Summary
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf delves into murky territory in Episode 5, tackling the utility of torture and the fluidity of allegiances, while a centrepiece shootout keeps things lively.
I’ve realised what The Terminal List: Dark Wolf reminds me of. It isn’t a show, funnily enough, but the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, specifically the reboot from 2019. And it isn’t because of the abundance of stern special ops men and women mowing each other down in urban centres, either, since that stuff’s ten-a-penny. It’s more of a morality thing. That game was all about “war is hell” posturing and included a bunch of risky set-pieces about the ends justifying the means, all designed to make the player think in the clunkiest way possible. Episode 5 of this show is a bit like that.
And yet the unrelenting bleakness kind of works all the same. There’s an entire subplot in “E & E” revolving around Hastings having snatched one of the couriers from the ambush in the previous episode so that he can torture information out of him, and maybe it’s just Tom Hopper delivering a really good psycho turn, but it does the job. Admittedly, it helps that the underlying message is quite simply that torture is stupid and doesn’t really work, which is what all the research we have on the subject seems to reiterate. Hastings creepily harms this dude all episode, only for him to eventually reveal he works for German intelligence, and is thus an ally, which could have quite easily been gleaned over a nice cup of tea. In this format, he drops dead, Hastings tries and fails to resuscitate him, and he feels really bad — and probably a bit silly — about it.
But this is the lesser of the three concurrent subplots happening throughout the episode. The main one involves Edwards, who somehow survived being shot in the back multiple times with barely any repercussions, reluctantly teaming up with Eliza, despite her being the one who shot him. To be fair, we’re back to very geopolitically risky climes here, since it turns out the Israelis aren’t the default baddies after all. Instead, Mossad has tasked Eliza and Tal with finding out who the Shepherd is, since Haverford has been running him — or her, I suppose — as an asset for such a long time that it’s possible the Shepherd is pulling all of the strings. This would mean that the CIA are the bad guys and the Israelis are fighting the good fight. Now’s probably not the time for this storyline, but it could all get turned on its head pretty quickly either way.
Eliza keeps saying silly things like “having my own assignment doesn’t mean I betrayed the team” to the guy she literally shot in the back moments before, but Edwards buys it eventually. I bet he wouldn’t have been so easily swayed if Eliza weren’t an attractive woman, which raises some questions about his operational steadfastness if you ask me, but whatever. The wheels of the plot need to keep turning one way or another, and it’s more fun for Edwards and Eliza to team up and fight off all the goons who randomly turn up to kill them. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf has reliably delivered strong action scenes since the very beginning, and Episode 5 is no different.
While this is going on, Tal is tracking Haverford’s burner to a safehouse in Munich, which contains the secure portal through which he does all of his communicating. Manning the portal is a giant bald guy with a big beard who looks like a pro wrestler but has the deliberately idiosyncratic hobby of painting figurines. He and Tal get into a really nasty fight, which culminates with her setting his entire head on fire after swiping a bunch of data from the servers. She vomits afterwards, for realism.
I’m not quite sure whether she has time to transmit any of this data to Eliza, but it doesn’t much matter either way. Edwards and Eliza are making their way to Stein, a town located an hour north of Zurich, with the bearings Eliza has been tasked with delivering. Rather stupidly, they’re travelling in a deeply conspicuous baby blue Mini Cooper, which is probably why another pair of motorcycling assassins are able to find them so easily. They plant a holdall full of explosives on the roof of the car, which turns Eliza to paste and leaves Edwards with his ears ringing. He’s able to regain his senses enough to gun down his attackers and grab the bearings, but he’s now totally alone and completely unsure of whom to trust, being pursued on all sides by mysterious, dangerous forces. Luckily, he has so much plot armour that he’s impossible to kill, which should be pretty helpful going forward.
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