The Hunting Party may be diving deeper into nightmare territory every week, but it’s doing it with style. This week’s double feature, “Elliot Carr” and “Colette Akins,” leans hard into psychological horror while still delivering character-rich, compulsively watchable TV. Between a self-flaying shoemaker on a twisted quest for redemption and a killer chasing the ghost of her father’s voice, the show keeps asking an uncomfortable question: when a system like The Pit is this cruel, are its inmates really the only monsters in the room? Here's my recap and review of episodes eight and nine of The Hunting Party Season 2.
"Elliot Carr"
In this chilling installment of The Hunting Party, "Elliot Carr" follows the task force as they pursue a high-end shoemaker turned serial killer known as the "Connecticut Cobbler." Featuring a highly anticipated on-screen reunion between Manifest stars Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh, the hour is a dark exploration of psychological torture and twisted remorse.
The team finds themselves hunting Elliot Carr (Josh Dallas), a former inmate of The Pit who was originally imprisoned for skinning his victims to craft exotic leather footwear. But Carr’s release back into the world reveals a psyche shattered by the Pit’s "Memento Mori" treatment — a form of psychological torture involving repeated, halted executions.
Driven by a warped sense of atonement, Carr adopts a new, gruesome modus operandi. He now targets people who are already dying, such as heart attack victims, to "replenish" his own body. In a bone-chilling twist, it’s revealed that Carr has flayed himself to craft “apology shoes” for his past victims’ families. The team eventually tracks him to a scene where he has kidnapped an EMT to patch his self-inflicted wounds, and Bex is forced to reason with his fractured conscience to secure his recapture.
While the hunt for Carr unfolds, the overarching mystery of the Command Center deepens. The team suspects Colonel Lazarus of staging a false-flag attack on Noah Cyrus’s convoy to consolidate power. Despite these suspicions, Lazarus attempts to bond with her son, Shane, by inviting him to dinner.
Shane is momentarily swayed by her claims of being "reformed," but the reality is far more sinister. As the two share a tentative moment of solidarity, Hassani discovers that three inmates have disappeared from the facility under suspicious circumstances since Lazarus took command.
"Elliot Carr" is a strong, atmospheric episode that uses its guest star effectively to highlight the horrific psychological toll of The Pit. Seeing a Manifest reunion with Josh Dallas and Melissa Roxburgh sharing the screen again is a treat for fans, made even better by the dark, antagonistic energy of their new roles. The show continues to excel at depicting the long-term damage caused by the government’s secret prison. And Kari Matchett remains a master of the "wolf in sheep’s clothing" performance, keeping the audience just as conflicted as Shane.
Overall, I give this episode an 8/10.
"Colette Akins"
In the ninth episode of this haunting installment of The Hunting Party, “Colette Akins,” guest star Piper Perabo delivers a powerhouse performance as a serial killer trapped inside her own mind. It’s a psychologically brutal hour that digs into the ethics of “The Pit” and the steep cost of comfort.
The episode introduces Colette Akins (Perabo), a killer suffering from “acoustic psychosis” after years of chemical exposure in her family’s mortuary. Her deceased father’s voice once acted as a psychological safety net, but the torment from her abusive sister, Liza, eventually pushed Colette to her first act of violence: slitting Liza’s throat.
To extract the locations of Colette’s victims, surgeons in “The Pit” previously removed the portion of her brain responsible for her hallucinations. The prison then cruelly manipulated her, using an AI-replicated version of her father’s voice to soothe her into confessing. After her escape, a desperate Colette begins abducting men from karaoke bars who share her father’s singing voice, forcing them to sing lullabies like “Rock-a-Bye Baby” to restore the comfort she can no longer find within herself. The case reaches a moral crossroads when Bex deploys an AI vocal avatar of Liza to shatter Colette’s psyche, finally forcing her to reveal the location of her latest victim.
While the team hunts Colette, internal trust starts to fray. Shane continues visiting his mother, Colonel Eve Lazarus, in secret. Bex outwardly maintains her trust in him, but Hassani grows increasingly suspicious after discovering that Lazarus personally pushed Shane’s security clearance through years earlier. Even a rare moment of levity at a karaoke bar can’t shake Hassani’s growing fear that Shane’s emotional ties to his mother may make him a liability to the task force.
“Colette Akins” stands as a high-water mark for the season, largely because of Perabo’s work. She plays Colette not as a monster, but as a tragic figure whose only wish is to hear a voice that no longer exists. It’s a stunning performance that captures both the fragility and lethality of a broken mind. The show’s use of AI as a tool of psychological warfare is both fascinating and chillingly plausible, and the simmering tension between Hassani and Shane adds a grounded, character-driven layer to the high-concept procedural plot.
Overall, I give this episode a 9/10.
What did you think of these episodes of The Hunting Party? Leave a comment.
You can catch The Hunting Party Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC and streaming on Peacock and Netflix.
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