The Terminal List: Dark Wolf opens in 2022, during the funeral ceremony of the team that was all but wiped out during a mission led by Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander James Reece to get Dr. Kahani in Syria. Then the show turns back the clock to 2015 and takes us to Mosul, Iraq, to focus on Chief Special Warfare Operator Ben Edwards (who is canonically dead), who is partaking in a prisoner exchange operation along with Lieutenant Raife Hastings, Ernest “Boozer” Vickers, Iraqi Special Operations Forces officer Mohammed Farooq, and several other soldiers. The deal is to give Hamid Al-Jabouri back to ISIS and liberate some ISF family members. But as soon as the ISIS soldiers get their hands on Hamid, they start firing, thereby jeopardizing the lives of the civilians and the American and Iraqi soldiers. Daran Amiri takes several hits to his leg, which renders him unable to move. But due to Edwards’ quick thinking, he gets to make it out of there alive and reunite with his family. How does Amiri repay that favor, and what does Edwards do in response to his actions over the course of the first two episodes of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Episode 1
After that “explosive” opening, the first episode of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf does a time jump three months into the future and takes us to an allied training facility 6.2 miles away from Mosul, where Edwards is training the Iraqi Special Forces while AC/DC songs blare in the background (feels like we’re back in the 2010s). They are joined by Reece, who comes bearing some gifts. But before giving him a proper welcome, Edwards meets Amiri, who is at the site with his wife, Marwa, and two children, Afran and Zaynab. Edwards says that he has contacted someone who’ll set Amiri up with a prosthetic leg. In response to that, Amiri says that he has re-enlisted. Edwards tries to discourage him from doing so and advises him to focus on his family, but Amiri is unwilling to stop until Al-Jabouri is back in the hands of the ISF. Knowing full well that he can’t change his mind, Edwards gives up and welcomes his decision. Later that night, Edwards is seen having a boys’ night out with Reece, Hastings, and Boozer (they say “brother” so many times that it started giving me the ick), during which he informs Reece about the need to capture or kill Hamid once he returns from Syria to Mosul. The following day, Dr. Khalaf pays Amiri a visit to give him his prosthetic leg. Khalaf hasn’t come alone, though; Massoud Danawi is with him. Before we can learn what Danawi does to Amiri and his family, we get to watch an explainer on ISIS by Aaron Fuller, Commander Bill Cox, and Jules Landry. After that, the SEALs and ISF go on a reconnaissance mission to see where exactly Danawi is operating from, following which they’ll find out how Danawi is supplying ISIS with weapons and whatnot. That said, right after entering Mosul and tracking down Danawi, Edwards gets a call from Amiri, who tells him to look after Zaynab and Afran for him. Anticipating a suicide bombing situation at the base, Edwards tells his crew to return to base ASAP. However, by the time he gets there, the damage has been done, as Amiri has detonated the bomb that was in his prosthetic leg.
Later on, the ISF and SEALs go to Amiri’s house and find out that Marwa is dead and the kids are gone. Cox addresses the team with his usual spiel about how they need to up their security, train enough ISF soldiers, and wipe ISIS off the face of the planet. But it’s Farooq who informs Edwards and his team about the bomb in the prosthetic leg and the fact that both Hamid and Danawi were present in Mosul at the time of the bombing. Based on that, Edwards tells his team to prepare for a mission to capture or kill Hamid. They are stopped in their tracks by Cox, though, which causes Edwards to become livid because he isn’t okay with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) protecting their asset, Hamid, instead of allowing the SEALs to take him out for forcing Amiri to take American and Iraqi lives. While Cox, Fuller, and Landry refuse to change their stance about safeguarding Hamid because he is integral to exposing Danawi’s supply chain, Hastings proposes a workaround. He says that they’ll be going into Mosul sooner or later. During that operation, they have to expose Hamid as a CIA asset. Once that’s done, ISIS will kill him for them. That way, Edwards and the SEALs won’t be held accountable for taking revenge for Amiri and all the fallen soldiers. However, since Landry, Fuller, and Cox are monitoring the op very closely, they figure out what Edwards and his platoon are up to. To make matters worse, after spotting Zaynab in Hamid’s house, Edwards loses his composure and, instead of “painting him as a traitor to ISIS,” he straight-up kills Hamid. While that complicates things for all parties concerned, at the end of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, Zaynab is saved.
Episode 2
In the second episode of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, we see Reece, Boozer, Farooq, and Hastings trying their best to cover up for Edwards’ hasty decision to kill Hamid. But Cox is forced to dishonorably discharge both Edwards and Hastings so as to set an example for anyone else at base who is thinking about settling personal scores instead of following strict orders. Edwards and Hastings say their goodbyes and head home. But while waiting for their connecting flight in Frankfurt, they witness a series of delays and cancellations, prompting Edwards to find ways to bide the time. Since Hastings isn’t interested in any of Edwards’ proposals, the latter goes to get some drinks from the airport bar, where he is confronted by a mysterious man named Jed Haverford, a CIA spymaster who seemingly knows about Hamid’s assassination and the subsequent cover-up. That’s because Haverford is the one responsible for the cover-up. Now, he has an operation for these two, which involves capturing Danawi. Doing so will allow the duo to avenge Amiri and also get reinstated so that they can be discharged honorably; or they can reject the offer, try their hand at civilian life, and eventually die by suicide. Edwards doesn’t waste a lot of time and says “yes” to Haverford almost instantly. Hastings requires a bit more persuasion, which is something that Haverford has mastered over the years. Of course, Haverford’s magic works on Hastings, and he postpones his plan to retire early so that he can get even with Danawi. A few moments later, Edwards and Hastings find themselves in Vienna, working with Tal Varon and Eliza Perash from the Mossad (the showrunners deserve an award for their impeccable timing and sense of relevancy). Haverford is there too, and he gives Edwards and Hastings a rundown of the meeting at a club in Krems, Austria, that they are supposed to infiltrate, which will be between Artem Golubev and Danawi.
After the transaction between Artem and Danawi goes down, Eliza tries to knock out Danawi by giving him a drink that has been spiked. Danawi senses something is off and forces Eliza to have the drink, and she obliges because she doesn’t want to blow her cover. She manages to stay conscious until she is out of Danawi’s field of view, and then she collapses into Edwards’ arms. He takes her to the washroom and flushes out the toxins with the help of saline fluid. In the meantime, Tal damages Danawi’s car so that he is unable to leave. Danawi begins to panic, and that leads to a shootout outside the club. As he starts feeling cornered, he runs into the alleys, hoping to lose his tail. Eliza and Tal collect whatever she can from Danawi’s car and also clean up the crime scene so that there’s no evidence of a shootout, while Edwards and Hastings go after Danawi. After a lot of running around, at the end of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 2, the duo trap him, and Hastings proceeds to bludgeon Danawi’s head with the butt of his gun. Is Danawi dead or not? Well, we got a shot of him lying on the ground, and I didn’t see him breathing. Haverford says that they have his phone, so Hastings and Edwards can return to base. Is that confirmation that Danawi is dead? Yes, I think so. Also, if you have to go all poetic on this show, you can hear the bells toll, which usually indicates death. So, yeah, I think it’s okay to assume that Danawi is in fact dead. Unrelated to the plot, I want to mention that a part of the show’s musical score has probably been ripped off from Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL’s score for the opening of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
