Episode 2 of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf opens with a wide aerial pan over Forward Operating Base Poe, the Navy SEAL staging area cut from a swath of desert outside Mosul, Iraq. Don’t get used to the view. Their cowboy-style raid on an enemy compound maybe wasn’t the best idea, and once there, going all instant Judge Dredd on an ISIS heavy protected by the CIA certainly wasn’t. But getting busted out of the SEALs for leading that team and pulling that trigger still isn’t gonna make Ben Edwards apologize. He avenged a teammate’s death, rescued the man’s abducted children. They can rip the Special Warfare Insignia from his uniform, the SEAL Trident guys like him, Reese, and Hastings poured their effort and blood into. But his disillusionment with what they were supposed to be fighting for is now complete. 

As the chopper blades spin up to take him away from his life as an operator, we gain a little background on Ben. Before all this went down, James Reece believed his pal since BUD/S training was in a good place. The Chief Special Warfare Operator was applying for his next-tier E-8 certifications. He had gotten married again back in the States. “New wife, new life,” as Reece summarizes it to Hastings. But Raife categorizes those accomplishments as Ben trying to acquire the signifiers of Reece’s life, rather than working to figure out his own shit. In other words, Edwards leaving the teams was always a possibility. 

And here’s something neither Reece nor Ben expected: Raife Hastings is leaving, too. He stands with Edwards at the defrocking ceremony, part of the fallout optics demanded by the Central Intelligence Agency. the officers in charge at the scene needed to get the boot. His reasons have to do with their shared bond, but also his own family history, which tracks back to his upbringing in Rhodesia. (That’s where his father was a member of a special forces unit known as the Selous Scouts. This is a significant part of Raife’s own backstory in the Jack Carr books Dark Wolf is based on, so we’ll see how it surfaces in the series.) In the meantime, Hastings and Edwards fly away from their life in the SEALs, toward an unexpected career change.  

In Germany, on their layover, Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom) enters the Dark Wolf picture. A CIA spook from way, way back, he knows all about the raid, the execution, and Edwards and Hastings’ punishment. And he says he can turn it all around if they help him out. “I need two shooters for a time-sensitive op.” The target? Danawi, the same arms dealer they were frustrated with tracking in Mosul. At first, Raife is wary. The CIA? Again? But Ben leans forward. When he asks Jed about the rules of engagement, Haverford knows he has him. The cagey old spy grins. “Flexible.”

Haverford’s sales pitch is as much about their current situation as it is a philosophical argument. “Men like us – protectors, defenders, sentinels – you’re either in the fight or you’re thinking about it.” What would civilian life even look like for Edwards, for Hastings? In that world, Haverford says, people will look at them with a mix of fear and pity until they stop looking completely. This sentiment is echoed soon after. Ben’s on the phone with “Amy.” (We only hear her voice.) Apparently she’s his new wife, she’s barely seen him since their wedding, and his protests – “I need to do this,” as in join a CIA kill squad instead of coming home – don’t even sound like he’s convincing himself. 

“Let’s go finish this.” Sure, it’s Danawi they’re after, meaning a legit score can be settled. But if it was any target in the world, our sense is Edwards would’ve jumped at the chance. Hastings still has concerns, like targeting an Iranian national on Allied soil in a venue they do not know. Haverford clarifies. On the black ops side, things move fast. The picture changes, “even before you get a canvas.” And Raife’s OK with it after a promise from Edwards not to go all Judge Dredd again. Onward to Krems, Austria, and a tacky techno club, where they’ll intercept Danawi in the middle of a shady arms deal.

We also meet Haverford’s team, which includes Eliza Perash (Rona-Lee Shimon), a former Mossad operative, and Tal Varon (Shiraz Tzarfati), who handles comms and outfitting. At the club, everybody’s connected through the ear buds so common to shows like Dark Wolf, but Danawi is one step ahead of them, just like in Iraq. Tal gets made at the table, her cover as a server blown, but she drinks the sedative she was about to deliver just to make an escape. And as she teeters on her way to the restroom, Edwards appears with the assist. They’re already functioning as a team. We’d say it was just like the old days, but for Ben and Raife, the old days were yesterday. 

Danawi doesn’t get far. Tracked by Tal as he breaks from the club, the shooters give chase, and corner their target in a dark alley full of smokey cobblestones. Go ahead, Dark Wolf, we see you, emphasizing the noir-ish, cloak and dagger mood. The visual aesthetic of this sequence works, because despite the action and gunplay, it’s nothing like camo and tactical gear and helmet-mounted NVG rigs the SEALs came from. Shit, in his three-piece suit, Tom Hopper even looks like a bulked-up Bond type. And now he’s really on board with Edwards, because they’re back doing what they love while free of command interference. If he wasn’t fully invested before, beating down Danawi with his own gun feels like a successful audition for this new black bag life. The ex-operators look at each other, and it’s all adrenaline and release. SEALs who?   

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.