‘Hunters’ Season 2: Ending, Explained – What Happened To Adolf Hitler? Is Jonah’s Hunt Really Over?

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“Hunters” Season 2 follows two storylines. One takes place in 1979, and the other takes place between 1975 and 1977. In 1979, Logan, Millie, Sister Harriet, Mindy, Lonny, and Roxy go to South America to hunt down Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (previously known as The Colonel) and make them pay for their crimes against the Jewish population. This brings them to Chava’s doorstep, who turns out to be Ruth’s little sister. She was presumed to be dead after being separated from Ruth at the concentration camps. But she has been living out in the woods and killing Nazis, and she has a team of her own that helps her do the job. Joe, who was kidnapped by Eva’s people in the first season, spends most of this season as a brainwashed strongman for Hitler. However, he snaps out of it and joins the Hunters to help them get to Hitler. Meanwhile, Travis road-trips all the way to Hitler’s abode and then kidnaps Jonah’s girlfriend, Clara, on Eva’s orders, which eventually leads the Hunters to Hitler. And then, in the flashbacks, we get to Zuchs (as Meyer Offerman) realizing that there are Nazis in America who want to make his identity public. So, he starts hunting them down. He’s visited by Ruth, and the two of them eventually form the Hunters. That backfires on Meyer because Ruth finds out that Meyer is actually Zuchs. If you think that it’s so convoluted, rushed, or unearned, you are right. This was supposed to be a five-season show, but it has been packed into two seasons. Hence, this mess. Anyway, let’s talk about the finale of “Hunters.”

Major Spoilers Ahead


Is Adolf Hitler Found Guilty Of Killing Jews?

Over the course of the sixth and seventh episodes of “Hunters,” the titular group rescues Clara from Travis, and, with the help of the deceased Chava’s husband, Zev, they bring Hitler over to the American embassy and then in front of the International Criminal Tribunal. Was Zev that good at bringing Hitler to court without raising any alarms? How did the Hunters get out of the compound unharmed when they were being shot at and chased down by numerous Nazi soldiers? Well, at this point, you just have to assume that they killed every single Nazi in Hitler’s compound and waltzed into Hitler’s trial like it was nothing. This is what happens when you have to stuff five seasons’ worth of development and storytelling into eight episodes (season one had ten episodes, fyi). Before the trial begins, we are given some vital pieces of information. Eva Braun and a scarred Travis are in an abandoned warehouse, plotting Hitler’s escape. We get a hint of what they are trying to do when a bunch of men begin planting explosives in a tunnel. Additionally, in terms of how the trial is going to go, we learn that Justice Mueller (one of the judges on the bench) has ties with the Nazis, Oliver Frankel (the lawyer who is fighting against Hitler) is Jewish, and Benjamin Kramer (the lawyer who is representing Hitler) is Jewish.

It goes as horrifically as you’d expect because Kramer keeps objecting to every subjective and objective question by Frankel that’s aimed at Hitler and the minions who worked under him, and those objections are supported by Mueller. Kramer even goes so far as to raise an objection when Mindy states what she had endured at the concentration camp and how she and Murray’s son were murdered by a Nazi. Now, Mueller’s support for Hitler and the Nazis, under the garb of being objective, is obvious. But why is Kramer, a Jew, fighting for Hitler? Well, Frankel thankfully confronts him about it, and Kramer essentially says that if Hitler is hanged or imprisoned without a proper trial, then their actions will be considered similar to those of the Nazis. From an idealistic perspective, I get what that means. However, logically speaking, that kind of idealism doesn’t make sense. This isn’t an “eye for an eye” situation. Hitler killed millions of Jews. He doesn’t even deserve a trial. That’s not fascist behavior. That’s justice. However, Kramer doesn’t do that, and he puts Hitler on trial. Hitler denies everything he has done, initially. Frankel, though, manages to anger him by pointing out that his denial means his followers are wrong for worshiping him. And in that moment of outrage, Hitler ends up admitting that he is the architect of the Holocaust, thereby giving the International Criminal Tribunal the opportunity to announce that he is guilty of all the charges labeled against him and send him to jail for life.


Does Jonah Manage To Catch Adolf And Travis?

