Amazon have announced today that they’ve decided to move forward with a second season of Hunters. The series focuses on a group of Nazi hunters in 1977 New York City who uncover a plot by Nazi war criminals to begin a new movement in the U.S., while also discovering information about the post-war recruitment of Nazi scientists to the American cause. Al Pacino leads a strong cast for the series that also includes Logan Lerman, Saul Rubinek and Josh Radnor.
The first season of Hunters launched with ten episodes in February of this year, with David Weil and Nikki Toscano acting as showrunners. The presumably very busy Jordan Peele is also involved on the production side alongside his many other projects. In terms of critical response, Hunters generated particular controversy for its depiction of the Auschwitz concentration camp, while the head of the USC Shoah Foundation went on record to state that Amazon shouldn’t give the show a second season. That being said, reviews were still fairly strong.
Reactions from viewers was pretty positive, too, with many people absolutely loving it, and the company must have seen something in the show to justify another block of episodes for it, after the series was heavily promoted on its release this year. Given that the level of competition between streaming platforms is only going to increase in the next few years, Amazon will no doubt be hoping that hit shows like The Boys and costly productions such as Hunters can help narrow the gap with Netflix.
It’s probably fair to say, though, that Amazon haven’t yet achieved the same consistent range of original programming successes as the aforementioned streamer, despite the critical praise that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Transparent and The Man in the High Castle, to name a few, have all found. However, they are getting there, particularly with the next few years set to see the long-awaited arrival of The Lord of the Rings series.
Based on what we’ve seen so far, Hunters isn’t quite at the level of essential viewing just yet, but it’s definitely one of their best shows and a second season could elevate it even higher, especially if the producers can respond to some of the criticism of the first run.