‘Hunters’ – Season Two – Review
Prime Video is one of the best places to be for original streaming entertainment and one of its most intense and captivating series is Hunters, an alternative-history spy thriller that sees a band of no-nonsense Jewish Nazi hunters waging war on what’s left of the Third Reich. And Season Two has now arrived. And the volume has been turned all the way up for the manic final season!
After an accident derails their exploits in Europe, The Hunters must band back together to hunt down history’s most infamous Nazi—Adolf Hitler—who’s hiding in South America. Meanwhile, a look to the past reveals Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino) encountering a dangerous threat that could unravel his secret and expose his true identity, with explosive reverberations for our Hunters.
In 2020 showrunner David Weil and executive producer Jordan Peele shook up Prime Video with an intense and thought-provoking thriller series called Hunters. And this was television that went straight for the jugular. Mixing together the energy of the spy adventure, with a heavy dose of history and drama and a good serving of grindhouse-level gore, Hunters was a series that took audiences on one hell of a journey and its binge-worthiness was all-consuming as we watched a young Jewish-American man named Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) get pulled into a chilling fight in the shadows. Episode by episode the action and drama grew heavier and left audiences in a spin with one hell of a shocking revelation, and a major cliffhanger. Now Weil, Peele and stars Al Pacino and Logan Lerman are back for Season Two. And it’s about to get gnarly.
Picking up several years after the events of Hunters First Season, Season Two finds a fraught and fractured team of Hunters drifted apart thanks to Jonah’s increasing brutality and obsession with the Hunt. But after taking out an old adversary, Jonah discovers a shocking secret that could change the very nature of the world and clawing his way back to his team, he sets off to capture the most infamous Nazi of them all: Adolf Hitler! Joining forces with FBI agent Millie Morris (Jerrika Hinton), signal expert Mindy Markowitz (Carol Kane), counterfeiter and forger Roxy Jones (Tiffany Boone), actor turned master of disguise Lonny Flash (Josh Radnor) and the vindictive former MI6 operative Sister Harriet (Kate Mulvany), Jonah and his team undertake the most important mission of their lives. And the action ramps up quickly.
But Season Two of Hunters isn’t Jonah’s story alone, and audiences also witness the unexpected return of the legendary Al Pacino as Meyer Offerman. While I won’t lean into the mechanics of Pacino’s return as Offerman, his presence in Season Two has some major ramifications for the narrative and its direction. There’s also the surprise appearance of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Chava Apfelbaum, a Jewish Nazi Hunter, and a woman who shares a special relationship with Lerman’s Jonah, and Leigh takes it up a notch with her performance. There’s a certain feline intensity and cunning to Leigh’s appearance as Chava and her addition to the narrative makes for an interesting contrast to Jonah and their shared mission.
Just as with its first season, Season Two of Hunters is a full-on thriller with a good serving of grindhouse violence, excessive profanity, sweaty sex and some totally wicked and outlandish humour, and audiences will get a real kick out of the action on screen. Inventive and original, Weir keeps the narrative moving at a kinetic pace and there are plenty of shocks and scares that you won’t see coming. As a showrunner, he puts his foot down on the gas with the Second Season, and this series is a rush that will see you binge episodes at an erratic pace. Fans will be very impressed with the severity of the action that is served up this time, and the violence is cranked up a notch as Jonah and the Hunters perform their work. And watch out for Kate Mulvany’s Sister Harriet….she’s one nun not to be trifled with.
Hunters is a series where the narrative just works and each episode that follows pulls you deeper and deeper into the series. But if there is a standout episode, then it’s undoubtedly Episode 15, ‘The Home’ which is an exercise in pure creative suspense. Masterfully directed by series showrunner and creative David Weil ‘The Home’ is an episode of pure Grimm Brothers terror, and its heightened pulse and nerve-racking pace will have you gripping your seat with tension. And the sweat will build up on your brow quickly. While it’s best that you experience it in one sitting, and it would be easy to slip into spoiler territory, all I’ll say is that ‘The Home’ is a masterwork of television narrative storytelling, and it packs one hell of a fright as Weir and his creative partner Jordan Peele helps to inject a good dose of horror storytelling into Hunters with this episode. It’s just flat-out amazing.
Hunters Season Two is a wild ride from beginning to end, and audiences looking for a series that will give them a jolt will be well entertained with this piece of exploitation-grindhouse-spy-thriller fun. And it’s a hell of a conclusion.
Image: Prime Video
