YMMV / Hunters

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Wolf. Unquestionably he committed unspeakable atrocities during the war, then, to protect himself from capture by the Allies, murdered one of the Jews he had long tormented, assumed the man's identity, and got rich off the position. But after Jonah discovers who he is, he claims he has used his remaining days for good, in order to atone for his sins. Did he have a genuine redemption arc? Or was he simply trying to draw attention away from being exposed? Note that Season 1 seems to point to the first interpretation, then Season 2 reveals the lengths he went to hide his true identity, including killing several innocent and not-so-innocent people who stumbled on his secret, until the final revelation that he was the one who ordered the hit on Ruth. Nevertheless, he remains perhaps the most complicated character among the Nazi villains on the show, and he arguably may be something of a Well-Intentioned Extremist, with a genuine belief in fighting the Nazi menace he once was part of. And he has a point when he points out to Jonah that he was the one who created their secret group devoted to hunting down Nazis.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: This show has too many of them. From Jonah's weed induced dance scene to the Nazi barn commercial to the game show, which, apart from illustrating some common excuses people use for anti-Semitism, has no bearing on the main plot. All of them are all oddly placed.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Biff Simpson to some. One side enjoyed Dylan Baker's Evil Is Hammy performance and felt he would have been a more interesting choice as the main villain over "The Colonel." The other side feels he is far too hammy to be taken seriously and really has no purpose in the show as his scenes feel more self-contained from the rest.
  • Travis also counts. While everyone agrees that Greg Austin’s performance is great as well as bone chilling, some are mixed on Travis as a character. On one end, some feel that he is the most entertaining villain on the show and steals every scene he is in. The other side might see him as too one dimensionally evil and without any true depth aside from being a psychopathic Neo-Nazi.
• Broken Base:
  • The Reveal that Meyer is the Wolf. Many people hated it from coming out of nowhere, others saw it coming and found ingenious.
  • The constant shift in tone where one moment it's grounded and depressing, shades of Schindler's List, to wacky and over the top, shades of Inglourious Basterds. Some appreciate the idea of it having fun with itself and it doesn't fall too much into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring territory. Others however hate it because it makes the show feel uneven and confuses the viewer on what kind of show it is supposed to be.
• Catharsis Factor: Arguably the entire point of the show. The basic premise is that a group of mostly Jewish vigilantes are hunting down and killing Nazis who got away with the crimes they committed in World War II. This comes to a head in the season 2 finale, when a still-living Adolf Hitler is brought before a court, tried and found guilty for the atrocities he escaped prosecution for in real life, and sentenced to life in prison.
• Complete Monster:
  • Adolf Hitler himself, after faking his death with Eva Braun, resides in Argentina to plot out his plans of world domination. With visions of turning the world into the Fourth Reich, Hitler hopes to drop a nuke on a populated city in order to start a war and hopefully come out on top. Hitler allows Eva Braun to enact her plan to unleash a virus that would wipe out all of America's minorities, while having Hunters member Joe Mizushima tortuously brainwashed into becoming one of his agents. Behind one of the worst genocides in recent history, with the horrors of his concentration camps still haunting its survivors, age is shown to have not slowed Hitler's childish wickedness down one bit.
  • Eva Braun, the "Colonel" of the Fourth Reich, is the architect of Nazi plans in the Americas. Building a network of political influence and corruption, Eva has countless innocents murdered by her agents. Testing out deadly chemicals on children and other test subjects, Eva's plot is to place the virus in corn syrup to wipe out minorities in the US, kill millions, and plunge the country into chaos so the Nazis can take over and institute a new Holocaust. Disdaining her husband Adolf Hitler as nothing but a failure, Eva then tries to have him murdered so she can rule unchallenged.
  • Travis Leich is the chief enforcer of the Nazi conspiracy, and is unique in that he's an American drawn into Nazism. Introduced beating down a politician's friends and threatening the man's young son's life to force his votes, Leich tries to hunt down Meyer Offerman's outfit, killing and torturing everyone he encounters, murdering Jonah's friend Booty and later tying up a family to interrogate the father via shooting his wife and pregnant daughter in the knees before he murders them all anyways. Causing the 1977 New York blackout to let the Nazis cause widespread terrorist attacks and incite violent riots, Leich is later incarcerated but attempts to make himself a leader to the racists within and forge them into an army by requesting a Jewish lawyer and murdering him while shouting that "Jews will not replace us."
  • Season 1:
    • Katarina Löw is Eva Braun's head scientist, and an executive at Schidler Corp. A sadistic chemist who firmly supports Eva's plans of a Fourth Reich, Katarina assists her boss by creating a virus located inside corn syrup that will kill all of America's minorities, hoping to have 12 million dead by the end of the month. Experimenting with her virus on countless South American children, Katarina takes an immense amount of pleasure in the deaths her virus will cause.
    • "In The Belly of the Whale" original broadcast version: Heinz Richter is an escaped Nazi war criminal with a fondness for chess. Finding intelligent prisoners, Richter would make them his opponents in "Human Chess", with camp victims forced to serve as the pieces and personally murder other pieces they had "taken", killing large numbers of innocents this way. After having his chief opponent shot for attacking him, Richter later flees to America as the owner of a toy shop, murdering the Hunter leader Ruth when he finds her. Upon being caught by Jonah, Richter overpowers and tortures him for information, plotting to eliminate him as well.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Chava carving out a Nazi's eyes after interrogating him? Horrific, even if deserved. Chava sticking the bloody eyeballs on a butter statue in broad daylight for no reason while the sculptor stares in horror? Hilarious.
