Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Van Glooten’s Day 1972 Butter Sculptor of the Year

On the premiere episode of the second season of the Amazon Prime Video series Hunters, the hunters are reunited by the biggest intelligence score yet. This may give them the chance to cut down a returning evil from the old days of the Reich.

It’s a sunny day in 1972, at the small village of Van Glooten in Austria. The annual butter sculpture contest of the locals as part of the festivities for Van Glooten’s Day, is well underway.

There are complex and arresting butter sculptures, from statues of children to architecture abound at the town square. A blonde woman walks through the town square admiring the sculptures, greeting children with a Happy Van Glooten’s Day.

She then enters a candy and souvenir shop. Beside the doorway is a mark that’s been blotted out.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Missing the mezuzah

Turns out this blondie is Chava Apfelbaum, sister to Ruth and great-aunt to our hero, Jonah Heidelbaum. She interrogates the shop owner about the missing Mezuzah at his door, meaning, the sign that’s been blotted out.

She finds out that the Austrian shop owner took over from the previous Jewish owner, when they got shipped off to the camps. She also discovers intelligence that Adolf Hitler passed by the town upon his escape.

He likely went after WWII to Valle de los Suenos, aka the Valley of the Dreams. Satisfied, Chava exacts revenge by taking the eyes of the shop owner and putting them in one of the butter sculptures.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Hello, Wilhelm

In 1975, two years before Meyer Offerman’s death, the leader of the Nazi hunters tells an assembly of friends at a restaurant about the story of how a man trusted God to rescue him from a rising flood, yet never accepted help from his fellows. Meyer spots a mysterious man lurking in the shadows and is rattled.

In other occasions at the same resto, the sighting recurs. Back at his office, a letter from an unknown courier is brought to him by his assistant.

Inside is the message: Hello, Wilhelm. Thrown into a panic, Meyer bullies his assistant into trying to remember who it was and then, unable to get any more information, he goes home early.

Paranoid and disturbed, he lists down all the people who might know his original identity as The Wolf, Wilhelm Zuchs.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Hunting down Biff

Fast forward to 1979, Paris and Jonah is leading a double life with his girlfriend Clara. He’s been hanging out at a whorehouse to stalk a disguised Nazi, patiently waiting for him to visit the establishment.

As he and Clara walk through the park, making plans for their upcoming wedding, one of Jonah’s contacts passes him a folded note. That night at the whorehouse, he finally finds the Nazi he’s been stalling: Biff Simpson.

Viewers may remember Biff as the Undersecretary of State in the Carter administration from the first season. He is secretly an undercover Nazi agent.

Because Biff is desperate to save his life, Jonah discovers from him that the most notorious Nazi in history may still be alive: Adolf Hitler. According to Biff, he is in Valle de los Suenos.

The majordomo interrupts them and Biff tries to attack Jonah. Jonah shoots him.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: The Nazi priest?

In Pasadena, Agent Millie Morris is inside a church confessional. She accuses the priest, Bishop Prentz, of being a former Nazi and arrests him.

At the trial, witness after witness accuses the bishop of war crimes as a collaborator with the Nazis in his original identity as, Father Balkus. Yet Agent Morris’s case and her evidence are flimsy.

The judge drops the case and frees the alleged Nazi. Convinced she has the right man, Agent Morris breaks into the bishop’s house and emotionally cajoles him to confess that he is the Nazi enabler, Father Balkus.

He refuses and she accidentally shoots and kills him.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Mein fuhrer lives

Back in 1975, Meyer finally baits the person who’s been tracking him. It’s another former Nazi, Fritz Hammerschmidt.

Fritz tells Meyer that the man who brought them through the ratlines to escape, had urged him to blackmail him and the rest of the folks he helped. To gain his trust, Meyer has a drink with him, charms him.

Outside, as they walk through an alley, Meyer knifes Fritz. Somewhere in South America, a wizened Adolf Hitler is joined at dinner by Eva Braun-Hitler.

With them is former hunter turned Nazi collaborator Joe Mizushima.

Hunters season 2 episode 1 recap: Review

Granted, it was pretty hard to top the ending of season 1. That Al Pacino’s, Meyer, wasn’t just lying about his identity as Jonah’s uncle, but that he was The Wolf who had imprisoned and tortured the real Meyer Offerman.

Well, we’re off to a good start with this first episode of the second season. Despite the rickety flow and stuttering pacing of the writing, where we jump back between years and between characters, most of the episode does its job well.

It establishes how the hunters are doing, especially Jonah and Agent Morris. It also gives us a great introduction to a new player in the game, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s, Chava.

Add to the fact that they establish that Hitler is still alive, and we are truly off to the races. I’d love to see where they take all these new premises, especially the team up between Agent Morris and Jonah.

How’d you like the start to the second season? Let us know in the comments below!

You can stream both seasons of Hunters on Amazon Prime Video now.