NBC’s crime drama “The Hunting Party” returned for season 2 with a shocking death.
Oliver Odell (Nick Wechsler) was poisoned in the Season 1 finale. The Season 2 premiere, which aired on Thursday, January 8, revealed that he did not survive. Oliver’s death, which took place off-screen, was confirmed when undercover FBI agent Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) was seen mourning the death of her ex.
Wechsler was listed as a cast member in an NBC press release regarding Season 2, so his character’s death was unexpected. “The Hunting Party” executive producer JJ Bailey told TVLine that the show’s creative team “struggled” with whether Oliver should die or not.
“One thing we kind of faced was creatively, it was difficult to get (Oliver) involved and find stories that really seemed to serve what we wanted to do with the character and with Bex,” Bailey explained. Fellow executive producer Jake Coburn also weighed in on the decision.
“I would say I think (Oliver’s) character was so closely tied to (Bex’s) past, and at a certain point we dealt with a lot of that history and emotions. And it felt like going forward we were looking more for the characters that were going to be part of her future story, and felt like we squeezed all the juice out of the relationship that we could,” Coburn said.
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“The Hunting Party” follows Bex, a former FBI profiler who returns to work after a secret underground prison called The Pit explodes, releasing the country’s most dangerous serial killers into society. Roxburgh, who plays Bex, didn’t know Wechsler would be written off the show when they filmed the dramatic season 1 finale.
“(It was) left on a cliffhanger, so I’m like, ‘OK, maybe there’s hope that he’s not dead.’ Because the Bex-Odell storyline, I feel like it needed something; we had to shut it down,” Roxburgh told TVLine. “So I was really hoping (he would live). But you know what? It’s a great plot twist, I think, that coming into season 2 and finding out that the cliffhanger… the audience will be more inclined to connect with it because I think they weren’t expecting it. “
In season 2, Bex assembles her team to continue tracking down serial killers on the run. The mysterious Eve Lazarus (Kari Matchett), Pit’s former inmate, is now the team leader. Roxburgh told Collider that Bex and her teammates will “always be wary” of Lazarus, whose backstory remains a mystery.
“The Hunting Party” airs on NBC Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET. The episodes are available for streaming on Peacock the day after their broadcast.
