John Corbett is back as Xander Wax in the Season 2 finale of The Hunting Party, and the character is being set up as the kind of killer who leaves people dead before anyone realizes they were poisoned. In an exclusive sneak peek, the team learns where he is after a partial fingerprint turns up on a self-checkout scanner in Washington, D.C., sending Bex, Hassani, Shane and Morales straight into the hunt.
Wax is not written like a usual suspect. He is described as a trained biochemist who may have killed at least 10 people and could be tied to as many as 40 deaths, with the victims first mistaken for heart attacks or strokes because he used highly lethal animal venoms as poisons. The detail that makes him harder to stop is the way he left neurotoxins on public objects such as elevator pumps and sugar packets, counting on random strangers to touch them.
That is why Bex tells the others they are dealing with a very smart individual. Executive producer Jake Coburn said Wax’s methods are designed to unsettle, adding, “When you learn about his methods, they just paralyze you with fear.”
The character’s methodical cruelty also ties the finale to a real-world warning from the 1980s. Executive producer JJ Bailey said the inspiration traces back to the Tylenol killer case, when poisoned bottles were put back on shelves and buyers had no way to know which ones were dangerous. He said the result was the kind of packaging and security consumers now take for granted, including the 15 layers of packaging and security used on Tylenol bottles today.
Bailey said the point was not just the poison, but the thrill the character gets from the uncertainty. “He didn’t care who he killed. For him, the thrill was the randomness of it all,” Bex says in the material around the episode, and Bailey echoed that idea by saying Wax enjoyed setting the trap and not knowing who he was going to catch or when. He also said John Corbett gave the role a post-Pit swagger that makes the character feel like someone changed by what came before.
The timing matters because the finale airs Thursday, May 7, at 10/9c on NBC, and the series has not yet been renewed for Season 3. That leaves the episode carrying more than one kind of suspense: whether Bex’s team can catch Wax, and whether this will be the last time the show gets to use him.
The answer to the question the episode raises is plain enough. Xander Wax is dangerous not because he is loud or reckless, but because he is patient, precise and willing to turn ordinary objects into weapons. That is what Bex and her team are chasing when the finale airs.