Hunters Episode 1.01 The Beginning & The End

In the series premiere, a troubled Baltimore FBI agent becomes involved with a secret government unit assembled to hunt a group of ruthless terrorists, who may or may not be from this world, and who may or may not be involved in his wife's disappearance.

We open on a creep in a messy house listening to new wave music as a naked, bleeding woman cries in a cage. How's that for starters?

Flash back 72 hours! A trio in defensive gear -- Briggs, Page, and Regan -- land their helicopter in an empty factory that looks like Freddy Krueger's boiler room. Regan sees a moving figure and insists on following it herself, even though Briggs believes they should go as a team. She finds a bloody skin-covered Cronenberg-esque creature before a guy attacks her. She rips off part of his face, revealing a weird non-human skull underneath. Page and Briggs shoot other enemies, revealing gooey, alien-like entrails, though Page is later killed by Regan's attacker. Briggs and Regan are devastated by the loss of their colleague, though Briggs believes his death could've been prevented if Regan had gone along with his initial "as a team" suggestion.

Meanwhile, in a suburban house, a noise downstairs interrupts the lovemaking of a beautiful young couple, Flynn and Abby Carroll. Of course, it's a cat that snuck in. Flynn tells Abby that she can't adopt every stray she finds, a remark that inadvertently hurts Emme, their adopted daughter, who appears behind him.

At ETU (Exo-Terrorism Unit) headquarters, Briggs and Regan report to Commander Truss Jackson, who reveals that the factory they raided belonged to the 'Hunters,' a group of terrorists. An ETU doctor performs an autopsy on Regan's attacker, revealing that the Hunters are ALIENS with human skin covering extraterrestrial body parts.

Flynn listens to radio report about an internal investigation at the FBI based on complaints about a decorated member of its drug-busting task force. He's obviously the guy under investigation, possibly because of the pills we see him pop. At his inquiry, he says that he's not seeking treatment for PTSD, while his investigator reveals that Emme is the daughter of his partner, who died in a heroin sting.

During their factory raid, the ETU seized three cell phones that recently received a text message of Abby's picture... and, wouldn't you know it, soon thereafter the creep from the first scene kidnaps Abby. He steals her hearing aid and paralyzes her with a high-pitched sound. After he gets home, Flynn reports Abby missing and begins investigating...

Later, Flynn wakes up from a horrible PTSD nightmare about Abby and his war experience. He checks in on Emme, who suspects that Abby was up to something. She shows him a GPS record stating that the day before she was kidnapped, she went off her beaten path to 1445 Quaker Ridge Road after lying to Emme that she was going to a music store in the opposite direction. This isn't a private conversation, as the ETU is listening in via their top-of-the-line surveillance tech...

Flynn goes to the mysterious address, sneaking toward the house where we saw Abby caged as Regan and Briggs watch from afar. Flynn has a PTSD flashback when he sees a creepy hooded man with what looks like burns on his face, after which Abby's kidnapper almost strangles him, saying that he will never see her again. Regan and Briggs move in, though the kidnapper manages to escape. They take Flynn to Jackson, who wonders what the Hunters want with this guy's wife.

Flynn goes home and talks to Emme, who got sent home from school for cutting herself. He asks her to attend a therapeutic boarding school. She throws a fit, reminding Flynn that he promised her father that he'd take care of her. Later, Regan shows up and tells Flynn that he's been recruited by the ETU.

At ETU headquarters, Jackson tells Flynn about the Hunters. Abby's kidnapper, Lionel McCarthy, will likely try to leave the country and head to the Middle East to meet with someone known as Brother #4, the "Bin Laden of little green men." He will travel via an airport where Slavich, another Hunter, runs security ... and they hope that Abby will be with him. Jules Callaway, ETU's tech guy, analyzes McCarthy's new wave song and decodes a manifesto from Brother #4, revealing a plot to launch a violent revolution against humans.

At the airport, Regan and Flynn find Slavich escorting McCarthy to a plane. They shoot Slavich as McCarthy retreats into the aircraft. Flynn holds Slavich at gunpoint and demands to know Abby's location. Slavich tells him that Hunters are "inside ETU," using him. In the plane, Regan confronts McCarthy, who calls her by her first name, Allison. He says he knows what's inside of both of them, "dying to come out"...

Slavich takes advantage of Flynn being briefly distracted by Briggs and shoots his own damn head off, which makes for an icky alien mess. Just then, Regan appears and says that McCarthy got away! She and Flynn look at each other suspiciously as we cut to black.