Don’t trust everything you’re told. That’s the lesson on The Hunting Party season 2 episode 2.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from The Hunting Party season 2 episode 2.
While the episode initially opens with a look into Lazarus, the task force is pulled into a new case. A man called Adrian Gallo has been spotted, a man who encased his victims in acrylic resin so that people would see. At first, it seems like Lazarus’s henchman wants to halt the search, but Bex and her team aren’t going to stop.
Bex is right when she says that he will kill if they don’t move in right away. Sure enough, it seems like that’s going to be the case, as he attacks an elderly man called Mr. Wilkins. Apparently, he saw something, and Adrian wants to know what that is.
Did Adrian Gallo actually kill victims on The Hunting Party season 2 episode 2?
While Adrian Gallo liked acrylic resin, there are immediate questions about whether he did it. At first, he said that he didn’t do it, and he even offered to help the police catch the real killer. It was only when he went through Immersive Accountability Technique that he started to talk about how he did it.
This technique made Adrian watch multiple screens at once, which included victim impact statements and the crimes. After a year, Adrian admitted to three kills, and it took four years of this torturous treatment to admit to all of them.
Their discussion is cut short when they find out there’s been a kill, and that takes them to Mr. Wilkins who is definitely dead. Mr. Wilkins lived in the house where a witness lived, and while Hassani says that Adrian is looking for revenge, Bex and Shane don’t think it’s just revenge.
Adrian heads out to Erica’s house
Bex, Shane, and Hassani decide that it’s time to head out to Erica’s house, the detective from the case. Adrian is already there, and he wants to “see them.” With a phone call, Erica is able to shoot at Adrian, but he’s able to get away before Bex gets there.
Erica immediately makes it clear that she wants to get involved in the case. She spent so long chasing him, and this man killed her partner, so she wants to make sure he’s taken down again. Hassani doesn’t like it, but Bex decides that it would be best to have her involved just to keep an eye on her.
Where did Adrian go? Well, he wanted to see his resins, and Erica told him that they’re stored in evidence. That’s where Adrian has gone. Naturally, everyone is shocked to learn that the resins are still in evidence, because usually, loved ones get the bodies to bury them. The families got fake cremains, rather than the real deal.
The questions about whether Adrian did it continue to form. Adrian is looking at the resins of insects rather than people. And he doesn’t seem to be at the same evidence lockup that Erica has taken Bex to. On top of that, there are no resins in the evidence lockup. The crates are there (and dusty!), but they’re all empty, so where have they been taken?
Who stole the resin bodies on The Hunting Party?
While Bex and Erica connect over the loss of a partner, Hassani and Shane get in touch with Morales. There are no signs of anyone from the Pit getting the resins, so it’s not clear who took it.
However, there is a bigger concern. Erica points out that if Adrian can’t get the resins then it means he’ll be after another victim and will need the supplies to put them in resin. She knows a lot about the process, and it continues to lead to questions. When she decides that she’s not going to keep on the hunt, there are far more questions that come up. Bex clearly has some questions.
Back at HQ, Morales runs into dead ends. The new guy makes it clear that he won’t hold Morales back. He doesn’t work for the Pit, so he will give over everything he has about what went down there. This means Morales gets Dr. Charles’s old hard drive. We learn he was the one to take the resins, and he destroyed them in front of Adrian as part of his therapy.
So, if he knew the resins were destroyed, why did he want to see them? The plot thickens, as Erica is given a card by a detective with her former partner’s name pays a guy to give her a card to a hotel. Of course, in there, Adrian has everything set up for another resin kill. Despite her phone being turned off, Bex already put a tag on her to make sure they could find her.
Bex goes through everything that happened in the Pit. While Adrian confessed to the first three, it was only when his three were being destroyed that he confessed to the others. He didn’t do it, and Bex realizes that the confession was coerced. He went to Mr. Wilkins to find out what the man saw, because he wanted to know what had happened with the other three victims.
There’s a copycat out there, and Bex realizes that Erica was the one to kill the last three, including her own partner. It turns out that Erica learned that her partner was going to retire after the case, and she didn’t want that to happen. More importantly, he was leaving for Florida and she didn’t want him to leave her, so she killed him.
Why would she stop at three, though? Bex doesn’t think she did, and that’s when the task force gets to the hotel, seeing Adrian in the resin. Without a sign of a struggle, he likely wanted this himself. As the resin hasn’t set, Shane checks for a pulse, but Adrian is definitely dead, and now it’s time to find Erica, which takes them all back to her house.
Erica never did stop at three, after all. All the missing persons files she has on her walls are all her victims, but where are the resins? Well, there’s a reason she’s been going a lot of home renovations. Gunshots to the wall help to get rid of the drywall, and Bex sees that all the resins are in the walls.
Does the darkness leave its mark on The Hunting Party?
The end The Hunting Party season 2 episode 2, Erica notes that the darkness leaves its mark. She found the life of a serial killer thrilling, and that’s why she kept killing.
On the way home, Bex turns to Shane to see if he thinks the darkness leaves a mark? Shane doesn’t think so, and he says it with such certainty. “You can just turn a light on,” Shane tells her, making it clear that the light will always win. The trick is finding something to keep the light on, and for Shane, it’s all about Bex, Hassani, Morales, just being a part of the task force, as well as Red Vines, of course.
The new guy goes to see Bex at the office to bring her Odell’s nameplate from the office. It’s a sweet gesture, and I really want this guy to turn out to be one of the good ones.
Shane does have some information about Lazarus, after speaking with someone at Westpoint who was there at the same time. While her military record checks out, Hassani’s CIA friend checks out her previous life. There isn’t anything about Lazarus before Westpoint, so who was she?
The Hunting Party airs on Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.