The FBI: Most Wanted team was on a different type of manhunt this week.
With Jess having bid farewell to his daughter, he had to lead the team in the pursuit for a very dangerous quarry in the aptly titled Hunter.
A hunting we will go…
The episode opened with a man (Kris Eiver) grabbing a cigarette in an alley and coming to help another man jumpstart his car. Instead, he was knocked out and awoke in the forest as the masked man gave him a three-minute head start for the highway, “Today, you’re not the predator anymore. You’re the prey.”
The man ran and almost made it to a car before the hunter finally gunned him down. He was about to use a machete on him when the car’s owner showed up and took a bullet himself.
Hana and Ortiz were sparring at a boxing gym to talk about how good it felt to be roommates. They were called to the crime scene just outside of Pittsburgh, where the jeep’s owner was identified as Jamie Scott. According to his wallet, the other victim was John Clemons with his head missing.
Clemons turned out to be a convicted sex offender from Pittsburgh, the home of his last victim, Chris Preston (Bryan Burton). Preston had an alibi at work, although he wasn’t too upset to hear Clemons was dead. He shared he had an offer from attorney Nedra Lewis to take part in a lawsuit against Clemons and the Boy Scout troop he worked for.
Footage from Scott’s cap camera showed scarring on the killer’s hand. Lewis (Tia Dionne Hodge) argued she wanted justice for those abused by Clemons, although Gaines pointed out $15,000 for each victim was shockingly low. Sadly, there were a lot of potential suspects.
The killer abducted Courtney Parker (Christine M.Campbell) to give her the same head start, and “the fact you don’t know who I am says everything.”
The most dangerous game
The team found Courtney’s decapitated body on the grounds near a ranch and it was revealed that she was a supervisor for the Boy Scout troop Clemons worked for. Her husband, Dan (John Bolton) claimed she’d known nothing of Clemons’ crimes and the lawsuits were slander.
Hana and Ortiz learned Courtney was killed by a high-powered arrow designed to inflict pain. The clerk identified the markings on the arrow as being created by Wally Turner (Nathan Wallace), who had scars matching the killer.
The team hit Wally’s place to find hunting equipment and the heads of Clemons and Courtney in the backyard, along with evidence Wally had kidnapped someone else.
A quick search showed Wally had been one of Clemons’ scouts, the team deducing he’d been abused and was seeking payback.
Wally’s parents, Denise (Andrus Nichols) and Colton (Allen McCullough) explained Wally’s scars were from being infected by a plant while lost in the woods. They refused to believe that Wally could have been abused with Colton actually playing the “blame the victim” card. Wally had gotten upset about the lawsuit offer, which might have been a trigger.
Hana was upset about Colton’s attitude making things worse, but Denise shared Wally had seen a therapist. Dr. Robert O’Leary (Lawrence Arancio) believed Wally had simply buried all the trauma, but the letter likely set him off. He warned it was likely Wally wouldn’t stop until he got his “closure.”
Wally had abducted Cameron Early (Chris Wendelken) and William Pitts (Frank Ridley), two more registered offenders, putting them in a “race” in an abandoned factory. Pitts killed Cameron only to find the game was rigged with Wally killing him.
Closing out the hunt
Jess figured that with his personal targets done, Wally was now enjoying the thrill of the kill and on a hunt. With a shocking amount of registered offenders in the area, “he’s got quarry for days.”
Sure enough, Wally was already stalking Watkins Farr (Adam Huel Potter), snatching him in broad daylight in front of witnesses. As they checked out the crime scene, a car tried to escape, driven by O’Leary.
O’Leary confessed that he’d reconnected with Wally and knew he’d killed Clemons but thought it helped his mental state. He was delivering a hunting rifle and ammo and agreed with Wally that these offenders needed punishment. The doctor was obviously affected listening to so many stories of abused kids over the years.
As O’Leary was arrested, the team tracked Wally to a forest where he had Farr tied to a tree and held the group at bay with his rifle. Jess tried to reach out to Wally, but the man sadly believed this was the only way to heal his wounds. The team used smoke to hide rescuing Farr while Ortiz got the drop to shoot Wally.
Hana and Otiz got over the case by cooking together, sharing stories on Ortiz’s family and his mother passing away a few years earlier while Hana shared she was actually adopted. She admitted she was worried about meeting the woman, but Ortiz encouraged her to reach out to find her birth mother, with Hana deciding “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
It was a harsh hunt for a man driven to an extreme by his trauma, even as Ortiz and Hana found new common ground.
FBI: Most Wanted Season 3 returns with new episodes Tuesday February 1 at 10/9c on CBS.