After two years,The Hot Zone: Anthraxis the latest series to return after a prolonged COVID hiatus, but the series now makes its debut as an anthology, returning to tell the stories of post-9/11 grief and the anthrax letter attacks that took the lives of five people shortly after the terror attack in NYC.
Featuring seasoned actorsDaniel Dae KimandTony Goldwynin its lead roles,The Hot Zone: Anthraxis a thrilling tale of the investigation surrounding the letters, filled with highs, lows, and unexpected plot twists, keeping the audience engaged all six episodes of this season, but with a story that fits the dramatic mold so well, it begs the question: what is actually true of this story, and what was invented or composited to make the story better?
Matthew Ryker
When the casting news forThe Hot Zone: Anthraxbroke toDeadlinein early 2021, Kim’s character of Matthew Ryker was announced as a composite character, or an amalgamation of several individuals involved in the real-life investigations of Amerithrax. This isn’t surprising, considering that the FBI considers the Amerithrax investigations as “one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement.”
TheAmerithrax Task Forceincluded 25-30 agents from multiple law enforcement agencies, including hundreds of thousands of investigator work hours expended and saw 10,000 witness interviews over the course of the multi-year investigation.The Hot Zone: Anthraxsimplifies the investigation by following two main and ideologically opposing investigators, the aforementioned Ryker and Dani Toretti (Dawn Olivieri). As the investigations provide a framing for the series, it’s much easier to guide the dramatized narrative through a character whose memory doesn’t need preserving versus characters like Ivins (Tony Goldwyn) who actually lived.
Another advantage to amalgamating law enforcement into Ryker comes with the worldbuilding of 2001. The fear and chaos that filled the months (and honestly, years) after the 9/11 attacks creates a unique environment and setting forThe Hot Zone: Anthrax. Even though this massive group trauma shows through the environment and organizations featured in this series, it takes Ryker’s PTSD to truly convey what living through this period of history was like and the effect it had on people, regardless if they connected to the attacks personally or not. Having a character with a blank slate that could be crafted to help drive this point home, although not a story that actually took place (that we know of), is still true to the essence of the setting.
The Hot Zone: Anthraxtakes place over six episodes, a length that feels like weeks or maybe months at most from start to finish. While the first victim of the attacks, Bob Stevens, was hospitalized on July 24, 2025, and the last victim, Ottilie Lundgren, died on November 21 in the same year, the investigations lasted years with investigations finally concluding in February 2010. For an easy-to-understand timeline, you can find one onNPR.
The series comes to the same conclusions that the Task Force did in 2010, but at a much faster pace. This isn’t the first time that a program has sped up the progression of a story – a fast story gives the characters high stakes and makes the experience more exciting and heart-pounding for the viewers.The Hot Zonepoises the investigations as a race to catch the perpetrator when in actuality, law enforcement didn’t search their first person of interest’s (Steven Hatfill [Justin Mader]) residence until 10 months after the first letters were sent.
And while Bruce Ivins likely took his own life due to the impending charges against him in the case (reported by theNew York Times), this cascade of events didn’t occur until the summer of 2008. The frustration with the Amerithrax investigations helped inspire new technologies to help finally prosecute a perpetrator. These new innovations seem to already exist inThe Hot Zone. While that may not be the case, and while no terrorist was never brought to judicial justice, these delays in the timeline may not be conducive to drama, but pushed science forward in a dark time.
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Dr. Bruce Ivins
If any character was dramatized inThe Hot Zone: Anthrax,you’d probably think it’d be Dr. Ivins, the implied perpetrator of the anthrax attacks. However, much of his characterization and backstory comes straight from a Los Angeles Times piece, “The anthrax killings: A troubled mind,” by investigative reporter David Willman. This author’s book was also a big part in Goldwyn’s research, as he toldDaily News.
Ivins evenoverdosed on the same drugas he does in the series. So, whileThe Hot Zonetakes liberties with compounding the story to simplify things for the viewer and create a protagonist the audience can connect to, the real-life characters that this series does portray are followed as close to reality as possible. However, with a person as suspicious and devolving as Ivins became in his last days, perhaps there just wasn’t much that needed to be stretched.
What Was Left Out
Although this series covers most of the major events and findings that actually happened in the non-fictional world, the bow on this case isn’t as perfect asThe Hot Zone: Anthraxmakes it seem. Before the final credits on the second season roll, a few details about the suspects are given (such as the date of Ivin’s death and Hatfill’s exoneration, but leaves outthe key 2011 reportreleased by The National Academies that cast slight doubt on Ivin’s guiltiness.
While the report doesn’t state that the scientific evidence doesn’t dispute Ivins as the possible perpetrator in the anthrax attacks, it does say that scientific evidence can’t prove that he was guilty, and that the FBI “did not rule out other sources.” Even though the FBI announced in 2008 that Ivins was the sole perpetrator in Amerithrax, in scientific actuality, that’s not completely honest.
Leaving this shadow of doubt out of the season finale may make for a better conclusion, but is somewhat deceptive for a program attempting to detail the investigation in a serious, noteworthy event. However, despite the alterations and omissions thatThe Hot Zone: Anthraxmakes, it still is a great window into post-9/11 grief and fear.
