The Hunting Party: Melissa Roxburgh Talks Bex's Reaction To Episode 2's Good/Bad Odell Reveals
The following contains spoilers from Episode 2 of NBC's The Hunting Party.
NBC's Hunting Party aka the "Inmate Recovery Task Force" this Monday night resumed its search for The Pit's escaped killers. Along the way, Agent Bex Henderson (played by Manifest's Melissa Roxburgh) learned a little something about former partner/Pit warden Oliver Odell (Revenge's Nick Wechsler).
Years ago, Odell of course infamously set fire to a man who'd abducted a young girl, after torturing him for information. Bex was horrified by the act, and she and Odell have been estranged ever since — until he showed up in a hospital bed at the close of the NBC series' premiere, to warn Bex that the "accidental" explosion that collapsed The Pit in fact was an orchestrated jailbreak.
Bex didn't seem to do much with that bombshell this week. Instead, she was a bit fixated on determining if Eli Johnson — her high school friend Naomi's father, whom a teenage Bex used her nascent profiling skills to put behind bars for a string or local murders — was in The Pit when it went boom. Odell did his best to assure Bex that Johnson hadn't been sent to the Pit, and then for good measure toward episode's end arranged for a one-on-one between Bex and Eli (Desperate Housewives' Mark Moses).
During their tense chat, Johnson alluded to the fact that Bex lied to the cops back in the day, telling them that she uncovered the damning evidence against him by herself, when in fact she nudged friend Naomi to rummage around her dad's garage. That truth could have waylaid for Bex any future bid for a federal law enforcement job, had it come to light. But it never did, thanks to Odell, who when Bex applied to the FBI years later, kept her fib under wraps.
Bex was clearly moved to learn of what Odell did, and said as much when regrouping with him after her chat with Johnson. She started to walk back her reaction to his immolation of that kidnapper, but Odell stopped her, saying it was the right call at the time.
Speaking with TVLine about what Bex will do with her realization that Odell took a risk for her, Roxburgh said, "It's part of the road to forgiveness. He did a bad thing [with the kidnapper], but seeing that he did protect her in all of those moments where he could have told everyone the truth kind of gives him some 'bonus points.'"
Odell had better store those bonus points in a safe place, because Bex is about to learning something not so great about her ex-partner. For as seen in this week's closing moments, CIA agent Jacob Hassani (The Flash's Patrick Sabongui) has learned that The Pit's warden knew the explosion was coming. In fact, 10 minutes ahead of the blast, Odell breached the prison computer system's firewall to download 1,000 terabytes of encrypted information.
Previewing Bex's eventual reaction to this newly uncovered instance of sus behavior, Roxburgh told TVLine that she and Odell will "have a 'convo'" about it, "and there are answers around that.
"We learn that he has an alliance" with a mystery woman played by Kari Matchett (The Night Agent), she continued, "and that he's trying to figure out some answers [for himself]."
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