Warning: Spoilers for Hunters season 2 ahead.
Prime Video's Nazi-fighting series Hunters has bowed out with its second and final season.
In November 2022, as the series announced its season-two launch date, it was also confirmed it would be their last.
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What's more, Al Pacino would be returning as Meyer Offerman somehow, despite him very clearly dying in season one. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, it was suggested his involvement in season two came down to them figuring out how to tie the show together once they knew it was ending.
Hunters is a series Prime Video clearly put a lot of money behind, with Pacino agreeing for the first time ever to appear in a series – one which by the creator's own admission had "terrified TV execs" by its premise.
The cast was then fleshed out with stars including Logan Lerman (Bullet Train), Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother), Carol Kane (Addams Family Values) and Tiffany Boone (Nine Perfect Strangers) just a fraction of the heavyweight names involved. Get Out's Jordan Peele was even executive director.
However, when the series launched in 2020 it arrived with some mixed reviews – and a fair few controversies.
Based in the late '70s, about a group of Nazi hunters trying to prevent the rise of the Fourth Reich, the series was toeing the line of good taste from the outset as it skirted the history of the Holocaust. It aimed for a blaxploitation-style cinematic style, with drama and comedy rolled into the story.
When the bold move paid off, it paid off well – but when it didn't, it caused major anger and offence for those directly affected by what was being shown.
The most notable example of this was in a fictional scene where SS members played 'live chess' with prisoners in a concentration camp. If the "chess piece" was taken off the grass-mown board, then the prisoner playing said piece would be killed.
The scene – which had no basis in history – caused such an outcry the Auschwitz Museum spoke out against Hunters, accusing it of giving ammo to Holocaust deniers by making up scenes that didn't happen.
They wrote on Twitter: "Auschwitz was full of horrible pain & suffering documented in the accounts of survivors. Inventing a fake game of human chess for [Hunters] is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers. We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy."
Creator David Weil, who created the series and whose grandparents were Auschwitz survivors, later wrote a lengthy statement to Variety to apologise for the moment.
He claimed he "didn't want to borrow from someone's real experience" and went to lengths to ensure they weren't representing real people, for example making sure survivors' tattoos always exceeded 202,499, which was the last recorded number at the concentration camp.
"Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series?" he wrote. "To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme – and representationally truthful – sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims.
And why did I feel the need to create a fictional event when there were so many real horrors that existed? After all, it is true that Nazis perpetrated widespread and extreme acts of sadism and torture – and even incidents of cruel "games" – against their victims. I simply did not want to depict those specific, real acts of trauma."
But the scene, or photos of it, went viral nonetheless.
It was something Weil clearly took on board when creating season two, having later worked with Jewish Temple leaders and Holocaust educators when writing flashback scenes.
He told EW: "I take incredibly seriously that relationship with an audience and that feedback. Season two is, to me, a beautiful evolution of the Hunters story. There's another component to that story, which is the audience who watched season one. I take into account all those thoughts and feelings and notions and reactions, both positive and negative."
Ultimately the first season's success is integral to determining a show's future – with investors and streaming sites relying on metrics like watch time, viewership, completion rate and online popularity to secure a return on their financial investment.
Sadly for Hunters, it just didn't have the audience. According to aggregate site FlixPatrol, the show didn't make the dent Prime Video was intending it to on launch, with major target areas like the UK and the USA failing to sustain their interest long enough.
In the US, it only lasted in the Top 10 Prime Videoshows for six days before dropping out.
While it's hard to know if this has been improved upon, over on RottenTomatoes, the show's audience score and critics score remain on balance with 65% and 67% respectively. It indicates some thought it was good, but wasn't great.
With metrics like these all taken into account, and with no major awards for any of the leading cast (bar one Golden Globe nomination for Pacino), it appeared the writing was on the wall for the series long before it was given the official axe announcement.
And now they've literally killed Hitler himself, it seems like it was time to put this show to rest.
Hunters seasons one and two are available now on Prime Video.
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Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
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