Spoiler alert: The following article discusses the entirety of “Hunters” Season 2.
For “Hunters” creator David Weil, the alternative history thriller series is about immersing audiences into the murkiness of morality. It’s about getting viewers to ponder if — in lead Hunter Jonah’s (Logan Lerman) position — they would opt for “the sword or the scales of justice.”
The executive producer told TheWrap, “The entire question of the series truly really is A: If you hunt monsters in the darkness do you risk becoming a monster yourself? And B: What is the difference between justice and revenge? And given the choice to choose one, what would you choose?”
Season 2, the last for the ‘70s-set Prime Video drama, picks up several months after a botched mission in Europe has shaken and dismantled the group of vigilantes. Over the course of the installment, it’s revealed that Jonah, in his quest for vengeance, inadvertently caused the death of an 8-year-old child of a neo-Nazi.
“They all pretty much hate each other now and don’t get along, and emotionally, it’s something that has traumatized Jonah a bit and it’s adding to the weight and responsibility of finishing what he started,” Lerman said in an interview, adding that he relished the opportunity to play with “the layers and complexities” of his character this season.
Weil began writing Season 2 ahead of the first season premiere, but it was only after talking with Al Pacino about his portrayal of Meyer Offerman (who was killed by Jonah at the end of Season 1 after he uncovered his true identity as the Wolf) that the producer broke the two-part story for the final season: a prequel of sorts that would serve as an origin story for both Meyer and the Hunters as a group.
“Really, the importance of it was how the story in the past collides with the story in the future, and with Jonah, and so this is really a story about how Meyer is still a part of Jonah and how Jonah tries to battle that darkness within him,” the writer said.
Lerman echoed that sentiment, saying, “Morality’s not a factor for [Jonah] at this point in his journey, but he’s guilty; he’s leading two different lives at the beginning of this show. He thinks that he’s moved on. He’s found love. He’s a student and he sees the light at the end of the tunnel and he thinks he’s almost over it — just maybe needed one more thing, and it’s done, he can put it behind them and stop living this lie because he keeps lying to his partner. He really gets sucked in again, and it gets deeper. He has one last mission, he thinks, and it’s just another one, it’s another one, but he’s constantly lying to himself about how much more there is left.”
Ultimately, Weil conceptualized the show’s final mission statement as “deliverance from that darkness back toward the light.” Jonah is able to find his way back to some semblance of peace and healing largely due to the addition of new character Chava (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who plays Ruth’s (thought-to-be-deceased) sister previously shown in flashbacks in Season 1.
“The antidote to being lost in the world is family — family is the medicine. And so being able to bring back or to introduce a character who we saw very briefly in Season 1 in the past and the flashbacks, and bring her into Season 2, especially through the most incredible Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is equal parts power and fury and might and also nuance and care and cleverness was really a thrill. I think she just infused and injected such a necessary ingredient into Season 2,” Weil explained.
The conceit of Season 2 is the band’s chasing of Adolf Hitler, who they learn has been hiding out in Argentina for years amid masterminding a plan for the Fourth Reich. Upon capturing him thanks to Chava’s sacrifice, Jonah is confronted with the consequences of his actions, opting to transport him to an international criminal tribunal rather than murder him while tucked away in a bunker.
“Ultimately, the thesis of the show is one that chooses justice over revenge, though doesn’t make judgment on choosing either one,” Weil said.
What follows is a court that finds Hitler guilty of war crimes, among other charges, and serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in which he is addressed solely by a detainee number.
“In a way, this trial was not just the trial of Adolf Hitler in the series, but I think also was an attempt to litigate the kinds of ideas and myths and disgusting lies that we see day-in and day-out within our culture in our society,” Weil said of the show’s metaphors. “So in that way, I hope it feels cathartic. I hope there’s a bit of wish fulfillment there — potentially a lesson or a model that people can take away from trying to confront in every way, in art and in life, this dialogue that’s happening.”
Even though Jonah and the group have presumably cut off the head of a rising neo-Nazi movement, there is more work to be done. The ending shot of “Hunters” finds Jonah zeroing in on a cafégoer, implied to be a possible fascist. Then, the screen cuts to black.
“Can you ever escape your fate, your birthright? Jonah, at the end, can’t really leave this life behind. And so though he tries, though he will into the future, I think that mission, that birthright and that legacy will weigh very [heavily] on him. The finale was also inspired by the ending of ‘Zodiac’ for example, living in that gray, living in that unknown and living in the question,” said Weil, adding that he was keen to leave the series “on a question and not an answer.”
For Lerman, Jonah will never be able to outrun his past, nor the generational trauma and international crimes that shaped him: “More than anything, it was leaving the door open for more, possibly,” the actor explained. “The ideology doesn’t end with one person, so it’s the idea that just because you may have completed your mission, there’s more out there, there are more threats. And can Jonah just simply let it go? And lead a normal life and put it behind him? Or will he or is he still working as a Hunter, or exploring his own brand of justice?”
He concluded, “I think he knows that he can’t really go back to being a normal individual, that he’s shaped by the events and that if not him, then who now?”
For cast members like Tiffany Boone (who plays the maternal, compassionate Roxy) and Louis Ozawa (who plays Joe, captured and indoctrinated by Hitler at the end of Season 1), wrapping up the show was a matter of not leaving “anything on the table,” though they weren’t aware it would be the last installment while filming even as there were discussions about the possibility.
“We discussed the ending so many times and there are various different versions,” Ozawa said.
At the end, Boone sees the drama’s conclusion as an analogue for how change is enacted, and that the fight continues beyond the scope of one singular individual: “You get these little glimmers of hope, justice is served in this little way or you see someone change their mind or whatever. Just keep passing the baton, keep passing the baton. There’s more of us than there are them: there’s more people who believe in love and equality and acceptance than there are them, so we just have to keep coming together as hard as it is, as diverse as we are, as many different personalities and backgrounds as we come from, we have to continue to fight in our own ways.”
