Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jen Maravegias | TV | August 28, 2025
Watching all of The Terminal List, and the first three episodes of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf that Prime dropped earlier this week makes it feel like we’re stuck in one of Dante’s levels of Purgatory, where it is perpetually 2007, and the only way to extract ourselves from Iraq is to keep watching The Terminal List. But when you get to the end of Season One, they take you back to the beginning and make you watch the prequel, Dark Wolf. And the end of Dark Wolf will leave you at the beginning of Season One again.
Why are we watching this show? Is it for the glorified notion that American soldiers are heroes in every situation? That they are protectors of women and children, arbiters of what is good and right? That they can be trusted to make split-second decisions when lives are on the line?
In Dark Wolf, they are a brotherhood fighting for (someone else’s) freedom and also to make sure all of their brothers get back home. They recite jingoistic catchphrases like characters in video game cut scenes. Saying things like:
“Our orders come from the top. We don’t always love ‘em, but we always execute.”
And, “Sometimes you have to kill in order to protect.”
And, “We’re training them to stand up so we can stand down.”
They are made of muscles and shaggy haircuts that make them all sort of look vaguely alike. They give each other bro-hugs and unironically say “Keep crushing!” They are Taylor Kitsch, Chris Pratt, and Tom Hopper (The Umbrella Academy) trying to disguise themselves as Middle Eastern men by wrapping their heads in keffiyehs without bothering to disguise their bright, blue eyes. Or the white skin around them.
They want to avenge the death of their friend and interpreter, Daran (Fady Demian), who was the unwilling accomplice of an ISIS plot to destroy their base of operations. They want to kill the warlord responsible. He’s a CIA asset, so they’re told to stand down. But Taylor Kitsch shoots him in the head anyway. And Tom Hopper takes some of the blame. They are both removed from their positions as “operators,” and they’re bitter. Which makes them ripe for the picking by a CIA operative working in Germany who recruits them to help take down that warlord’s boss. At which point this show became NCIS because it’s a joint operation between Naval Intelligence and Mossad, and the woman they cast as the Mossad agent (Shiraz Tzarfati) bears more than a passing resemblance to Cote de Pablo.
Or, are we watching it because both seasons of The Terminal List showcase how our government turns our enemies into assets, our allies into victims, and our soldiers into mercenaries? Because, although I stopped paying full attention to what was happening in Season One (shot too dark, story too boring), that’s basically what’s up, right? Dark Wolf is even more of that, but the lighting is better. And it has bearded Tom Hopper doing a passable Afrikaans accent.
The cast also includes Luke Hemsworth (the one built like a fireplug), Rona-Lee Shimon (Fauda), Dar Salim, and Robert Wisdom (The Wire). Future episodes will feature Riley Keough, Jai Courtney, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Constance Wu, who I assume is reprising her role from the first season, even though we’ve gone back in time for Dark Wolf.
Whatever the reason for watching it is, we’re all wrong. We should just not be watching it. In a world of seemingly endless movies and series about spycraft, soldiers at war, or returning from war, government agents, and espionage, Dark Wolf does nothing to stand out from the pack (see what I did there?) And, if it follows in the paw prints of its predecessor, it’s on the bottom rung of the genre. It plays like “content,” instead of as a creative project. And we already have plenty of that, too.
The first three episodes of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf are on Prime, with new episodes streaming every Wednesday.
