Summary
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf benefits from some new arrivals in Episode 3, providing more interesting perspectives on the espionage plot. At the same time, the boots-on-the-ground action continues to be effective.
It occurs to me that The Terminal List: Dark Wolf suffers slightly from Ben Edwards and Raife Hastings being the least interesting things about it. Episode 3, “What’s Past Is Prologue”, folds some new characters into the joint CIA/Mossad task force that took down Massoud Danawi in Episode 2, and it’s immediately more interesting. Sure, it still isn’t in a hurry, but that’s fine when the operational action and character drama are both compelling.
Mo, Landry, and Ish aren’t special inclusions in and of themselves, but when bundled up with Jed, Tal, and Eliza, not to mention Edwards and Hastings, there’s an ensemble feeling that benefits the espionage plot by providing multiple relevant perspectives to events. And, predictably, those events are going nuclear – literally. A brief early scene at a summit in Vienna first floats the possibility of an Iranian nuclear connection involving two diplomat brothers, Cyrus and Vahid Rahimi, but it takes a while to loop this around to Al-Jabouri’s activities in Mosul and the events of the previous episode.
Danawi’s death, you see, has caused a problem. He was given five million dollars that he was supposed to pay Professor Molnar, a teacher at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, in exchange for something mysterious and undoubtedly dangerous. The only way to find out what it was is to have Mo pose as Danawi and attend the exchange, which is complicated by a text message from another of Danawi’s contacts requesting a meeting. Since that matter is a bit more pressing, as it can expose the fact that the real Danawi is dead, Mo has to meet with the contact first and take them off the board.
This proves to be easier said than done when the contact is revealed to be Danawi’s daughter, who, despite her biological connection to an arms-supplying mass-murdering terrorist, is otherwise innocent of any wrongdoing. But that isn’t the concern – the concern is whether she can be trusted not to blow the whistle if she’s allowed to live. The safest option from the CIA’s perspective is just to kill her and be done with it, but it’s obvious that Mo doesn’t see it this way, so he lets her live and lies about it, which is later uncovered by Tal. But it allows for one of the best scenes in the episode, where Mo discusses his backstory and his moral viewpoint, which helps to create a more ambiguous, textured underpinning to the action. This isn’t a story about good and evil, per se, but about what’s acceptable and to whom in very specific contexts; about the scars of loss and trauma and the needs of the many outweighing the few. This is better explored through characters like Mo and Tal than it is through Edwards and Hastings, who just have a bit too much of that ooh-rah American exceptionalism to not feel generic.
Anyway, Mo is able to meet with Molnar and dupe him into believing he’s Danawi thanks to Haverford’s voice in his ear, at which point Molnar reveals that the five million is for a proof of concept of a nuclear bomb that Iran is building. Given this and the positioning of Israeli intelligence agents as the good guys, The Terminal List: Dark Wolf earns at least a line in Geopolitically Contentious TV Bingo. Episode 3 widens the scope more than the previous episodes, which felt contained to Mosul and the outgrowths of that specific conflict. We’re entering bigger, riskier territory here.
Mo is forced to complete the transaction at pace since an unknown third party is closing on his position, which is where “What’s Past Is Prologue” kicks into gear. As in the first two episodes, the boots-on-the-ground operational stuff is really good and effectively tense. I genuinely feared for Mo’s life while he was being pursued, since a bit of sensitivity like the kind he exhibited earlier tends to be a death sentence in shows like this, but it’s another character who meets his end instead – Ish, who’s quietly killed at a train station before Edwards is able to get to him.
And thus we have another example of Edwards being unable to keep his emotions in check. Against advice, Edwards follows the assailant aboard the train and instructs the team to kill the CCTV cameras in the carriage so he can pull his gun and put the bad guy down, taking a photo of his corpse for later identification purposes before slipping away. Notably, he does this seconds after smiling politely at a little girl sitting in the seat opposite him. That’s TV shorthand for “dude’s a psycho”.
Pretty good at his job, though.
RELATED:
