The Hunting Party Season 2, Episode 5 ‘Noah Cyrus’ is an episode we’ll come back to as the beginning of the team’s instability. Noah Cyrus, played by television icon Kelsey Grammer, set an eerie intense tone early on for being a charming narcissist. His performance was memorable in portraying a man who is unbelievably stubborn and confident in himself.
Aside from the team’s search for Cyrus’s bomb, the episode felt intense for multiple reasons. Bex had to deal with the guilt of keeping Shane’s secret to herself by telling Morales and Hassani. Which felt her feel even worse and it hurt to see her so torn up over this. Then, we got to see Morales at the center of action to save the day which we loved. And the cliffhanger at the very end made sure we wouldn’t forget that Lazarus is the one controlling everything. Which naturally made us want more of her.
For both Cyrus and the team, keeping secrets that have power to shake foundations of trust loomed over them in this hour. While Cyrus got cut off, it was Bex who never wanted to say the words. The Hunting Party Season 2 Episode 5 ‘Noah Cyrus’ dealt with themes of loyalty, power, and trust.
MORE: Miss our interview with Patrick Sabongui where he discusses how important family and the team is to Hassani in Season 2?
Cyrus on Television
While we’ve seen a cult leader guided by killer narcissist tendencies before in Season 1, Episode 6 ‘Arlo Brandt’, Cyrus felt different. He was more calculated, charming, and always knew how to say the right thing to get somebody to trust him. In “killing” then hiding him in The Pit, the government never broke Cyrus down. They fed and attacked his ego to the point where it looked as if he had never been gone when back on civilian streets. They proved his prophecy true that revival was possible, even if it was accidental. As a result, his confidence was unwavering even when confronted by Bex at the end of the hour in the news station.
It’s never a good thing to doubt a woman’s capability to take a man down. Especially when that woman is Bex Henderson, one of the world’s best profilers. So, victory was sweet in the end when Bex and Morales managed to stop his destructive plans of setting it off.
While that was enjoyable, it was Cyrus’s last words that stuck out to us the most. Because no other killer so far has tried to expose The Pit to the public. Other killers like Jenna Wells in Season 1, Episode 10 targeted the military and therapists behind the experiments. But Cyrus wanted to tell the public the truth that dangerous killers weren’t actually dead and gone. They were taken to The Pit and not all of them died when it exploded. Some were alive and living freely again. If Morales didn’t get to the cameras in time, Cyrus would’ve exposed the confidential secret to the whole country. And we hate to say it, but we don’t think it would’ve been a terrible idea.
Don’t get us wrong, we’re on Hassani’s side of reasoning as the good guy. If the team has everything under control and can catch killers quickly, they shouldn’t cause national chaos and unrest. But could telling the public and having them be overly cautious be a good thing? It’s such a difficult predicament to be in that we can’t fault Hassani for wanting to keep the public unaware of lurking danger to keep them happy. Or Cyrus for wanting to expose the dark truth.
Shane vs. The Team
Bex and Morales have officially looped Hassani into the truth that Colonel Lazarus is Shane’s biological mother. And we think we have a valid reason to be upset because the one person who should know the truth is being kept in the dark.
Shane told Bex that finding his mother wasn’t important to him anymore in The Hunting Party Season 2, Episode 5 ‘Noah Cyrus’ and we partly believe him. We think he’s right in saying that who he is as a person doesn’t come from family, but of what you make yourself to be in the world. He doesn’t need to find out who his mother is anymore because he feels like he’s in a good place in life.
However, his nonchalance in dismissing his mother is a cultivation of multiple factors. He has purpose and knows his worth. But Shane also reached a dead end in the tapes, doesn’t have Sarah helping him anymore, and thinks his team can’t help him because there’s nothing else out there to find.
Bex and Hassani have good hearts in wanting to protect Shane from pain. His lifetime search for his mother will lead him to someone evil and emotionless. But it feels wrong to keep this information from Shane and borders on holding leverage and power over him. Because Shane isn’t a child or an unstable guy. He’s someone who trusts his friends and thinks they’re in the same boat of not knowing who his mother is. We don’t want to think about what’ll happen when he finds out he was essentially left out at sea on purpose.
Morales Saves the Day
Morales got her time to shine in ‘Noah Cyrus’ and we’re thrilled. Everyone working at the command center, especially Morales, Ben, and now Jonathan Peck are big parts of how the team operates on a daily basis. At their core, Morales who we’ve rarely gotten to see outside of phone calls, is the most important person on the team. She’s Bex’s tracker and the person who always gets coordinates of where killers are last seen or hiding. And we’ve missed her being a part of final confrontations when the killer is threatening the lives of her friends.
We get that it’s hard because her job requires her to sit at a computer. But it stings to see her missing from hangouts or nights spent at the bar. So, it was nice to see her spending the morning with Bex and Hassani. (Even if it meant watching them talk about keeping Lazarus a secret from Shane. That hurt us too). It felt even better seeing her at the forefront of a life-or-death situation when it was revealed that Noah’s bomb was planted in the base.
Not because she was in danger, but because she felt important and capable of saving lives just like Bex. Morales was the one to save the day while Bex was the one to shoot Noah. Admittedly, we’d never turn down a moment where Bex gets to be badass. But it’s always nice to be reminded that Morales also graces our screens as a lead female character. She was the one to distract Norm, the one Noah tasked with arming the bomb, and tackle him for the trigger.
Overall, she may do her best work behind a desk, but she’ll always fight her way out of a dangerous situation when faced with one. And we’d love to see more of Morales, no matter what that looks like.
NBC‘s The Hunting Party airs on Thursdays at 10 pm EST.
