(TV SERIES) The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Season 1 - A High Octane Action Thriller Based on Characters from Best Selling Novel Series

I read about this series several months ago which was the prequel of an action thriller that I enjoyed on Prime Video 3 years ago. As usual I would only start watching when all episodes were already available. But since the final episode was released also during my long holiday trip, I just watched this after I returned and finished it few days ago. Without further ado, let's get on with the series then.

Brief Story Line

Seven years before the events of The Terminal List, Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch - American Assassin, Friday Night Lightss TV series etc) was the Chief of Navy Seals Charlie platoon who was stationed in Iraq together with Lieutenant Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper - Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, The Umbrella Academy TV series etc) and Lt. James Reece (Chris Pratt - The Garfield Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy etc). After a dangerous mission with their unit, Ben and Raife were discharged but later recruited to work for the CIA by Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom - Vacation Friends, Barry TV series etc) for a special mission. Though reluctant at first, both of them decided to join him.

What started as a seemingly simple enough mission turned out to be much more complicated. So Jed brought along other team members that consisted of tech expert from Mossad Tal Varon (Shiraz Tzarfati - Theodosia TV series etc), experienced Mossad operative Eliza Perash (Rona-Lee Shimon - Dirty Angels, Fauda TV series etc), former Iraqi special forces Mo Farooq (Dar Salim - Guy Ritchie's The Covenant etc), CIA officer Jules Landry (Luke Hemsworth - Westworld TV series etc) and former Green Beret Ish Reinhart (Michael Ealy - The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window TV series etc). Things became even more dangerous when other forces seemed to have the same target which meant Ben's team had to race against time before the other party.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

When I began watching this series, I got to admit that I was a bit bored and not too interested since it felt like a war movie. Don't get me wrong, I like to watch it every once a while when I am in the mood. Thing is I was hoping for a similar kind of genre like the original series. But after reaching episode 2 and the character Jed appeared, the story became more interesting for me especially once the first mission was executed. Subsequently, the series became way more exciting with plenty of high octane action sequence. The story was quite fast developed, though there were few times when the pace felt slowed down a bit. I like the way the story moved around to several locations which made it feel like watching those spy movies. And frankly the series did feel like several action movies put together due to its high intensity and the explosive actions. There was even a big twist too to enhance the suspense (though it was not that surprising and quite predictable). 

The series only had 7 episodes with varied duration. The longest was 67 minutes in the first episode though it was my least favorite, while the shortest was 49 minutes. My favorite episodes were the 4th and 5th. I also liked the final episode with an awesomely done battle. The season ended with something that we would have known considering it was a prequel after all. Just like its predecessor, this series was also created by David DiGillio. But this time he did it together with Jack Carr, the author of the novel, though it was not adaptation of any of his previous works. It has a pretty large ensemble cast with few other people in support or guest star roles aside from the ones I mentioned above, such as Alain Ali Washnevsky (Tehran TV series etc) as Iranian negotiator Cyrus Rahimi, LaMonica Garrett (Special Ops: Lioness TV series etc) reprising his role as Commander William Cox, Pablo Schreiber (HALO TV series etc) as Hank Dashnaw and several others.

For an action thriller series, I thought this was entertaining. The way the action was shot were pretty amazing. I believe it was due to the fact that all episodes were directed by Frederick E. O. Toye (episode 1-2), Liz Friedlander (episode 3-4) and Paul Cameron (episode 5-7) who are veteran directors whose experience spread for many years across multiple TV series. Btw for personal reason, I also liked the way the story was set in various locations that my wife and I were familiar with, cause a lot of them were cities that we just spent time during our last holiday trip. 

Overall this is an entertaining action series. Aside from the not interesting opening episode for me, the rest were really enjoyable especially if you are fan of some spy work and obviously high octane action sequence like me. The story was not complicated and somehow it was not as dark or dramatic as the original series.I think critics were quite positive with the series as well, so let's hope that it would be renewed just like The Terminal List. It also has a satisfying ending. So if you like that series and the characters, I think you would enjoy watching this one too. Obviously if you are major fan of action, then I believe you would be entertained.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars