The new Wolverine podcast is full of villains, and despite Logan being the prime suspect in a bunch of nasty murders, he probably isn’t one of them. Episode 3 last week might’ve introduced a creepy cult leader obsessed with ley lines, but in this week’s fourth episode, “Hunters,” we finally meet Joseph Langrock the local patriarchal magnate who might be this story’s principal villain.
Marvel and Stitcher released “Hunters” on Monday, and it plays with the idea that there are many different kinds of hunters in the seaside town of Burns, Alaska. Logan is just one of them, hunting elk alongside wolves in the nude and devouring their flesh like a crazy animal.
But we’ve come to expect that from Wolverine, so when we learn just how fake-nice Joseph Langrock (Bob Balaban) is, it makes him seem way more suspicious than the 5 foot 3 naked man running around. This emotionally-manipulative business owner is his own kind of hunter.
Consider the following intensely creepy story he tells about why he reverently treats his Golden Retrievers so well:
Normal people don't talk about their dogs this way.
“Bred to sit at their master’s feet in miserably cold and damp conditions for hours, and only when they’re told to, they’d leap out of the boat and splash out into the water to find a shot duck in the marsh,” said Langrock, looking at his dogs. “They’d be thrilled to do it!”
Agent Tad Marshall (Ato Essandoh) and Deputy Bobby Reid (Andrew Keenan-Bolger) hear this story when they go to the Langrocks compound to talk with the elder Langrock.
Joseph Langrock is good at pretending to be fake nice and totally magnanimous in front of Agent Marshall — but later, we learn that Agent Marshal put a recording device in Langrock’s study, and we hear him talking to his own son in private. In this scene, he’s totally cruel.
Art for 'Wolverine: The Long Night'.
Langrock does his very best to seem like a good guy, but everything he says in this episode oozes creepy. He’s far too quick in assuming Logan is the one who murdered those local fishermen. Because the listener knows Logan is probably innocent, you have to wonder what nasty secrets the Langrock has?
They’re basically the rich family that owns the town, and in every smalltown mystery that sort of family always has skeletons in their closet.
“Everybody wants their privacy because everyone’s got something to hide,” Deputy Bobby Reid said a few episode ago about everyone in this town.
So what, exactly, are the Langrocks hiding? And what do they have against Logan?
Wolverine: The Long Night releases every Monday on Stitcher Premium.
