For this late in the season, The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 7 ‘Mark Marsden‘ felt like something close to filler episode that gave its best moments at the end of the hour. The hunt for Marsden and his victim bride was predictable. Even if you weren’t paying attention. Carol Miller was one of those women who believed they could change a man just by loving him. And the chase was going to end in one or two ways: one or both of them had to die.
In reality, you can’t fix someone who can’t help who they are. You can’t fix someone who isn’t willing to change from old habits. Without action matching words, believing a partner could change their destructive habits just because someone loves them will only hurt in the end. And ultimately, it almost cost Carol her life.
With Marsden’s case taking close to forty minutes of screentime, it gave little time for other important storylines to be explored. As previously stated, we only have three more episodes left in the season. For a majority of the hour, we kept asking ourselves “When will Carol realize she can’t change this man?” Marsden was giving signs that he was still his old self, but she wasn’t looking.
Consequently, we didn’t get to see moments that deserved more time to simmer above surface level. Conversations that deserved more time such as Shane’s confrontation with Sarah Dulles. Shane was lying to the hospital about being Henry Dulles’s son. Meanwhile, Hassani, Bex, and Oliver began to investigate Silo 12 and came to a shocking realization. We understand the purpose of leaving these impactful scenes short and sweet. It’s to tease us with the beginning of an answer rather than providing it all in one go. We get it.
For us, this hour, at least when focused on the team, just made us wish we could skip to the next episode. It felt like a big tease for answers to questions that just got more complicated and dangerous to ask.
MORE: Read our interview with Melissa Roxburgh and Patrick Sabongui about what makes Bex and Hassani’s partnership work so well!
We Don’t Know What Shane is Investigating
We almost can’t believe it. Shane really was lying about being the son of Henry Dulles, one of the doctors in The Pit. A doctor that was first introduced in The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 2 ‘Clayton Jessup’. It broke our hearts a little to watch one of the hospital nurses turn Shane away with tears in her eyes. She didn’t understand why he lied about being Dulles’s son. It’s a secret he couldn’t tell her. Shane truly didn’t want to hurt anyone by his lies. If she would’ve let him, he wanted to console her.
We don’t see much of Sarah Dulles but that’s because she’s in Shane’s shadow for a majority of the episode. She had been following him as soon as he left the hospital and was not as hidden as she believed herself to be. Shane had caught onto her quickly but didn’t let her know until he sat down at the bar for a drink after a long day of putting Marsden away. When Sarah confronts him about his lie, Shane doesn’t answer her. We understood why at first. He wasn’t expecting to be found out so soon. Marsden had the team flying and running around Reno looking for him. We could see the exhaustion on his face.
The questions he’s seeking answers to sound complicated. It’s something he doesn’t want to open up to anybody about. Not even Bex. However, if he wants to find out what Dulles knows about the things he wants to learn about, he might have to open up to a complete stranger. It’s an odd hole he’s digging himself into.
MORE: Read our The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 3 ‘Lowe’ review if you missed it!
Bex Is the Heart of the Team
The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 7 ‘Mark Marsden’ highlights the ever-growing team dynamic between Bex, Hassani, and Oliver. At times throughout the season, the men have behaved like teenagers in high school. Hiding and avoiding the other as much as possible. However, civil and professional when discussing cases together. It’s not hard to understand why. Hassani and Oliver don’t fully trust each other. At their core, Bex is someone everyone can trust in the midst of uncertainty. That’s who they have in common. Her stubbornness in including both men in the investigation of Silo 12 is what drives their interactions in the episode.
They should all be on the same side. If the secret horrors of The Pit and Silo 12 are so dark and twisted that the military wanted the prison blown up so it wouldn’t exist anymore, Bex wants to be the one to figure it out. It’s dangerous to dive into an investigation alone. She learned her lesson in The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 1 ‘Richard Harris’.
Although new, Bex has begun to form meaningful relationships with both Oliver and Hassani. If she’s involved, they’ll do anything to protect her. We saw this in ‘Doctor Ezekiel Malak‘. Oliver had no trouble demanding Hassani to find Bex at any cost. No matter if Oliver tells him to or not, Hassani will always have Bex’s back on the field. Although the men care for her in different ways, Bex is important to them. If finding information on Silo 12 is something they’re all passionate about, why not work together?
What Happened in Silo 12?
The discovery of Silo 12 has been something we’d been looking forward to learning more about since Oliver explained it’s origin to Bex in The Hunting Party Season 1 Episode 6 ‘Arlo Brandt’. Although we had only a few minutes to analyze the blood stained and empty room, the realization that Bex comes to is one that’s heavy and shocking enough to end the episode on. The episode had taken a more dark and eerie turn in its final moments. And it pulled us in as soon as the team’s flashlights went on to investigate the space.
The treatment room in Silo 12 reminded us of what death row looked like at the end of someone’s life. There was a single chair in the room with viewing chairs set up along the wall. Blood, still fresh after thirteen days, had pooled on the floor of both the treatment and office rooms. It looked like a massacre had taken place. Which puzzled the team at first. This was the room where the trained military officers had broken into The Pit on the night of the blast. What were they planning? Who did they want to kill? And why was Richard Harris’s blood found in an IV bag hooked up to the chair? Talk about a jaw-dropping last line to end the episode.
There are many new questions forming after getting a taste of the answers we want when it comes to The Pit and Silo 12. It’s a never-ending cycle of wondering what truly went on in there. Evident more than ever is the knowledge that The Pit was a terrible place full of terrible people. They abused and neglected the serial killers with excuses to exploit their twisted mentalities. It was a way to get into their minds to learn about them rather than treat them like a human being. It’s not a surprise to us anymore that they would end up evolving and changing their behavior to become more violent if they escaped the blast. It’s just sad to watch new and innocent victims get brought into this.
All this to say that we’re ready to learn more about why the killers were chosen to be brought to Silo 12. We’re a little scared to see what’ll happen to the team once their higher-ups realize they’ve found out they have access to Silo 12. Why is Shane is investigating Dulles so heavily? Things are beginning to unravel and although we don’t know if we’re ready to see how this ends, we’re eagerly awaiting the moment everything is brought to light.
The Hunting Party airs on Mondays at 10 pm ET on NBC.
