The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Review: Prime Video's Spin-Off Is Too Little, Too Late

It's odd that The Terminal List: Dark Wolf exists. It's a spin-off prequel of the Chris Pratt-led military thriller The Terminal List, which premiered in the summer of 2022 and has yet to return for Season 2. It's focused on Navy SEAL-turned-CIA operative Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch), who — spoiler alert — was killed by his friend, SEAL Commander James Reece (Pratt), after being exposed as a betrayer whose leaking of intel in exchange for $20 million led to the deaths of Reece's teammates and family. He's an unlikely hero for a prequel, especially one that's coming in the midst of such a long gap between Terminal List seasons. Blame the strikes, blame Chris Pratt's busy schedule, blame the producers overestimating how interesting this character is, but whatever the reason Dark Wolf got made before Season 2, it's not the ideal outcome for the Terminal List franchise. Dark Wolf is for diehards only. 

The series follows Edwards as he descends down the path from being a member of the SEAL teams to being a man who fights only for himself — and is fighting himself. There are two wolves inside of him, and the dark one is winning. The series is set five years before the events of The Terminal List and starts in Iraq in 2015, when Ben is discharged from the SEALs for disobeying an order he believes is immoral. After that, he and his teammate Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper) — a white man from Zimbabwe who joined the U.S. Navy — are recruited by chain-smoking CIA agent Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom), who sees that they're fighters who are willing to do whatever it takes. He tells them that the mission is to stop Iranian officials from receiving technology that will turbocharge the country's nuclear program, but they soon realize that it's not that simple, and they're part of a mysterious conspiracy. Hastings has to decide whether the operator's life is still for him, while Edwards faces losing the only life he's capable of living. 

5.0

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf

at Prime Video

Like

• A sense of authenticity
• Hard-hitting action

Dislike

• Flat lead performance
• Disjointed plot

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf is a well-made, high-end action thriller defined by an unusual level of technical realism. It features military veterans as writers, actors, on-set advisors, and executive producers, and the jargon and hard-edged attitude they bring gives Dark Wolf a sense of authenticity that sets it apart from similar projects. Much of that comes from co-creator Jack Carr, a SEAL veteran and author of the James Reece novel series. Carr developed Dark Wolf with David DiGilio, who is the sole credited creator of The Terminal List and showrunner of both series. While Carr was very involved in The Terminal List, he's even more actively involved in Dark Wolf. As a result, Dark Wolf, even more than The Terminal List Season 1, is a vehicle for Carr's point of view, which is bitter cynicism about everything except the brotherhood of operators. 

Carr's SEALs don't really fight for ideals like freedom, honor, or glory. They know better than to believe that they're fighting to spread democracy or to liberate oppressed people from tyranny. They're too savvy and disillusioned from fighting the War on Terror for that. They fight because they're natural-born warriors. They're sheepdogs with an instinctual drive to protect their flock from wolves. But the sheep are an abstraction — unseen wives and children they rarely go home to, civilians who can never understand them. The people back home aren't truly what they fight for. Really, SEALs fight for each other, making sure that their brothers survive for the next fight. So anyone who threatens the brotherhood — ISIS, Iran, the CIA, military brass, elected officials, etc. — is an enemy. The bilious contempt Carr has for bureaucrats who treat warfighters like pawns is palpable, understandable, and unsettling. Carr gives a creative voice to a timely conception of soldiers not as one-dimensional American heroes, but as complicated individuals shaped into weapons who should be respected for how they choose to wield their capacity for violence. The Terminal List exists in the world of "We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country's so innocent?" 

Narratively, Dark Wolf lacks the revenge-fueled clarity of purpose that drove The Terminal List, and the plot feels a bit disjointed (perhaps not coincidentally, The Terminal List had eight episodes, while Dark Wolf only has seven). Dark Wolf is not based on a book, and perhaps the lack of a blueprint led to an uneven structure. Details are taken for granted that perhaps shouldn't be. Raife Hastings, a book character who first appeared in True Believer, which is being adapted for The Terminal List Season 2, gets introduced for the screen in Dark Wolf, but people who didn't read True Believer and don't know his deal might be confused about why the show is treating him like someone they should already know. The Umbrella Academy's Hopper does a good job of embodying Raife's care and concern for his friend Edwards, though. 

Kitsch's lead performance is less successful. The Friday Night Lights veteran has struggled for his entire career to break out as a leading man, and Dark Wolf gives more evidence as to why: He is an overly laconic performer. He often plays characters who repress their emotions until they explode — most of the time, he comes off as inexpressive and aloof. That kind of inscrutability makes Kitsch shine as part of an ensemble or in supporting roles — his enigmatic performance as Edwards on The Terminal List gave the season a jolt of intrigue — but it makes him emotionally inaccessible as a lead. This is in marked contrast to Pratt (who appears as Reece in a few episodes of Dark Wolf and executive-produces), for whom a large part of his on-screen appeal is that you always know what he's feeling. 

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It's hard to imagine anyone who didn't love The Terminal List tuning in for Dark Wolf, but Prime Video seems to be banking on The Terminal List being a big enough hit to justify the spin-off. That was three years ago, though, and this isn't The Terminal List. The past three years have seen even more realistic work from a SEAL veteran (Warfare) and an even more thematically complex and high-caliber action-packed espionage thriller (Lioness). Dark Wolf is too little, too late. But if you're a Terminal List fan, maybe it's better than nothing.  

Premieres: The first three episodes premiere Wednesday, Aug. 27 on Prime Video, followed by new episodes weekly through Sept. 24
Who's in it: Taylor Kitsch, Chris Pratt, Tom Hopper, Robert Wisdom, Jared Shaw, Dar Salim, Rona-Lee Shimon, Shiraz Tzarfati, Luke Hemsworth
Who's behind it: Chris Pratt, Jack Carr, David DiGilio
For fans of: The Terminal List, supporting the troops
How many episodes we watched: 7 of 7