As Hitler is being whisked away to jail, where he’ll spend the rest of his life without the chance of an early release, Jonah notices that the pen that was in Hitler’s possession is lying open there, and the ink chamber is missing. Moments later, we see Hitler ingesting a blue tablet that causes a violent seizure. So, instead of going to his cell, he is loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. But it is insanely obvious that Hitler is faking his affliction, and the driver of the ambulance is a Nazi who kills the guard and the nurse and deviates from his route. The Hunters, who are already in pursuit because they know something is going to go wrong on the way to the hospital, follow the rogue ambulance. As they approach a tunneled section of the road, the explosives (that were highlighted throughout the first half of this episode) are brought into action with a bang, thereby stalling the heroes. However, since Jonah is on a bike while the others are in cars, he’s able to bypass the exploded section of road and follow the ambulance all the way to the abandoned warehouse where Eva and Travis are waiting for Hitler.

Eva’s intention of heading the Fourth Reich instead of letting Hitler do it was mentioned in passing earlier in the season. The writers try to give it a payoff by having Eva order Travis to kill Hitler so that she can become his successor and control his followers by lying to them that he’s still alive and in hiding. Travis betrays Eva and stays true to his Nazi roots by shooting Eva and taking Hitler to the roof to put him on a helicopter and fly him away. Here’s where we get another weak-as-hell pay-off. Do you remember that in the first season, Travis promised to start a Nazi uprising in the jail? So, in the last few moments of the show, Travis reveals that the men protecting them and the one who has arranged the helicopter for their escape are the Nazi men from his prison. And that just raises so many questions! How did Travis turn the prisoners into Nazis? How are these prisoners roaming around like that? “Hunters” doesn’t provide any answers and instead proceeds to have a shootout where Jonah gets shot by Travis. Joe gets there and saves Jonah. And while the police arrest Hitler, Travis jumps from the roof and vanishes into thin air.


‘Hunters’ Season 2: Ending Explained – Does Jonah Get Closure? What Does His Final Stare Mean?

A major aspect of the finale of “Hunters” season 2 is answering why Ruth exactly died. Even though it wasn’t really mentioned in the first season, it was clear as crystal that Zuchs (disguised as Meyer) ordered Heinz Richter to kill Ruth because she got too close to finding out that Meyer isn’t actually Meyer. That’s revealed to Jonah, by Sister Harriet, after his marriage with Clara. I am not sure if it’s due to the bad writing or the rushed storytelling, but this moment, along with the flashback of Meyer subliminally recruiting Jonah, didn’t land for me. Because it made me question why Meyer got in touch with him in the first place. Jonah knew nothing about Meyer’s existence. But he purposefully put himself in Jonah’s path and caused the events that eventually led to his demise. I mean, I get the overarching theme of guilt. However, this season kind of makes it clear that Zuchs didn’t become Meyer and then began the Hunt as penance for his crimes against the Jews. He did it to hide his identity. So, he wasn’t a sympathetic figure. He was selfish, and it seems that he died stupidly. Or this can all be the side effect of trying to cram five seasons’ worth of stories into two seasons.

Millie gets a call from Congresswoman Elizabeth, who informs her that she’s going to get the Congressional Gold Medal for capturing Hitler. Millie admits that she is guilty of killing the bishop (who was a Nazi but was unceremoniously acquitted). Elizabeth apparently doesn’t pay heed to that confession because one righteous deed (capturing Hitler) is capable of washing away several wrong deeds. Joe is seen happily driving his bike through a deserted landscape. I was assuming that the showrunners were going to reveal that he’s still hunting Travis. But apparently, that’s not the case at all. He’s just riding his bike to celebrate his freedom. Hitler is seen rotting away in his jail cell and lamenting about the fact that he’s not being referred to as the Führer. With that, the showrunners want to say that the dictator’s worst punishment would’ve been his erasure from public memory. However, that’s not possible in reality, but it can be done in fiction. So, we’ve got to make do with the notion that this fictionalized version of Hitler didn’t get away so easily by simply killing himself, which is something that Jonah prevents earlier in the season when they are in the  Führerbunker, i.e., a reference to the real Hitler’s death by suicide. Instead, he was punished horribly for his crimes against humanity. In the final moments of “Hunters” Season 2, we see Jonah and Clara enjoying their honeymoon in Miami. That said, as Clara talks to Jonah, he begins to focus on an elderly gentleman sitting behind her. And he stares at this man until he gets uncomfortable. Is that man a Nazi? Yes. Has Jonah retired like he said he would? No, I don’t think so. He’s clearly on the job; he’s still killing Nazis, and even though “Hunters” has ended, he’ll keep killing Nazis in his world until there are none left.


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Pramit Chatterjee
Pramit Chatterjee
Pramit loves to write about movies, television shows, short films, and basically anything that emerges from the world of entertainment. He occasionally talks to people, and judges them on the basis of their love for Edgar Wright, Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, and the best television series ever made, Dark.

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