name. When his name pings on the radar, Bex and the team know that they need to rush because they have no idea which random person Xander will target. Soon enough, a victim emerges, and he turns out to be a reporter.
While he is also killed by poison from a rare snake, it is noted that there wasn’t anything random about this kill. Xander specifically targeted the journalist guy, which led the team to look more closely at the victim. Bex discovers that he had been working on an article, which may be why he was targeted. While the editor doesn’t divulge the contents of the article, she does point Bex towards the victim’s assistant on the project. It doesn’t take Bex much to know that the assistant will be the next victim. She calls the woman and warns her of the upcoming danger. But by then, Xander has already done his job. Fortunately, the assistant isn’t dead by the time Bex and the team find her. While she is entrusted to the care of 911, Bex, Hassani, and Shane find Xander still inside her house.
The reason he stuck around was to destroy the research that the victims had collected for the article, which turns out to be about the Pit. A secret source with crucial knowledge of the Pit had reached out to the journalists, telling them everything about the place and what was going on there. Xander was sent to kill the journalists as well as the story, and there is no surprise that Lazarus is the one who sent him. It doesn’t take much to catch Xander and make him confess that he is working with Lazarus. However, Bex also knows that they can’t let him go back. Not only will Lazarus disappear from the system, but they will also lose the chance to expose her.
Does Bex Die? Is Lazarus Dead?
To get to Lazarus, the team needs resources and some backing. So, Bex calls Mallory, whom she explains the entire thing to, asking for help. She says she needs backup, and Mallory agrees to send whatever she needs. Bex is grateful for it, but she has no idea that Mallory is already being held captive by Lazarus, who is two steps ahead of her. She forces Mallory to trap Bex, Hassani, and Shane, and when the job is done, Mallory is killed. The trio arrives at the ambush entirely unaware of what’s about to happen. Bex and Hassani are thrown in cells next to the criminals they’d helped catch not long ago. Meanwhile, Lazarus has a chat with Shane, where she tries to persuade him to join her.
Meanwhile, Morales is still at Peck’s place, where he is still being held captive. This gives her a chance to help Bex and Hassani, who were already on Lazarus’ chopping block. With everything ready for her flight out of the country, she had planned to blow up the prison where she was holding the others captive. She wouldn’t have any time to work on them, so it would be better to remove any trace of them still alive. When Morales sees the bombs being placed, she hacks into Lazarus’ system and opens the locks of all the cages, giving Bex and Hassani a fighting chance. But this means that other cells are open too, creating more chaos as the serial killers try to flee.
After being briefly engaged by the serial killers trying to kill her, Bex notices Lazarus slipping into the background and disappearing. Bex chases after Lazarus, and a gunfight ensues, which ends with Bex getting shot in the chest. Right as Lazarus is about to slip away, Shane shows up. He worries about Bex but knows that catching Lazarus is equally important, if not more. As he holds her at gunpoint, she tries to manipulate him into letting her go, or better yet, joining her. She even tells him about his killer instincts and how he is not very different from her.
She pokes him to the point that he ends up firing a shot, but not at her. He lets out his anger, but he shows that he is not like her by being insistent about arresting her and dealing with her the right way. Of course, she doesn’t care for it and lifts her gun to shoot back. It happens too quickly for Shane to react, but luckily for him, Bex regains consciousness and notices what Lazarus is about to do, right on time. She takes a clear shot at Lazarus, hitting and killing her on the spot. Meanwhile, help reaches soon enough for Bex to be treated immediately. While she will be saved, Lazarus isn’t so lucky. Bex’s shot was so good that it killed Lazarus in one go.
What Happens to Peck? Why does Morales Let Him Go?
While Bex, Hassani, and Shane are out there chasing after Xander Wax and then trying to get Lazarus, Morales is at Peck’s home, where he is still tied to his chair. Because he has worked with Lazarus very closely, Morales knows that he might be able to help Morales and her team with those things. And that’s exactly what happens. When Bex, Hassani, and Shane are held captive, Morales uses Peck’s help to free them and give them a fighting chance against Lazarus. Of course, he doesn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart. Morales promises to let him go in return for his help.
But he has been working with the bad guys for so long that he doesn’t think Morales will keep her word once she has what she wants. He even tells her that he understands if she never intended to let him go in the first place. However, Morales is a woman of her word. If she told Peck she would let him go, then she would honor the terms of the trade. However, she is still an officer of the law, which means she cannot let him slip away so easily either. So, she fulfills her promise by allowing him to run away, but she also puts a timer on him.
He has a short time window to ensure that he is gone for good because after that time period, she will report the whole thing to her superiors. Instead of making some excuses or a story about what happened, she will tell them that she used his help to help Bex and the others, and let him go in exchange. This is the only right way to handle this situation because she is not going to lie and hide anything. This was a choice she had to make, and she doesn’t necessarily see it as the wrong choice. She will make her case in front of the superiors and take whatever punishment they give her.
Who was the Source? Who is the New Head of Operations?
One of the names that comes to light during the search for Xander Wax is Beaumont. At first, his name appears on a book that turned out to be one of the core principles used inside the Pit to treat the serial killers. Then it becomes clear that Beaumont wasn’t just some writer, but an active participant in the making of the Pit. He was one of its creators and an important piece of the puzzle. Bex, Hassani, and Shane know his importance, but they don’t meet him until the end of the episode. By this time, Lazarus is dead, and Bex is out of the hospital. The trio assembles at their regular haunt to discuss what will become of the Pit and the recovery program now.
In the middle of this, Beaumont shows up to talk with them. He confesses that he is one of the people behind the creation of the Pit, but unlike the others, he didn’t want it to become the psychological hellhole it is now. Bex correctly deduces that Beaumont himself was the source who had told the journalists everything they needed to know about the Pit and to expose the whole thing to the rest of the world. This is because he didn’t agree with the route that the whole program had taken. Now, he is back to put the project under new leadership. With Lazarus and Mallory gone, a new person needs to take charge, and Beaumont turns towards Bex for it.
She is offered the chance to run the entire operation, but more importantly, it also opens her to the secrets about the Pitt that were being kept from her all this time. It turns out that the Pit wasn’t just a place to experiment on serial killers. They were also “making” serial killers there, which explains the long list that Beaumont hands over to the list. It is yet to be revealed how exactly they “made” serial killers there, but the investigation down this rabbit hole might be able to answer some questions about Shane’s origins. With Lazarus dead, he doesn’t have a lot of sources to delve into the truth about his birth. With Bex taking over the program and receiving insights into more of the Pit’s secrets, he might have that opportunity.
Meanwhile, the episode sets up another mystery: a photo Hassani notices at the assistant journalist’s house. The photo refers to an article written by a journalist. Clearly, the writer had a connection to the Pit, and she perhaps even knew about it. Sadly, Hassani cannot follow up with her because he knows that the woman is already dead. In fact, this woman was his wife, and her death is not news to her. It’s the fact that his wife had been looking into the Pit. This makes Hassani wonder if this is what got her killed. If so, then things got much more personal with Hassani. He’d already been having a difficult time recovering from the grief of her passing. To discover that may have been killed for digging up the secret Hassani is after makes things even more interesting.
Read More: Is Oliver Dead? Did Nick Wechsler Leave The Hunting Party?
