Up to this point in The Hunting Party, we’ve seen Bex and the team hunt down people from The Pit and know exactly who they’re up against. In The Hunting Party season 1, episode 8, things will take a turn. The killer is a copycat, paying homage to someone else locked away in another prison.
Keto Shimizu, who is one of the executive producers on the series, wrote this episode. However, many fans will know her best for her work on Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. We talked with her about the decision to go for a copycat killer, the inspiration for the killer, and the jump from DC to crime procedurals.
Keto Shimizu talks inspiration for the psychopath in The Hunting Party
Precinct TV: This has been the episode I’ve been waiting for all season! So, let’s jump in to discussing the use of the copycat killer. Why a copycat this time in The Hunting Party?
Keto Shimizu: The notion of a killer that is paying homage to another killer really excited us for a number of reasons. For one, it allowed us to sort of shake up the premise in this particular episode. Usually, we know who we’re looking for and we can then utilize all the tools to figure out where this person is going. In this episode, we wanted to change that a little bit.
Usually, we know the killer who did these awful things in the past is out there again. Instead, that person is still in our custody, but they have a protégé out there wreaking havoc in their name to honor them, and it allowed us to have another level of mystery. In this episode, we have to find out who this pseron is and how they got so enamored with this person while in prison. It adds pressure, and we also have these wonderfully juicy scenes with the original killer trying to discover how she influenced this person, who this person is, and get her to spill some vital information.
She’s very smart, she’s very ruthless, and she has no intention of giving Bex and Oliver any information. She gets to sort of play and toy with them.
The set up also allows us to play a lot in this theme of mentorship and protégé. Oliver and Bex have this partnership, which we know is one they’re used to. We see them now working together and reallydiving into this theme of student and master. The student is overcoming the master and still learning from each other. It allowed for some really compelling scene work.
PTV: I’m looking forward to more with Oliver. He knows The Pit, and now he gets to share a little bit more. Usually he knows the inmate, but he is on this mission as well. What was it like to have Oliver be more part of the search and share a bit more about what he knows of The Pit?
KS: First of all, Nick [Wechsler] was delightful. He brings such gravitas and meaning to every scene that he works in. It was really a great opportunity to let him step back into that role of profiler, something that we know he’s really good at. He taught Bex a lot of her tricks and helped make her the master profiler that she is. It was great to just allow him to flex those muscles and work with his old partner, to see the two of them outwit someone that’s very clever.
He certainly has a lot of expertise and experience in The Pit that he can bring into this situation, but there’s still some things that he doesn’t know, and to have him and the whole team come together in this episode — both the away team and the home team — to work in concert to figure out what’s going on in the nick of time, it again, allowed for a lot of really great moving parts that all converge in a very exciting climax.
PTV: Let’s talk the serial killer. What is the inspiration behind her character?
KS: Oh, she’s so fun. The idea behind an artistic killer is something that we kicked around from day one of our development room. This was years ago, before the show was even greenlit, when it was just a couple of us at Jake [Coburn]'s office kicking around ideas. We always wanted to do an artistic killer. We all love the movie Seven. We all love the visual element where you want to look away but you can’t look away because it’s still kind of pretty, even though it’s disgusting and scary. So, we always wanted to do that, and it just took a matter of us nailing what this artistic killer, their concept, was.
It just came together one day in the room. I’m a huge Greek mythology nerd, and I suggested the muses. Where does art come from? It comes from the Muses. It comes from inspiration. This killer is literally killing people based on their fields, based on their art. It’s a way of one artist honoring another.
PTV: You’ve gone from DC to crime procedurals, which are very different. What was that shift like?
KS: They are, but they also aren’t. The thing that I really enjoyed about working on this particular procedural is that there’s a lot that actually translates from Arrow, which I worked on with Jake, who was the showrunner on there. It was a case of the week, and there was a procedural engine — who’s out there, what’s their deal?
With the comic book genre, you’re only as interesting as your villain. The villain is a big part of the story engine, and what makes those worlds so fun to be in — and this show’s no different — is that they hinge on these super twisted, tortured killers and getting into their psychology and following them as they go on these really bizarre head-scratching journeys that leave our heroes in their wake, wondering how they get ahead of it.
The Hunting Party airs on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.
Stay up to date with the latest TV crime dramas with Precinct TV.