“Most Dangerous Game: New York,” the second season of the 2020 series “Most Dangerous Game,” has just dropped. Creator Nick Santora is back with the gripping series with 12 new episodes. The previous season featured Liam Hemsworth as Dodge Tynes, a bankrupt athlete who is set up by Miles Sellars (Christoph Waltz) to participate in a game hunt by tricking him into believing that he has an inoperable tumor in his brain. He explains to him the rules of the hunt: he will be hunted by five hunters, and for each hour he survives, a hefty sum will be added to his bank account, amounting to a total of 24.5 million dollars at the end of the stipulated 24 hours if he survives. Liam agrees at first, as he has a pregnant wife to care for, only to find out later that he has no such tumor and that he was set up to take such a deadly deal. The new season follows a similar plotline, with little twists added along the way. Let’s dive into it.
Spoilers Ahead
Searching For The New ‘Prey’
The series begins with The Tiro Fund, the organization responsible for conducting the “game-hunts,” looking for their new runner, the candidate who will be the hunted one in the game. Miles Sellars, the man responsible for the smooth operation of the hunt, is seen under a lot of pressure. He is summoned by the Chairwoman (Anna Gunn) and asked about the status of the scouting process. Miles confidently reassures her that the proceedings are perfectly on their way to find the best candidate possible. The Chairwoman gives Miles a final warning that any errors, such as the one that occurred in the previous hunt, will not be tolerated. We then follow Miles into a meeting where Tina, Miles’ protege, recommends a candidate that she finds perfect for the hunt. Here we learn that whatever he told the Chairwoman was a lie because he has not yet selected the runner, and things are not going as smoothly as planned. He rejects the candidate suggested by Tina because of a video of him that went viral and is left with only files of runner-up candidates. Miffed with Tina’s behavior, he takes up the responsibility to find the best candidate possible himself. Out of the many files, one catches his eye: that of Victor Suero (David Castaneda). Victor is a boxer who lives with his younger sister, Josie. They were orphaned after their parents died in a house fire. He saved his sister from the fire but lost almost all vision from his left eye and now has to fight for sustenance in present-day New York. Miles is thrilled, as he thinks he has his runner. He later tells Victor’s backstory in a speech he makes in front of all the investors and Tiro Fund’s Chairwoman, explaining to them why Victor “Victory” Suero is the best choice for the game hunt.
Victor is introduced to us, competing in a seedy underground boxing match and getting heavily hit by his opponent. His feisty but caring sister Josie throws in the towel, ending the match. Their conversation afterward makes it clear that Josie wants Victor to quit boxing. Victor is in no mood to hear that. He wants to provide for her the best of everything.
Victor also works in a shipping factory under Mickey Dupree. He gets a call from an unknown number and is given a time and place to meet. He goes there to find Josie in trouble. Josie, in order to earn some extra cash, started working for a Russian mobster named Timur and lost one of his delivery parcels containing 500,000 dollars. Timur threatens Victor to return the money anyhow; otherwise, Josie will have to face the consequences, and he shoots the man right in front of Victor, who was the one responsible for handing over the parcel to Josie. Victor now understands that Timur means business. He asks Timur to bet against him in an upcoming boxing match, which he will deliberately lose to profit. Timur refuses and demands all of his money to be returned within a week. Victor states he won’t be able to return that huge amount within a week, so Timur gives him Tiro Fund’s calling card and tells Victor to contact them if he thinks he can’t pay.
Victor meets Miles after contacting him, and Miles explains the same game hunt and its rules as he did to Dodge (Liam Hemsworth) in the previous season. Victor takes a day to weigh his options. As one of the rules of the game is that he cannot tell anybody about the hunt, he keeps that a secret from Josie. He steals some cash from Mickey’s office and hands it over to Timur as a token of confidence that he will definitely be able to return the whole amount, but Timur remains unimpressed and persuades him to return the entire amount in one go and take the cash he has stolen back with him. He places the cash in a packet in Josie’s room.
