Nemsie Gonzalez ’26
Co-Chief Editor
“The Hunting Wives” Netflix series follows the story of Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) as she navigates her new life in East Texas in the wake of a mysterious personal tragedy. Upon her arrival, Sophie is thrown into a homo-erotic clique of wealthy housewives. As Sophie tries to navigate the new conservative climate she finds herself in, she meets Margo Banks (Malin Akerman). While they get to know each other and uncover one another’s secrets, they find themselves in more than a few sticky situations after Sophie is named as the main suspect in the murder and kidnapping of a local girl Abby (Madison Wolfe).
If you have not watched the show I encourage you to stop here and go binge. The following review is not spoiler-free. For the first half of the season, “The Hunting Wives” is a thrilling queer soap, but as we delve further into the murder mystery, the show seems to collapse in on itself, trading in exposition for shock value.
The show, upon introducing its key characters in a “Pretty Little Liars” style, tries to piece together the events of one night from the perspective of different characters. The final product? Choppy. The beautiful raunchy queer soap before us suddenly pulls an “Avenger’s: Endgame” with deaths left and right, leaving the audience finding themselves unsatisfied with the final murder reveal. What helps to save the show is its pedophile pastor sideplot. It is the only place viewers truly get closure as the youth pastor is brought to semi-justice through his own act of suicide and the release of his two young female victims. Unlike the main plot, viewers aren’t spoon-fed the twist or motive behind the pastor’s acts of violence.
Throughout the season, the tenuous relationship between Abby and her boyfriend’s mother, Jill (Katie Lowes), is built up. We see Jill acting envious of Abby through her offhanded comments and inappropriate touches towards her son, Brad (George Ferrier). On the night of Abby’s death, we see that Jill called Abby and mysteriously deleted her driving history from that night – a plot point that remains unresolved.
In the wake of Abby’s death, however, we see tensions grow between her mother Starr (Chrissy Metz) and Jill, ultimately leading to Starr Jill, resulting in another murder. This plot choice alone is infuriating, the grieving mother never gets justice and is treated so horribly throughout the series to no avail. If that were not shocking enough (and inevitably it wasn’t), Margo and her long-term girlfriend, Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), decide to stop by Jill’s house and confront her about Abby’s murder…and then kill her. The audience gets no closure and four members of the cast are dead. But wait! Sophie finds out that Margo killed Abby and she’s upset that Margo let her get blamed for murder, resulting in Sophie killing Margo’s brother and hiding the body. So now we have five dead cast members and a cliff hanger for a show that honestly I pray doesn’t get picked up for a second season.
I am tired of shows killing off characters so often. It gets to a point where it loses its punch (cough cough Grey’s). I love a queer show as much as the next girl, but these stories always seem so rushed and overclouded by random subplots. Netflix historically cuts good shows with queer representation then feeds us half-assed shows like this one. To future directors: please do better!