“You’ve got a reckoning coming for you, Reecer.” In The Terminal List Season 2, James Reece (Chris Pratt) returns to Prime Video haunted by voices — and a deadly tumor in his head. He is also a fugitive, having killed everybody he once convinced himself deserved to die. Yet in a thriller like this, former allies can quickly become enemies, while the people pursuing Reece may ultimately need his particular set of skills.
Opening Shot: After 172 days at sea, James Reece (Pratt) has entered full Cast Away territory. Alone and unraveling, he hallucinates Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch), his former SEAL teammate, former ally and the final person named on Reece’s kill list.
The Gist: The Terminal List Season 2 uses loud cameos from Bill Maher and former SEAL turned podcaster Jocko Willink to show how Reece’s story has become headline news and hashtag-fueled controversy. As he sails alone toward Mozambique, hoping to find safety with the family of his late friend Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper), journalist Katie Buranek (Constance Wu) remains his strongest public defender. She understands that the conspiracy exposed by Reece’s violent quest for revenge was real. He may be a fugitive and a killer, but he believed he was fighting for the truth.
Meanwhile, Amin Al-Nawaz (Shadi Janho), leader of what is described as “the new Al-Qaeda,” has arranged a devastating bombing in London. The CIA discovers connections between Al-Nawaz and Mohammed “Mo” Farooq (Dar Salim), a character introduced in the recent Terminal List prequel, Dark Wolf. The Company believes Reece could help them find Mo, and that Mo could lead them to Al-Nawaz — potentially giving a world already on edge a much-needed victory.
The mystery also extends to Russian oligarch Vasili Adrenov (Costa Ronin), whose loyalties remain uncertain. As Buranek investigates from inside his circle, the season expands the world of the Jack Carr adaptation. The Terminal List Season 2 draws from True Believer, the second book in Carr’s series, and brings Hopper’s Raife Hastings into the story — a character familiar to fans of the novels. Once Reece reaches Africa and begins rebuilding his life on land, he crosses paths with Gabriel Luna’s Freddie Strain, another operator who became a CIA operative, along with more Dark Wolf figures, including Luke Hemsworth’s Jules Landry and Shiraz Tzarfati’s Mossad agent Tal Varon.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Terminal List Season 2 carries plenty of Dark Wolf DNA, but it also draws heavily from the globe-spanning espionage and military drama Lioness.
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Our Take: The question is whether those Lioness-style elements will make viewers more invested in James Reece’s blood-soaked vendetta. The series has all the expected ingredients of a modern international action thriller: firefights in distant cities, helicopters sweeping across spectacular landscapes and operators working through blue-lit command centers. But spectacle can only go so far. If the characters feel familiar, thinly drawn or — in Reece’s case — actively difficult to like, the story may struggle to make us care about the next mission.
Performance Worth Watching: Ben Edwards returns alongside Reece in Season 2, but only as a product of Reece’s imagination. Even so, Taylor Kitsch brings such force to the role that it is easy to wish Dark Wolf had not been made as a prequel.
Parting Shot: At a hunting reserve in Mozambique, Reece finally makes contact with Richard Hastings (Arnold Vosloo), Raife’s father.
Our Call: STREAM IT. By broadening its ambitions into a worldwide action thriller, The Terminal List Season 2 has a genuine opportunity to move beyond the relentlessly bleak mood that defined its first season.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide and The Village Voice.
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