Gazing into the Abyss: Truth and Fiction in Amazon’s “Hunters”

Part 1: What the Hell is Vril?

Some of the Hunters. From left: Mindy and Murray Markowitz; Roxy Jones; Joe Torrance; and Lonny Flash. (Christopher Saunders/Amazon)

It’s Summer, 1977. New York City. After his grandmother — a Holocaust survivor — is murdered, young Jonah Heidelbaum discovers that she was a member of a group dedicated to tracking and murdering Nazis living in America under assumed identities. Seeking vengeance, Jonah joins the group — a motley crew of characters that includes their leader, multi-millionaire Meyer Offerman; Sister Harriet, a pistol-packing foul-mouthed nun; obnoxious B-movie actor Lonny Flash; black power activist Roxy Jones; Asian-American kung-fu expert Joe Torrance; and tech wizards Mindy and Murray Markowitz.

In Hunters Episode 6: “Ruth 1:16” the “red journal” owned by various Nazis is found to be a wacko science fiction novel called Vril that is, as Lonny Flash describes it, “an instruction manual” for the coming Fourth Reich.

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

A real book published anonymously in 1871, the short novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race was written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Once as popular an author as Charles Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton would probably now be best remembered for inventing the…