‘Manhunt’ Recap: ‘Useless’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Tobias Menzies as Edwin Stanton in Episode Six of ‘Manhunt’ – ‘Useless’. (Photo Courtesy of Apple.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the Penultimate Episode of ‘Manhunt’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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We have come to expect a very specific type of ending regarding stories that feature a grandiose manhunt. Wherein the person sought by law enforcement, desperately barricades themselves in a secure location. Out of the hope of finding a way out or a way to reason with those chasing them. But instead, that hope turns to desperation, and a grand final showdown between villain and hero, where the bad guy dies in a blaze of glory and where the denouement of the story is quick and decisive… takes place. For justice has been served, and good triumphed over evil and there’s nothing more to tell. And we most certainly eat that up because that is a satisfying way to bring such an intense story to a close, and it is an edict that most stories rarely deviate from.

But now and again they most certainly do, and that is precisely why this week’s episode of Manhunt on Apple TV+ is of note. For ‘Useless’ did not set the stage for John Wilkes Booth to heal and make his way to that final location for the finale of this limited series. No instead, his feverish and beat up self was still at the farm that he found his way to during last week’s episode and while there he tried desperately to procure any supplies or any transportation to Richmond. To be the hero for the Confederacy he thought he might be, and well… that’s when this episode offered up quite the shocking surprise. In that, the Union Army was on its way, and so was Stanton and his son, and Eckert. Because they knew where Booth was, and they were ready to corner him. That meant, the showdown was about to take place and Booth’s last stand… was nothing like we’ve seen before.

Because outside of the baseline tenet of being isolated and barricaded, since he and David were relegated to the barn nearby… the showdown in question was as unique as it gets. In large part thanks to the fact, that it took place at this point in the series, but also because nothing went as expected. For there was no pleading or attempts to make peace from Booth. He was defiant and angry, and he spent those moments in the barn, pondering deeply upon failure and legacy, since he did not walk into Richmond the hero he expected to be. Not to mention, there was no blaze of glory, and oddly, no sense of satisfaction to his end. Just poetry to the death of Booth really, since he took a slug in the back of the head as he imparted upon President Lincoln from a solider named Corbett. Giving rise to a slow and painful end to a pained and arrogant man. 

All of which, really was the anthesis to the final showdown and left us wondering… what lay ahead. For this was not the series finale of the show, this was its penultimate episode, and well, with Booth dead and any links to his bosses severed through his death, and with no real justice on the horizon for Booth to quell the growing resurgence of Confederate agendas… it meant that Stanton had to get creative in order to do right by the nation and its fallen and beloved president. So, he came up with a grand plan to go after everyone in a tribunal court, and after arresting Jefferson Davis down Georgia way and by having a stable of conspirators in jail and witnesses ready to go, Stanton set the stage for the trial of the century, and one of the biggest this young republic would ever know, which is where this series will close out. 

But while we wait to see how the trial plays out, we can indeed applaud one bold tale. One that truly did take this old storytelling trope and flip it upside down. For nothing played out as it should, and kudos to Showrunner Monica Beletsky for doing this now and not ending the series with a super-sized episode that rushed through the aftermath of Booth’s killing. For now, we get to see the real impact of his death and learn lessons regarding the trial that looms on the horizon, and that is going to make the wait for next week’s series finale as difficult as can be. Because we simply must know how this brilliant story is going to come to close and what, if any, justice was handed out in a broken country eager to lick its wounds over properly doing the work to heal its wounds for all time. Until next time.

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