He So Op He Had To Be Nerfed By Layering Problems On Him - Blog Posts

Thinking about how we’ve never once seen Hunter fighting at full strength and power in toh.

You need to remember this dude has been trained his entire life to serve as an elite soldier under the emperor. Belos wouldn’t have made him his right hand man and eventual coven head after Lilith left if he wasn’t capable of handling himself, anyone who might seek to harm the emperor or anyone else of importance, dangerous monsters and demons, and capturing powerful wild witches.

I mean, think about all the specifics of his job and training that he’s mentioned. He had to have been really freaking tough and talented to have been able to make it through all that.

And we never once get to see what he’s truly capable of.

In Seperate Tides, Hunter doesn’t see Luz or Eda as any sort of threat. He knows they’re both powerless. He’s clearly relaxed and toying with them. He’s confident that he has the upper hand and isn’t worrying about having to handle a couple of troublesome criminals.

Hunting Palismen takes place late at night. He was expecting this to be a quick and easy in and out mission. It’s understandable that he would be tired this late. And again, you have to remember that he still doesn’t view Luz as any sort of threat. He’s annoyed by her and gets caught off guard because he wasn’t expecting her to be any sort of challenge to handle.

Plus he was just in a crash and doesn’t even have his staff the majority of the episode, but is still able to easily keep up with Luz. And he willingly goes along with her afterwards so that he can get the palismen quicker and then dispose of Luz.

By the time he fights Kiki, he’s been running around all night and clearly just wants this mission to be over with. Kiki has been shown to be a pretty powerful person fighting wise, and even though she’s barely conscious, Hunter bests her fairly quickly. It wasn’t something that was really that hard for him.

Then comes to Eclipse Lake. By the time he and Amity fight, he’s exhausted, just had a mental breakdown, and fighting on an unfamiliar staff. Mental breakdowns like this leave people feeling super drained and burnt out, but he still gives Amity a pretty good run for her money.

I believe he would have easily won if not for the events in the episode leading up to the fight. I mean, he was literally just involved in a mine cart chase before he got to the lake.

In Any Sport in a Storm, other characters clearly point out the fact that he’s very talented at what he does. But he doesn’t exert full effort. He’s trying to recruit teens and play a sport.

In Labyrinth Runners, he’s dealing with the impacts and trauma from Hollow Mind. This dude has just learned that everything he thought he ever knew was a complete lie. He knows the man he once saw as his uncle wants him dead. He’s terrified. All he ever had to do before was follow orders, but now it’s up to him to make decisions and he has no idea what to do, where to go, or who to turn to. All he knows is that he has to stay as far away from Belos as possible.

All of this is clearly mentally and physically draining him. But even at this weak point, he’s able to push through and get to Gus when several other scouts and a literal coven head could not.

Again in Clouds On the Horizon, he’s still terrified and dealing with everything that happened. He’s still not in a good head space.

In King’s Tide, he’s been in yet another crash and is being effected by the draining spell. But he’s still able to push through and fight Belos, holding up fairly well, when everyone else with a sigil can barely even move.

It wasn’t even him fighting in Thanks to Them. That was just Belos using his body. But still, an argument can be made. He’s able to push through Belos’s possession after being rusty on fighting and all of his training for literal months. Belos was clearly trying to hurt Hunter when possessing him and didn’t care whether he lived or died. Hunter pushes through in minutes.

When Belos possessed Raine, he didn’t want to hurt them. He needed a body and to sustain Raine as long as he could. Raine has been trapped as a puppet, but they haven’t been conscious for months. If they were freed from puppet form, then they’d still be as used to fighting as before they were enslaved into a dreamless sleep.

Belos even comments on how powerful Raine is, but it still takes them a lot longer to push through his control than Hunter did. They did also have to push through Collector’s, but there’s still a point to be made.

In For the Future, again Hunter is still rusty, in painful grief, having to deal with all of his worst traumas coming back, and now has no magic at all. He figures out he’s able to use it later on, but it’s only ever that one spell.

This brings me back to my main point. In all of these instances, Hunter has either been tired, burnt out, in mental distress, just previously dealing with another physically taxing event, not really trying or having to use effort, rusty from lack of practice, using unfamiliar magic, or a combination of those. I believe that if we ever got to see him fight in his prime—with a staff and magic that he was used to, in a mostly stable emotional state, physically rested or not just previously having to deal with another taxing event, and with all of his training in tact and not out of practice—then we would see just how powerful and terrifying of a foe he could have really been.