The Hunting Party Team Talks Those Big Finale Cliffhangers, Season 2 Hopes: "A Long Arc"
The Hunting Party Season 1 finale answered lingering questions and exposed some bigger mysteries.
This story contains spoilers for The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 10, "Jenna Wells."
It's been a roller coaster ride of a first season for NBC's latest thriller The Hunting Party. After the explosive introduction to the series, audiences have watched Agent Rebecca “Bex” Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), CIA agent Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), former Pit warden Oliver Odell (Nick Wechsler), former Pit prison guard Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie), and HQ intel officer Jennifer Morales (Sara Garcia) mold themselves into a crack team of profilers and trackers.
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Their last Pit fugitive for this freshman season, "Jenna Wells," not only gave them a life-or-death killer to find, but it also put several members of this team in mortal danger.
To close out the season, NBC Insider spoke with series co-showrunner Jake Coburn and actors Sabongui and McKenzie about the big moments that impacted the ensemble and what they'd all like to see in Season 2.
Settling stories & creating new paths in The Hunting Party
Co-showrunner Jake Coburn explained, "For Episodes 9 and 10, we felt a really strong obligation and desire to stick the landing on the serialized stories. Specifically, Shane's story and giving the audience an answer that will provoke a lot of questions, but giving them an answer that they hopefully are excited by.
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"And then, giving an answer as well on the larger mystery surrounding what exactly happened at The Pit," he continued. They wanted, he said "to find cool ways" to wrap up Season 1's overlapping stories.
"There were also some really personal moments that were really important, like there's a reveal about [Hassani] and the fact that his wife died years ago, which was hopefully surprising," he shared. "And there's a little bit of a hint of an almost romantic connection between Shane and Bex. We were really looking forward to having that moment in the finale. Then, obviously, we have huge reveals in terms of General Lazarus that hopefully people did not see coming. And then the biggest reveal of all with the ending with Bex and Odell."
Patrick Sabongui on getting a heads up about that bullet
For any actor on a television series, cracking open a new script and reading that your character gets shot is always a scary day for job security. Luckily, Sabongui revealed that he got a prior warning from the show's producers before he opened the season finale script.
The actor said they told him that when he got to a page where Hassani takes a bullet, that didn't mark the end for him.
"And in fact, they said I survived and would see him again before the end of the episode. So, yeah, they gave me the heads up," he said.
As for the big scene where his character goes down, Sabongui said, "I really did enjoy that opportunity. I love it when a character's vulnerabilities are exposed and I think the way that Hassani takes a bullet is indicative of who he is as a person, rather than as an operative."
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He continued, "He's a guy who has survived for so long by not trusting anybody, and extends a moment of trust, exposes himself, and then pays the ultimate consequence. I think there's a beautiful irony, just story-wise, in that. It was interesting embracing his inability to do anything about it. He's shot and he's in the hospital bed. He clearly can't participate in accomplishing the mission, and that was just a weird space for him to reconcile because he's all about the mission. That's his reason for existing. But then to have that paternal moment of, like, 'Go get him.' I loved that."
If The Hunting Party gets renewed for a second season, the actor hopes the show dives right into the revelation that Hassani is a widower and single father.
"We get a little bit of insight in that finale episode about his wife, so that opens up a whole bunch of questions about his children. Are they back in D.C.? How good of a father can he actually be if we're watching him all day, every day, on these planes, and he's in different states chasing bad guys? And how does that land on him?" he wondered.
The big love triangle: Bex and Shane and Odell
The show's writers have been slowly suggesting that while Bex has unresolved ties to Odell from when they worked together, she's also come to trust and lean into Shane's solid countenance as well.
Actor Josh McKenzie told us that he liked the seasonal slow burn between the characters.
"It feels like it's a relationship that, whether it's going to be a really good friendship or romantic or end up turning, I think the payoff will be greater and stronger with this dappling of little moments," he said. "There are a lot of charged moments, and I think those moments are just the characters figuring each other out. Shane's relationship is tested with the 'Malak' episode when she nearly dies. That was a turning point for him, like, 'Oh, this person actually means something to me.' But is that a friendship or a family thing because he doesn't really have a family?"
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As for the Bex of it all in the finale, Coburn said her actions in the last hour continued to prove that she's a survivor.
"A lot of what Season 1 is about is about her returning to look at some of the old wounds that she's been carrying around," he pointed out. "In many ways, Season 1 is about accepting and making peace with things that have happened, even if they're difficult and complicated. Certainly, that has to do with her childhood story, her Odell stuff, and [daughter] Sam. I think there's also an existential question for her at the heart of it, of what should I be doing? What am I good at?
"As she progresses, hopefully in seasons to come, she will be slowly growing out of her reflection on the past and also be driven by the current relationships that she's having in the present," he teased. "We see a long arc for her, and for Shane and for Hassani. My dream is, after 10 seasons, that they're all in good places as people. They feel loved and protected because all of them, in different ways, have really been through the wringer. They deserve security and comfort because they didn't get a lot of it."
All of The Hunting Party Season 1 episodes are available to stream on Peacock.
