[This story contains spoilers from the season finale of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, “The Wolf You Feed.”]
In the season finale of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom) was in the hotseat about the bloody messy operation that went wrong in the penultimate episode, which left Iranian diplomats and soldiers massacred in a private plane on an air strip in Germany.
The Iranians didn’t, however, get to escape with the bearings that would help kick off their nuclear program because the show’s protagonist, Ben Edwards (played by Taylor Kitsch), and the surviving espionage members of Haverford’s team found out that their leader had double-crossed them.
With the CIA ready to relieve Haverford of his duties for the mess he created, Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper) sat in a meeting to tell the agency that Haverford was in cahoots with the Iranians and set up his own team members to take the blame and/or be killed to cover up the misdeeds of the team’s field leader.
Meanwhile, Edwards retreated to the Dark Forest in Germany with the actual nuclear bearings, and reached out to his Navy SEAL buddy, James Reece (Chris Pratt), to share his mindset of how war bureaucrats have set up real soldiers to fail in their efforts to keep the free world safe. It is clear in a letter to Reece from Edwards that he has lost faith in the individuals who send young men and women to die for their country, either as soldiers or spies.
“There was an inevitability to all of it,” Edwards say in the narration of this letting to Reece. “While I wish I had the answers, sometimes there are none. We are not ones who matter. Sometimes all you can do is play your part. I’m trying to make a difference. … War is part of the human condition, and you can only understand if you have lived it. Plain and fucking simple.”
Edwards is on a suicide mission; Kitsch tells The Hollywood Reporter of the ending to Prime Video‘s prequel series and origin story to The Terminal List. “I think that is the call when he calls Reece,” Kitsch says about Edwards thinking he won’t make it out of the fight with Iranian soldiers alive. “He thanks Reece for everything, and he is definitely going to take as many people out as he possibly can. It is a viable cause. I mean, he’s not an idiot. He is going to fucking know that there is an army coming.”
He continues, “There is a small scene where he is having a whiskey and a bag, and signing papers over to his wife, like clean cutting that divorce. I think he’s retrospectively living out a few beats in his life before he knows it may be taken in the next day or two.”
In an epic battle scene of one man against hundreds of Iranian soldiers, Edwards fights to exhaustion with the booby-traps, bombs and multiple weapons he has laid out around the property of his country house until he has to retreat into woods where he has more surprises for the enemy soldiers. Edwards gets wounded a few times, but just when viewers think it may be the end for him, his Navy SEAL brothers — led by Reece — sweep in to quickly dispose of the Iranian soldiers closing in on Edwards.
Reece and his men patch Edwards up and tell him he’s now on his own. He should go home. Edwards gives the nuclear bearings to his SEAL brothers, but now the former soldier/new black ops agent has revenge on his mind. Edwards and the surviving agents who were part of Haverford’s team spread out to Istanbul, Tehran, and Virginia to avenge their fallen comrades. Edwards says those who failed him and the disloyal agents have to be held accountable.
“It is about Haverford, but I also think overall it goes with that scene in episode one with the CIA, where he wasn’t being told about everything that was happening, and his men were in harm’s way without knowing the full story,” Kitsch explains.
Taylor Kitsch (Ben Edwards) in The Terminal List: Dark Wolf.
Prime Video
Ironically, when Haverford walks into his home in Virginia to find Edwards sitting inside waiting for him, he is somehow able to escape Edwards’ punishment of death. Kitsch says there is a good reason why Haverford lives.
“It’s in the show,” Kitsch says. “He says that Haverford is not going to be a star on the wall [at the CIA headquarters]. There is a scene where they show Haverford literally looking at the wall of the fallen ‘unnamed agents]. I mean, what’s worse? I think it’s worse keeping him alive and making sure he doesn’t get anything; letting him live in it, sit in it and dwell in it.”
He continues, “It is also a turn for Ben. Violence has always been the answer up to that point. It’s a conscious decision, and hopefully you notice a turn for the character. He is thinking through it. It’s not just fucking walking in and shooting him in the head, and then walking out of the door. That is lazy writing, and that’s what you are expecting. It was one of my favorite scenes in the series.”
Kitsch, however, says not to expect a reunion or forgiveness between Edwards and his Navy SEAL brother Hastings anytime soon. As played out in the penultimate episode, the two brothers-in-arms had a huge philosophical disagreement about art of war and what it means to be loyal to the cause.
“In season one of The Terminal List, I have this line where Ben said something like ‘he actually came through,’” Kitsch says. That’s a long grudge that Ben holds. So I think their relationship is pretty severed, especially the way we ended it on that boat. I can’t see that coming back. Maybe we’ll figure something else just to get Hopper back in, but I think that relationship, along with a lot of relationships, are been and done that. It’s always been important to Edwards to be in the fight, especially when it’s only four of them now. It’s something so personal to Ben, and also to Raife.”
With Dark Wolf serving as a bridge story for seasons one and two of The Terminal List (the latter is currently in production), Kitsch believes Edwards has nowhere to go but to spiral deeply down the rabbit hole of loneliness and darkness in the spy world if they were to do a second season.
“We have a pretty good damn outline,” Kitsch explains of what could come next in the expanding franchise. “Because Ben is so unpredictable, it’s been a fun ride just figuring out the next steps. Without giving too much away, I think you are going to see him bottom out. There’s a line on the boat [in episode six] where I say to Hopper that I’d rather be brought home in a box than to be doing what you’re doing right now.”
But the hardest part about filming the first season of Dark Wolf, Kitsch says, is that many of the characters and relationships won’t carry over. Instead, viewers will see Edwards go deeper into a world full of lies, intrigue and vengeance alone.
“One thing we’re proud of is showing the darkness in service, and I think we are going to dive even more into that,” he says. “You are going to see Ben be lonelier than he has ever been, and you are going to see him go into a world where there is no escape anymore, in more of a psychological way. You start to see him break at the end of the finale when he says ‘I belong here [in black ops].’ That’s a beautifully tragic thing because of where we are going to take him in the world we are creating for him to go into, and what that will look like.”
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf is now streaming all episodes on Prime Video.
