The team hunt down a dangerous psychopath. This one is a psychiatrist in The Hunting Party season 1, episode 4.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for The Hunting Party season 1, episode 4.
We get to start the episode with a look into Dr. Ezekiel Malak’s experience on Death Row. It’s his execution, and a chance to see how prisoners went from their executions to The Pit. It turns out that they were killed and then brought back, with a tattoo on their foot.
This wasn’t planned with the inmates. It also wasn’t planned with too many people at the executions. There was one doctor, who happened to be in the photo that we saw in the previous episode. I’m intrigued by the way the prisoners were chosen and then taken to The Pit. Did they even get a choice? What happened if they said no?
Figuring out the new list of victims in The Hunting Party
Bex and the team figure out that they have a chance to get Dr. Ezekiel Malak back behind bars. The problem is this guy has escalated from his initial MO.
Malak didn’t go around just randomly killing people. He would kill some of his victims. Others he would save. He had a God complex, and this continued now that he was back out of The Pit. However, he seemed to go a different route to choose his victims.
He couldn’t treat patients anymore. That meant he would need to find a pattern in his victims, and he found people at the local library. He found a list of people who checked out his book about grief, viewing himself as their savior.
Bex learns Malak has a new MO in The Hunting Party season 1, episode 4
After his third victim, we finally got to know a little more about the torture that Malak put his victims through. Bex went into speak with the third victim, only to find out that “he wanted to know what [she] saw.” He would kill her over and over again, and he wanted to see what was on the other side.
Is it possible that this stems from his own death and rebirth? What did he see when he died? Does he want to find out what other people see, but he doesn’t want to risk his own death? That certainly seems likely considering his mental state.
Bex learns that Malak went through this in The Pit. He was constantly killed and brought back to life. This helps to understand him better, making it easier to catch him. As the team realize that Malak isn’t done and needs more drugs to kill people, it means he needs to go to a hospital for supplies. This will be the closest hospital, and they all split up to find him. This is the biggest mistake possible. We all know when you split up something bad happens! To make it worse, Bex turns off her comms.
Sure enough, Malak captures her!
How does the team save Bex?
We knew Bex was going to be taken based on the promo for The Hunting Party season 1, episode 4. The question always was how the team would save her.
Malak shares that he is doing this to help people get a breakthrough in their life. It’s more of a God complex, and he wants to be part of people’s journey to connect with something personal in their lives.
It’s not hard for Bex’s team to figure out where Malak would take Bex. Everyone else was taken back to their homes, but Bex doesn’t live in Chicago. She is staying in a hotel there, and that’s exactly where Malak took her. It’s not overly smart of him.
Bex decides to taunt Malak in the end. There is a method to her madness. She manages to get one of her hands free, so she can fight him back, as the sound of police cars gather around. Malak chooses to take his own life in the bathroom, but Bex won’t allow that to happen. She brings him back, giving us the chance to see a villain taken into custody. That is something the show has done right.
I did enjoy the two boys comparing war wounds. IT’s comfort for Bex as well, who is dealing with the injury from the defibrillator. This shows just how the trio have become friends along this journey.
The ending gives us a moment between Bex and Odell, who are dancing around a lot right now. Bex decides to tell him what she saw just before her death. She shares that she saw Sam and Odell. It was a sign for Bex to accept that what the two shared was important, and she had to stop running from that.
There is a chance for Bex to finally get Odell’s phone. Hassani had given Bex a device to put into Odell’s phone to clone it, and she was able to use it, knowing that she needs to if she wants answers about The Pit. With the information, they’re able to find a storage unit with items, including a box of items from Sam. Sam and Odell had been in touch. Of course, the co-ordinates are the most interesting elements of everything in the room.
We also find out a little about Shane’s family. He goes to an assisted living facility, where he meets with the doctor from earlier in the episode; the one connected to The Pit. Well, it turns out he’s Shane’s dad! What! I did not see that coming, and I love the twist.
This episode does make me want to know more about the “treatments” that the inmates experienced in The Pit. What was going on down there, and why? Co-showrunner JJ Bailey made it clear there’s more to The Pit, and I want to know now!
The Hunting Party airs on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.
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