Dark Wolf’ Is Basically ‘Call Of Duty’ The Show, And It’s Great
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
Credit: Prime Video
If you’re looking for a really fun, intense and exciting spy thriller, look no further than The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, the prequel spinoff to 2022’s Prime Video series The Terminal List. This is a better, more exciting series filled with tense, action-packed sequences, an abundance of suspense and some genuinely fun characters. It’s all a little over-the-top, but tightly crafted and well-paced.
The series stars Taylor Kitsch as US Navy SEAL, Ben Edwards. He’s joined by Tom Hopper as Rhodesian native and US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Raife Hastings; Luke Hemsworth as CIA contractor Jules Landry; Robert Wisdom as Jed Haverford, a CIA spymaster; Dar Salim as “Mo” Farooq, an Iraqi Special Operations Forces officer; Shiraz Tzarfati as Tal Varon and Rona-Lee Shimon as Eliza Perash, two Mossad spies; and Chris Pratt, reprising his role as Navy Seal James Reece. The story is set around seven years prior to the events of the original series. Pratt is a secondary character here, only showing up (so far) in the first two episodes.
If I had to describe Dark Wolf, in a single phrase, it would be Call Of Duty: The Show. Each of the first three episodes now available on Prime Video is an edge-of-your-seat ride through some kind of operation, ranging from military strikes to cloak-and-dagger spy ops. There’s a bit of Mission Impossible here, a bit of James Bond (Tom Hopper, in particular, gives off a very strong Bond vibe in the second episode) and a bit of Homeland.
All of which is to say, Dark Wolf is an intoxicating combination of the genre’s best elements if you’re into international spy thrillers. It’s all very earnest and bombastic, so pretty much the opposite of smart spy thrillers like Slow Horses, but when it comes to this kind of story I’m as happy with The Bourne Identity as I am with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
The story kicks off in 2015 in Iraq. ISIS has made its big power play, catching Iraqi and American forces off guard. The city of Mosul is under radical Islamist control, and Edwards and his fellow special ops troops are training up Iraqi forces in order to take back the country. Thrown into the mix are shady Middle Eastern arms dealers, equally shady CIA operatives and various plots that lead to a bombing at a US military base and a raid on an ISIS stronghold that goes sideways.
Without spoiling too much, all of this – and Edwards’ actions during the raid in particular – lead to serious repercussions. Heads must roll and Edwards and Hastings are kicked out of the SEALS and sent back to America. They’re intercepted en route in Germany by Haverford, who needs highly trained shooters to join his spy outfit. It’s a joint-operations effort that includes the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and our new recruits.
Again, without spoiling too much, the arms dealer that Edwards and Hastings were gunning for in Iraq is now in Europe. Some kind of big nuclear deal is going down, and Haverford and his team need to find out what and do whatever it takes to stop nuclear weapon technology from reaching the Iranians. This leads to a tense undercover op in a European nightclub and later a wild hunter-becomes-hunted-becomes-hunter style face-off in a crowded European urban center and subway.
Kitsch is great throughout, in some ways a more believable lead than Pratt was in Terminal List, but I have to admit that it’s Hopper’s performance that really steals the show. While Edwards is passionate and emotional, Hopper is dapper and controlled, radiating a kind of even-keeled British coolness. If Edwards is a maelstrom, Hastings is a sea of calm. It’s also fun to see Robert Wisdom as spymaster. I’m most familiar with the actor from his time as “Bunny” on The Wire. You’ll recognize Dar Salim from The Covenant and Game Of Thrones (Hopper is also a Thrones alumni).
Of course, I do understand some of the pushback against the show. It’s seen as overly jingoistic, pro-military, pro-Israel even given the inclusion of sympathetic (and attractive) Mossad agents. I find it’s important and necessary even to set aside politics as much as possible when assessing the quality of a film or television show. I thought the political brouhaha around the Benghazi diplomatic compound catastrophe in 2012 was overblown and tiresome, but the Michael Bay movie 13 Hours was a great piece of filmmaking and military suspense. Dark Wolf takes more than a few notes from that film.
The Iraq War was a mission I opposed at the time and still believe was a monumental mistake. The decades of conflict between Israel and its neighbors have led to bloodshed, loss of life and enormous pain and suffering, but it’s a complex issue that political leaders on all sides have been unable to solve. None of this will face any kind of meaningful scrutiny in a show like Dark Wolf, and that’s fine. There’s a time and place for political commentary and a time and place for fun espionage and action. This is basically Call Of Duty: The Show, so I wouldn’t place too much weight on its politics. We get some grumbling from soldiers understandably upset that the job in Iraq wasn’t done properly in the first place, but other than that there isn’t a lot of politicking here that isn’t pretty commonplace in the genre.
All told, if the remaining four episodes are as strong as the opening three, this will be a great new addition to the spy thriller catalogue. I’m certainly enjoying it more than the original series. It’s less conspiratorial and more straightforward spy-vs-spy fun. New episodes drop on Wednesdays on Prime Video. Check it out.