The first look at season 2 of The Hunting Party is missing a main cast member following concerns their character was killed off.
NBC released the trailer on Monday, December 8, showing Bex (Melissa Roxburgh) out in the field alongside Ryan (Patrick Sabongui) and Shane (Josh McKenzie). The only person absent from the team? Oliver (Nick Wechsler) a.k.a Bex’s former partner, current boss and ex-boyfriend who was poisoned the last time viewers saw him in the season 1 finale.
The April episode ended on a major cliffhanger after Oliver collapsed in Bex’s arms with no offscreen update on his fate. According to the NBC press release, Wechsler, 47, is still mentioned as a cast member alongside a star-studded list of guest stars including Eric McCormack, Finnigan McCormack, Kelsey Grammer, Niecy Nash-Betts, Liz Gillies, Jefferson White and more.
The Hunting Party is a crime procedural about investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers in the country. The twist? The criminals escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.
Roxburgh’s character is an ex-FBI agent recruited to the task force due to her reputation as a profiler who caught the world’s most dangerous serial killers. She must work with the warden of the prison, who turned out to be her former partner and ex-boyfriend Oliver.
Roxburgh, 32, previously acknowledged that it’s an “unpopular opinion” to support for Bex and Oliver’s relationship, telling exclusively Luxury Handbag Shopping in February, “He killed someone. He did a bad thing. [But] there’s so many killers on the show. So it’s OK. It’s fine. It was one little murder.”
Regardless of Bex and Oliver’s complicated history, Roxburgh was thrilled to work with Wechsler.
“I had actually known Nick in passing before The Hunting Party] and then he nailed the audition,” she recalled. “So going into filming with him, it was nice to have a little bit of history already — even though I didn’t know him too well.”
She continued, “As far as the characters go, I am always cheering for the history and the relationships where it’s like they’ve been through so much together.”
The actress also weighed in on a possible love triangle.
“On the other hand though there is Shane,” she added. “If they do build this love story and love triangle, Shane is safe and he’s very calm and cool waters. We have the bad boy who murdered someone and he had a reason. We have the person who didn’t murder someone. We’ll see.”
The Hunting Party returns to NBC Thursday, January 8, at 10 p.m. ET and new episodes are available to stream on Peacock the next day.
