Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Hunting Wives’ focuses on the unraveling of a Texan town after a girl named Abby is found dead in the woods. The suspicion turns on Sophie O’Neil, a newcomer to town who had just started to find a place for herself with Margo Banks and her group of rich wives whose friendships are more complicated than what appears on the surface. When Sophie’s newly bought gun is found to be the murder weapon, the cops see her as the easy target. This leads her to conduct an investigation of her own, which ends up spilling more blood, before the true culprit comes to light. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Starr and Jill’s Violent Confrontation Ends Tragically for Both
When Abby dies, her mother, Starr, grapples with the reality that, being from the poorer side of the town, her case might not receive as much attention as it should. Even when the whole town seems to rally behind it, she witnesses people like Jed Banks taking advantage of the crowd to further their own political ambitions. While the cops are yet to determine the culprit, with strong suspicion falling on Sophie, Starr believes that Brad and/or his mother, Jill, are the ones to blame. Her suspicions are strengthened when Sophie comes to her with her own theory about how Abby got pregnant with Brad’s child, got an abortion, and attracted Jill’s ire enough for the woman to kill her.
Despite Sophie’s belief that Jill did it, the cops don’t pursue that end of the investigation. Brad and his mother act as each other’s alibi, and he is let go with a pat on his back, which makes Starr furious. When Sophie comes to her about Abby’s pregnancy, she finds it difficult to believe. But then, she asks Jamie about it, and he confirms that Abby and Brad were in a sexual relationship, though he cannot confirm if Abby was pregnant or not. Jamie’s words are enough to spur Starr into action, and she decides to get justice for her daughter on her own. One evening, she shows up at Jill’s house with a gun. Her intention is to kill Jill, and maybe even Brad. However, things don’t turn out as expected.
Though she has a shotgun in her hand when she enters the house, Jill, too, has a gun of her own. The confrontation between them happens such that Starr accuses Jill of murdering her daughter, which Jill vehemently denies. In an act of self-preservation, she shoots Starr before the latter can shoot her. The shot is fatal, and Starr bleeds to death on Jill’s kitchen floor. Soon after this, Callie and Margo unexpectedly show up at Jill’s place. At first, she tries to keep them outside, worried that Starr’s death might be seen as murder. But her friends push through her and enter the house, where they find Starr dead.
While Jill tries to explain the situation, the duo talks about calling the cops. Unbeknownst to Jill, her friends had already been suspicious of her. Margo had been talking about the possibility of Jill being the killer when Callie suggested that she is their friend, and instead of suspecting her, they should just ask her about it point-blank. Whatever faith Callie had in Jill disappears when she sees Starr dead in her kitchen. So, when Jill pulls a gun on Margo, Callie doesn’t hesitate to jump into action, shooting Jill several times and killing her on the spot.
Abby’s Murder is Pinned on Jill, But the Murderer is Someone Else
The doubts about Jill are ignited after Sophie talks with Pastor Pete, who reveals that Brad told her his girlfriend was pregnant and got an abortion. Sophie believes that this revelation may have pushed Jill to kill the girl, which wouldn’t have been hard, as she already hated Abby. The suspicion deepens further when Margo talks to Brad and he reveals that his mother was the last person to call Abby before she was murdered. He wonders why his mother would have kept this a secret.
He also wonders why his mother was so adamant about linking his alibi with hers, and starts to believe that it was more about her having an alibi rather than him. When Margo asks Brad to find anything that could incriminate Jill further, he tries to look into her phone and laptop, but they are password protected. He tries to find her history through the maps, but it turns out that she has deleted the data, which strikes him as odd. Margo uses all of this to convince people around her that Jill has something to do with Abby’s murder.
She even brings up the fact that when she asked Jill to delete the pictures from her phone, she refused to do it. While others buy it more easily, Callie is hesitant, at least until she finds Starr’s dead body and then shoots Jill to death. With everyone, including Brad, supporting the theory of Jill’s guilt and her not being able to defend herself because she is dead, the cops close the case by pinning the murder on her. For a moment, everything seems resolved.
But then, Sophie discovers that Margo uses tampons, and she lied to her when they first met because she had recently gotten an abortion. This thread leads her to Margo’s real father, who turns out to be the doctor who supported her alibi. When that unravels, Sophie confronts Margo, and the latter accepts her guilt, though it doesn’t mean that she is going to go to the cops and clear Jill’s name. In the eyes of the law, Jill remains the only culprit in Abby’s murder.
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