Summary
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf whips up a head of steam in Episode 6, and despite a too-obvious twist, there’s a welcome sense of momentum heading into the finale.
It has taken a while, but The Terminal List: Dark Wolf really gets going in Episode 6, fittingly titled “Pawns & Kings”. Despite being based around the most obvious double-cross in television history, there’s a welcome intensity here nonetheless, and that nice late-season feeling of the pieces coming together. We know who’s who and what’s what now, finally, with certain key plot points like the identity of the Shepherd and the endgame of various parties revealed, and as a result, the only thing left is an abundance of blood and bullets.
There’s even some decent character work here, albeit delivered through the medium of occasionally lacklustre and clichéd dialogue, but I don’t think anyone’s watching this show for the snappy writing. Of particular note are Edwards’ ongoing heel turn, or at least the next mile marker on his way to the character introduced in The Terminal List, and Hastings being the only character with enough foresight to realize everyone’s being played.
Speaking of Hastings, he’s feeling particularly pious and guilty after torturing an allied intelligence agent to death in the previous episode, and this doom cloud hangs over him for the entire runtime. He’s smart enough to have realised that there are some serious question marks hovering over Haverford and the Shepherd, and he also recognises, tellingly, that Edwards is becoming much too keen on violence for violence’s sake, having lost sight of the rules of engagement and moral framework imparted on them by the Teams.
Having said that, though, by the time Edwards, having spent an afternoon digging shrapnel out of his leg, makes his way to Stein, Germany, with the stolen Mossad bearings, he has a question or two for Haverford. The CIA man admits to having been played by the Shepherd. Hastings arrives with the German intelligence bombshell, and the working theory becomes that the Shepherd manipulated Haverford’s team into spoiling the party that the Germans had planned for the Iranians. This is extremely out of character, since why would a historically anti-Iranian asset want to arm Iran with nuclear weapons?
Luckily, Haverford has the Shepherd tied up in the riverboat he’s hiding out on, so he can simply ask him. According to Haverford, Vahid Rahimi is the Shepherd, and he confirms, admittedly under duress, that he fed Haverford false intelligence so that his team would stop the Germans from stopping the Iranians. All hope is not lost, however, since Edwards and Hastings can simply pose as Khalid couriers and deliver the bearings to the Iranian minister, completing the deal. Cyrus will pay the price somewhere down the line, but Vahid’s in no position to argue. After he arranges the meeting, Haverford puts him out of his misery execution-style.
This is when Hastings checks out, and to be honest, I can see his point. The weakest element of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf Episode 6 is how obvious it is that a betrayal is coming. Part of the tragedy of Edwards’ arc is that he stays the course despite this, even though it’s obvious to Hastings and the audience. But even despite this, “Pawns & Kings” does such a good job of building tension around what’ll happen during the sale of the bearings that you allow yourself to consider, even for a moment, that it’s all going to go wrong in a different way.
But not quite. The Iranians bring along a centrifuge tachometer to verify the authenticity of the bearings. This puts Edwards, Mo, and Landry, who are carrying out the mission in Hastings’s stead, very much on edge, since, as we know, the Mossad bearings are fakes designed to crumple under a certain amount of revolutions per minute. They hold up, though, which reveals to the team that they’ve been hoodwinked. At the same time, we see Haverford meeting with Cyrus, who turns out to be the real Shepherd. Vahid sold the Iranians out to German intelligence, so Cyrus sold his brother out to the CIA, offering him up as a sacrificial lamb to allow Cyrus to maintain his cover.
Why would Haverford be working to arm Iran with nuclear weapons? Well, his long game is to get Cyrus promoted to Foreign Minister on the back of delivering a nuclear option, and then use his station to ensure that option is never used. In the meantime, Cyrus can work towards developing a better relationship with the West. Everybody wins.
Everybody, that is, except Edwards, Mo, and Landry, who have to be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics. Unfortunately for Haverford, and indeed for the Iranian minister, Tal spends all of “Pawns & Kings” refusing to do as she’s told. Instead of waiting for extraction, she uses the communication portal between Haverford and the Shepherd to discover that the former contacted the latter after he told Mossad he was dead. Tracing the IP address allows Tal to secure a drone photograph of Haverford and Cyrus together, which she sends to Edwards and the others.
And then all Hell breaks loose. The team rains bullets on the minister’s departing jet, killing everyone aboard. Riddled with bullets, the minister manages to place a call to Cyrus, so he and Haverford overhear the carnage. Edwards lops off the hand of the minister, which is handcuffed to the bearings briefcase, and he looks like a bit of a psycho doing it, which doesn’t bode well for Haverford when Edwards finally catches up with him. But that’s something for the finale to deal with.
When the gang makes it back to the riverboat, they find it empty except for a computer still showing an email to the CIA director pinning the blame for everything on the team. Even Hastings, who was watching over the airfield exchange through the scope of a sniper rifle, unknown to the others, is burned.
Tal arrives in time to receive the bad news. But according to Edwards, they’re still in the game. We’ll have to wait until the finale to figure out how so.
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