• Evil Is Cool: Holy crap, Travis. He is one of the most despicable characters on the show, but the guy is so damn entertaining that you can’t help but almost enjoy every time he is on screen.
• Fridge Brilliance: If Meyer is supposed to be around the same age as Al Pacino (in his late 70's at the time of filming) in 1977, then he would have been born around the turn of the twentieth century. However, Meyer is depicted in flashback by Zack Schor, who was in his mid-twenties during filming and who does not look old enough to pass for a forty-something. What could have been a mere inconsistency makes much more sense when it is revealed that "Meyer" is actually the Wolf, who was played in flashback by 48-year-old Christian Oliver, who better fits the timeline in terms of age. A blink-and -you’ll-miss-it shot of the Wolf’s date of birth shows that he was born in 1907, placing him at 70 years old - much closer to the apparent age of “Meyer.” Whether or not this was intentional, it adds another layer of foreshadowing to the twist.
  • There's also the fact that prior to the show's release, some people found casting the non-Jewish Pacino as the Jewish Meyer a controversial choice, especially considering how many actual Jews they got for the other Jewish characters. The revelation that his character isn't a real Jew makes this controversy a non-issue.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Some people checked out the show just to see Al Pacino hunting down and killing escaped Nazis.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Nazis in general are over the line by virtue of having committed the Holocaust; however, a few specific examples stand out.
  • Heinz Richter crossed it by forcing Jews to kill each other in his human chess game (the fact that this was eventually cut from the episode notwithstanding).
  • The Wolf is a complex example; while he seemingly crossed it in the camps by forcing Meyer into a Sadistic Choice of having Ruth killed or shooting eleven Jews followed by killing Meyer and stealing his identity, his apparent redemption and decision to form the Hunters to atone for his crimes would appear to mitigate this somewhat. Therefore his actual horizon is likely either when he murders Tomasz for deducing his identity, when he orchestrates Ruth's murder, or when he brutally murders Dr. Mann to maintain the facade that he was the Wolf.
  • Travis crossed it by torturing and killing Detective Sommers and his family, including his pregnant wife.
  • Katarina Low, the Colonel and their associates crossed it with their plan to kill millions of Americans by poisoning corn syrup supplies with a biological agent, having tested the agent on children. That's if the Colonel hadn't already crossed it by helping Hitler escape with the intention of reviving the Reich and restarting the Holocaust.
• Squick: The Hunters force feeding Tilda actual crap while interrogating her. Yuck!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • With all the major set up that was given to him, it feels like Biff Simpson was being set up as a major villain and a major target for the Hunters. The fact he was winning the trust of many US leaders from the inside with nothing but charisma seemed far more interesting than whatever "The Colonel" was planning. Instead, his story goes nowhere and he goes on the run with none of his plans ever happening, therefore making him a major Plot-Irrelevant Villain. The Hunters don't even seem to pay any attention to him.
  • It is teased once in a while that the Hunters may have either gotten the wrong target or that the Nazi characters are trying their best to redeem themselves by doing some good deeds. Instead, they are either right from the start or the Nazis are always pure evil.
  • While the twist that Meyer was really The Wolf is a polarizing twist, they still had a chance of still making things interesting, making him a Nazi who saw the light and is truly trying to do the right thing, and explore the relationship between him and Jonah (as well as all the other characters) after the revelation; and his evolution as a human. Which would have been a refreshing take on a Nazi character, considering every Nazi in the show is pure evil. Instead, Meyer or rather The Wolf is just killed off.
  • The Nazi's overall plan can feel this way too. The idea that they are infiltrating the US Senate and slowly trying to form the Fourth Reich with Biff Simpson appeared to be a remarkably interesting idea and could have given them Villain with Good Publicity status vs the Hunters who were viewed as criminals anyway. Their master plan instead? Poison everyone in the US with poisoned corn syrup. Why? For the Evulz of course.
  • Travis's followers. Season 1 ends with him in jail beginning to build a following a white supremacist inmates. When we see him again in Season 2, he's escaped from jail and spends the whole season being Eva's Dragon with no mention of that army he was building until the very last episode, where they just serve to give one more action scene for Jonah and Joe to get through.
• The Woobie: The real Meyer Offerman was imprisoned in a concentration camp and singled out for abuse by The Wolf, a Nazi Surgeon, all because said surgeon was obsessed with Ruth, the woman whom Meyer was in love with. Meyer was physically tortured and ultimately forced by The Wolf to kill eleven people, under the threat that The Wolf would kill Ruth if he didn't. This act broke Meyer, and after the camp is liberated, he is mentioned to have reoccurring nightmares of the event. And to top it all off, Meyer is killed by The Wolf several months after the camp is liberated. The Wolf then proceeds to steal his identity and build a fortune under his name. Meyer, in turn, never gets to meet his daughter or grandson. The poor guy.

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