Brittany Snow’s most recent Netflix series, The Beast in Me, made a splashy debut, but it still can’t top the deliciously scandalous The Hunting Wives, which also premiered this year. Released on November 13, The Beast in Me cast is led by Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs, a celebrated author mourning the loss of her young son, who develops an obsession with her new next-door neighbor, Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys).
Snow stars as Nina Jarvis, Nile’s devoted second wife, whom he married following the mysterious disappearance of his first wife, Madison. Though it has since dropped to 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Beast in Me premiered to a rare 100% score. This beats The Hunting Wives, which sits at 76%, but the latter thriller is far superior.
Thriller Fans Will Love The Sordid Secrets Of The Hunting Wives’ Main Characters
When we first meet Brittany Snow’s Sophie O’Neil in The Hunting Wives, we know she has secrets to hide. A Boston transplant, Sophie arrives at her new home in East Texas as a total fish out of water, having moved with her family for her husband Graham’s (Evan Jonigkeit) job. She feels even more out of place at an NRA fundraising party hosted by Graham’s boss, Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney).
However, Jed’s wife, Margo (Malin Akerman), instantly takes a liking to Sophie and invites her to a girls’ night with her clique, the titular Hunting Wives. From there, Sophie is seduced by Margo’s gun-toting, hard-drinking world, and much like us, Margo is desperate to know what’s going on behind Sophie’s skittish facade.
But this doesn’t even get to the heart of The Hunting Wives‘ main storyline, which is the murder of local high school cheerleader Abby (Madison Wolfe). As Sophie is pulled into the investigation, more secrets are revealed, including the truth behind another local girl’s disappearance, and affairs, affairs, affairs.
No twist is boring, and each storyline is more sordid than the last without ever being exploitative. The Hunting Wives is an unapologetically vulgar show, and the show is just as fun as it is gripping, never taking itself too seriously. This sets it apart from more straitlaced thrillers like The Beast in Me, which is still worth watching, though it’s not nearly as refreshing as The Hunting Wives.
Brittany Snow Is Even Better In The Hunting Wives Than In The Beast In Me
There’s no doubt about it — 2025 is definitely Brittany Snow’s year. Having previously been pigeonholed as a teen genre actress thanks to her roles in Hairspray and the Pitch Perfect films, Snow has successfully made the leap to more grown-up fare with the incredibly not-safe-for-kids The Hunting Wives and The Beast in Me.
Snow is terrific in both Netflix thriller series, and on the surface, her characters are quite similar, as both are well-off women married to controlling husbands. But more importantly, Sophie and Nina are both full of surprises.
The difference is that, as the main character in The Hunting Wives, Snow has more room to play. We both get to know and care for Sophie deeply, while she still remains a complete mystery to us. As we inch closer to solving it, every revelation — from how she met her husband to her ability to kill — is a shock, but one we would have seen coming.
In The Beast in Me, Nina has secrets of her own, but as she’s a supporting character more defined by her relationship to her husband, the audience is kept at somewhat of an arm’s length, and we don’t really get to delve into her psyche the way we do Sophie’s.
Whether we’re seeing her as a nervous wife and mother, an eager-to-fit-in Hunting Wife, a prime murder suspect, or an unhinged woman having an absolute meltdown in a motel, Sophie O’Neil is without a doubt the greatest role of Brittany Snow’s career, making The Hunting Wives the superior Netflix thriller.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