The Hunt Begins, And So Do The Troubles
Victor reaches a baseball stadium, which is where the hunt begins. Miles tells him about the bets the approved betters will take on Victor during the game. He is given a mobile phone from Miles, which will send his (Victor’s) precise location to the hunters each passing hour. The hunt begins at sunrise, and he meets his first hunter with the codename Ford, a retired Wall Street banker. Victor fights and gets wounded by Ford’s whip but eventually manages to escape the stadium, leaving Ford almost strangled, but he manages to survive. Connell, the “cleaner,” is responsible for erasing any trace of the game hunt. He oversees the whole thing.
Next, Victor meets the hunter, codenamed Monroe, on the subway train. After a fight sequence, he ends up being dominated and tortured by a laser beam when, at the last moment, he manages to electrocute Monroe by making his steel weapon touch the high-tension wire running through the subway. Victor escapes into a basement area where he tends to his wounds in a storeroom but gets trapped there as the door closes behind him. Meanwhile, Connell disfigures and burns Monroe’s body to avoid identification.
His body was carried out by the police. Ford and the third hunter, codenamed Taft, chat casually outside the subway. Taft receives Victor’s location and impersonates a police officer to enter the basement where Victor is trapped. Ford catches Connell on the sidewalk and expresses his anger at him for watching him almost die in the stadium, to which Connell replies he isn’t meant to interfere with the game. Ford breaks his glasses and walks away. Connell takes out another pair of glasses from his pocket and nonchalantly puts them on, giving Ford a long stare.
Taft enters the basement and tries to kill Victor by pouring gasoline into the storeroom and setting it on fire. As resourceful as Victor is, he prepares a potion, puts it on a cloth, and rips open the door handle using an iron chain. Taft goes in for the kill, but Victor uses the cloth to make Taft unconscious and escapes the subway.
The hunt is going according to plan, as far as Miles is concerned, but the video footage of Victor stealing the cash from Dupree’s office is found out by the company’s security, and a police report is filed against Victor. Dupree tries to inquire about the cash and calls Josie. Josie answers his questions dishonestly at first. After finding the cash in her room with the note telling her to return the money to Dupree, Josie gets worried and calls Dupree back, telling him about the whole fiasco involving Timur and Victor. Not understanding Victor’s sudden disappearance, they both meet and start looking for him. She tries to reach Victor on his cell phone. Miles intercepts the voice message and gets to know about the police case filed against Victor. He gets concerned as this might jeopardize the whole hunt and even his position in the company.
Victor, constantly on the move, decides to head toward an abandoned area in Staten Island. He calls Josie from the cabbie’s phone, apologizes to her in an almost cryptic message, tells her to believe that he hasn’t abandoned her, and cuts the call right before Josie says, “This was all planned.” They go to the police and tell them everything they know. The police discard the idea that there ever was a gang of Russian mobsters in their area doing business unbeknownst to them, essentially calling Josie a liar. Josie shows the money deposited in the account and gains the officer’s attention. He orders an immediate freeze on Victor’s account and puts out a memo to bring him into custody.
In Staten Island, Victor faces the fourth hunter, codenamed Tyler, aided by his dog Katie. Victor injures Tyler’s right arm in a fight and escapes in a stolen car. Tyler chases him with his vehicle. Victor ditches the vehicle and steals a motorboat. Katie leaps on it and attacks Victor, but he manages to throw it into the water. Tyler jumps into the water to save Katie but drowns.
Meanwhile, Tina barges into the control room to express her apprehensions about Miles choosing Victor over her recommended candidate now that Victor has the police looking out for him. You can sense Miles having a bit of a soft corner for her, so he schools her on the lesson of loyalty and assures her that he will take full responsibility if anything goes wrong in the hunt and she need not worry.
