From the beginning of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, we’re pulled into the horrors of war. While it starts with a funeral, we head back to seven years before the events to find out what led Bed Edwards to this moment.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for The Terminal List: Dark Wolf series premiere
We open The Terminal List: Dark Wolf with the lead-up to a prisoner exchange, giving us a chance to get to know a few key players in the series. One of those is Daran, a translator and member of the Iraqi Special Forces Operations (ISFO), who is helping Ben and others translate to make sure other members of the ISFO know that they’re being trained to take over from the Americans to protect their country from ISIS.
The prisoner they are exchanging is one Ben wouldn’t want to let go, Al-Jaburi, a leader of ISIS. He’s being exchanged for a bunch of Iraqi civilians, but of course, there is a bigger plan happening. As some of the civilians stop on the bridge they exchange on, a gunfight starts. It ends with Daran being shot in the leg and the reveal that one of the civilian prisoners had a bomb strapped to him.
Fortunately, all the SEALs make it out alive, but some of the civilian prisoners are killed in the gunfight and the bombing. It’s clear that ISIS would never follow through with honor in exchanges, and Ben was right to not want to go through with this.
Daran finds himself in an impossible situation in The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
Three months later, we catch up with the training that the SEALs are offering the ISFO. This leads to Chris Pratt’s Lieutenant James Reece showing up, and there are some great bonding moments between the group. While you don’t need to watch The Terminal List before Dark Wolf, it is worth it to understand some of these bonds.
Daran had his leg amputated after the firefight, but he intends to return to the special forces to help take down ISIS. However, he soon finds himself in an impossible situation. A stranger turns up to his house, and then we later see him getting into camp and calling Ben to ask Ben to look after his children. Ben knows that something has happened, and he tries to race back to base to stop whatever it is.
You see, Ben, Hastings, Reece, and others were out on a mission at the time. They were trailing ISIS to a terrorist compound, but they were then called off back to base. They weren’t going to come back until Ben got that call from Daran. Sadly, they don’t get back to base before Daran goes through with the command he was given: blow up the mess.
Why would he do that? It’s something that Ben wants to know, and he and others go out to Daran’s place to find Daran’s wife dead and the house ransacked. The children are gone, and Ben will stop at nothing to find them, knowing that the only reason Daran went through with something he was so against was for his children’s safety.
Ben, Hastings, and others storm the compound
Finding out that Al-Jaburi was involved in Daran blowing up base, Ben decides that they need to take him down. However, it turns out that Al-Jaburi is a CIA asset, and the CIA refuses to allow anything to happen to him. Not happy with that decision, the group head out at night to the compound to take down the man they hold responsible for Daran’s actions and the death of seven others.
As they make their way through the compound, they find Al-Jaburi and cuff him. However, Ben hears a familiar sound from one of the women in the room. As he walks over, he finds that it’s Daran’s daughter—and her brother is also somewhere in the compound.
Understandably angry, Ben walks over to Al-Jaburi, who keeps going on about how he’s a CIA asset and there’s nothing Ben can do. Well, Ben makes a snap decision, drawing his secondary weapon and killing Al-Jaburi.
Reece rushes into the room with others, immediately shocked at the events. They have to find a way to cover this up as this has broken all rules of engagement. Seeing some keys on the nightstand, Reece suggests that Al-Jaburi was reaching for them and Ben mistook them for a bomb trigger, so he had no choice but to shoot.
Hastings cuts off the cuffs from Al-Jaburi, and they all head back to base. They will cover for their chief, but we know from the trailer that it won’t be enough in The Terminal List: Dark Wolf.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf airs on Wednesdays on Prime Video.