We’re hitting the ground running in The Hunting Party Season 2.
Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, with fans uncertain if Oliver Odell would survive. With the premiere of The Hunting Party Season 2 Episode 1, we know his fate. Odell has died. And this has reinvigorated everyone as the lights are turned back on and Rebecca “Bex” Henderson, Jacob Hassani, and the rest of the team continue to go after the escapees of the Pit.
Fangirlish had the opportunity to visit the set of The Hunting Party to interview the cast. And while we got to interview creator and showrunner JJ Bailey, we also had the opportunity to interview Melissa Roxburgh, who plays former FBI agent Bex, and Patrick Sabongui, who plays CIA agent Hassani. And with the way that Season 2 starts, everyone is hurting and chaos is still present.
“We see at the end of Season 1, this revelation of Colonel Lazarus and her contribution to the story,” Roxburgh said. At the end of Season 1 it was revealed that Colonel Lazarus was A) Shane’s mother and B) a former inmate of the Pit. And in Season 2, Lazarus is now the boss in charge of things. Roxburgh continued by saying, “And so I think going into Season 2, we get a deeper dive on that. And obviously chaos ensues to a degree because of that. Yeah, it’s complicated.”
Sabongui followed that up with, “I think as we’re getting closer as a team, there’s like this family relationship dynamic that’s evolving. So the operational structure of the command center and the mission overlaps with how we feel about each other and ourselves. And Lazarus kind of straddles both of those worlds.”
And that’s where things get even messier for Bex, Hassani, and the rest of the team. Sabongui said, “We find out that she’s… or some of us find out that she’s Shane’s mother and that she was in the Pit. And now she’s our boss. And that’s an intersection of everything that we’re trying to navigate. So it gets a lot messier.”
Talking about Shane, played by Josh McKenzie, one of the most interesting parts of The Hunting Party are the relationships. Because the missions or mysteries of the week are fun and all. But we keep coming back for the small and big moments between our favorite characters, whether those relationships are friendly, romantic, or antagonistic. And with Season 2, things are shifting a little while still remaining the same.
Before we go forward into Season 2, Roxburgh started with the past. “Backtracking into Season 1, we have the Odell-Bex aspect that we didn’t really see come to anything. They’d had their thing in the past. And then it was a push-pull throughout Season 1. And then at the end of Season 1, we don’t know the fate of Odell.” Now in Season 2, we know Odell is gone. But Bex is still there. And whether she likes it or not, life keeps moving forward.
Roxburgh continued with, “We see this friendship kind of forming with Shane and Bex. And what does that turn into? Does it turn into a deeper friendship? Or does he become her safe space? Does he become the person that she can just not be so tough around?” And this matches up with our interview with The Hunting Party showrunner JJ Bailey who said, “The Bex-Shane thing, I think it’s a central arc to the show.” So expect more there.
But Bex’s relationship with Shane isn’t the only important part of The Hunting Party Season 2. A core part of the show is the time Bex spends with Hassani. And Roxburgh wanted to make sure she took time in this interview to talk about them. “As far as Hassani and Bex, I think that they have this older-sibling rivalry in a weird way where they want the best for each other, but it’s like, “No, I’m right. No, I’m right. No, I’m right.”
Sabongui was right there with her and said, “And you kind of can’t tell each other what to do.” Roxburgh answered with “Yeah, no you’re not the boss of me.” before continuing with, “And I think I love that about their relationship because they’re both really great at their jobs. But they have different approaches to the same job. And I think it makes playing with Patrick in the scenes really fun. Like if I come to him with this one bit of information, it’s fun to do a little quarreling with you.”
“A little sparring. A little light sparring,” Sabongui said.
Roxburgh replied back with, “Sibling sparring.”
The Hunting Party airs new episodes Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
