The Hunting Festival returned with a shocking twist after the show killed off a main cast member in the season 2 premiere.
During the Thursday, January 8, episode of the NBC series, it was confirmed that Oliver (Nick Wechsler) did not survive being poisoned in the season 1 finale. Bex (Melissa Roxburgh) was seen on the field with Ryan (Patrick Sulmonui) and Shane (Josh McKenzie) and it wasn’t until later in the episode that Bex was seen crying over the loss of her ex.
The fictional death, which took place off-screen, comes as a surprise after Wechsler, 47, was still listed as a cast member in an NBC press release. However, he was conspicuously missing from the trailer, prompting some concern about his future on the show.
The Hunting Festival is a crime procedural about investigators who come together to track down and capture the country’s most dangerous killers. The twist? Criminals escaped from a secret prison that shouldn’t exist.
Roxburgh’s character is a former FBI agent contracted to the planned work group to her reputation as a profiler who caught the world’s most dangerous serial killers. She has to work with the warden of the prison, who turned out to be her former partner and ex-boyfriend Oliver.
Roxburgh, 32, previously admitted it was an “unpopular opinion” to support Bex and Oliver’s relationship, saying Us Weekly exclusively in February, “He killed someone. He did something bad. (But) there are so many killers on the show. So it’s okay. It’s okay. It was a little murder.”
At the time, Roxburgh said that she was delighted to work with Wechsler.
“I had actually met Nick in passing before (The Hunting Party) and then he nailed the audition,” she recalled. “So going into filming with him, it was nice to have a bit of history already, even though I didn’t know him too well.”
He continued, “In terms of the characters, I’m always encouraging the story and the relationships where it’s like they’ve been through so much together.”
9-1-1 wasn’t the only show to kill off a major character in 2025, and many of these fictional deaths still have fans upset. The ABC drama threw us for a loop when an April episode ended with Peter Krause’s Bobby secretly infected with a rare and deadly virus. While the spectators faced the (…)
the actress hinted at a possible love trianglewhich will now be rebuilt.
“On the other hand, though there’s Shane,” he added. “If they build that love story and love triangle, Shane is safe and in very calm, cool waters. We have the bad guy who murdered someone and he had a reason. We have the person who didn’t murder someone. We’ll see.”
While Wechsler has left the show, Eric McCormack, Finnigan McCormack, Kelsey Grammer, Niecy Nash-Betts, Liz Gillies, Jefferson White and they are expected to do more guest appearances later in the season.
The Hunting Festival airs on NBC on Thursdays at 10pm ET and new episodes are available to stream on Peacock the following day.