Victor is caught by the police as soon as he sets foot on land, violating the rule of the game, which was to not get arrested during the hunt. He gets taken to a bail hearing. Josie and Mickey Dupree are notified of Victor’s arrest. Josie goes to the bail hearing to find Victor. Meanwhile, a certain Clive Nixon arrives in the court out of nowhere and presents himself as Victor’s lawyer, getting him out on bail before Josie could arrive. It is only later that we find that Clive is a conditional hunter sent by Miles himself to let the game continue without hiccups. It’s because Victor did not intentionally get himself arrested, Miles does not entirely blame him for violating the rule of the game, so he gives him a choice to either run away and let the hunt continue indefinitely until his death OR go to a secret location and fight Clive one on one. If he makes it out of place alive, he will resume the hunt, with his location sent out to remaining hunters and Clive joining in the hunt an hour later. Victor agrees to the latter option; they all reach a desolate water treatment facility, and the fight commences. Connell waits outside while Miles is seen on a call, managing bets on this encounter, keeping it “off the books,” meaning not making it known to the Tiro Fund’s board.
Clive injures Victor badly, but he manages to get out. Miles congratulates him on surviving and gets in his car. Victor notices Miles’s driver is the same man Timur shot dead in front of him. He puts two and two together and understands he was set up. However, with no room to wait, he tries escaping the water treatment facility but is met by Ford, who is back for his revenge. Victor manages to lock him in a container, pumps in the water, and leaves. Connell oversees Ford struggling once again, almost on the verge of opening the lock of the container, but Connell closes it again, ensuring Ford’s death. Maybe it was his way of getting revenge for breaking his glasses!
With only a few hours to go in the game, the bruised and battered Victor takes a bus and heads toward Montauk. He calls Josie from the conductor’s cell to tell her about the setup. He cuts the call, but not before Josie hears the bus call for Montauk, knowing where he is headed.
Miles visits the Chairwoman’s office but before he can meet with her, he gets suspicious and leaves after witnessing Tina already in conversation with her.
In Montauk, Victor fights off Lainie, the final hunter, and emerges victorious. At this point, he has no more willpower to continue and goes up to a nearby lighthouse to spend the last few minutes remaining until the game’s end. Josie tracks him down. Victor is surprised but asks her to leave immediately. This is where Taft enters, for he wasn’t dead in the first place. He goes in for the kill but stabs Josie instead. Seeing Josie hurt, Victor goes berserk and throws Taft off the railing, essentially surviving the hunt. He rescues Josie and takes her to a hospital, where he wakes up in the morning to find Josie in a stable condition and discovers that it was none other than Clive who donated blood to save Josie.
Miles makes the final call to Victor before meeting the Chairwoman, congratulating him on the victory and telling him about the 20 million dollars (the rest being frozen by the police) waiting for him in a bank account in Panama. Victor looks at Josie, who is resting peacefully and declines the money, realizing he doesn’t need it.
Miles meets the Chairwoman and sees Tina present there, and she enquires about the hidden impromptu death match he conducted between Victor and Clive. Scared that Tina might have spilled the beans, he tries to save face and asks her not to believe Tina. The Chairwoman surprised Miles after she told him that Tina took responsibility for choosing such an emotional and risky runner herself, which is why Miles would now have to kill her. She hands him a loaded gun, and Miles aims at Tina but suddenly shoots the Chairwoman instead.
‘Most Dangerous Game: New York’ Ending Explained – Why Did Miles Shoot The Chairwoman?
Miles was fed up with the chairperson constantly questioning his operations. When Miles was asked to shoot Tina, he realized she had proven herself too loyal to be killed, as she took the responsibility of choosing Victor Suero on her shoulders even when she could have laid the blame on Miles. So when Miles is given a loaded gun, he makes the best use of it and shoots the Chairwoman dead. With no one as experienced in running the game and the skillset to make a profit for the investors, he isn’t worried about them coming to get revenge as long as he is able to make money for them. So he takes charge of the Tiro Fund with the loyal Tina by his side, whom he entrusts with finding the next runner for another game hunt within the next 90 days.
“Most Dangerous Game: New York” is a thrilling series streaming on Roku.