‘The Terminal List: Dark Wolf’ Episode 5 Recap: “E & E”

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf introduced its main character, Taylor Kitsch’s Ben Edwards, as the key part of a gang of bro-down warriors known as the Navy SEALs – then booted him from that organization, downstream his disillusionment. Dark Wolf next introduced Edwards and Raife Hastings, his foxhole buddy from the SEALs, to an entirely different team, one wrapped up in the CIA’s magic show. And then it blew up that group, too, which has only escalated Ben’s disillusionment. That tends to happen when someone you trusted shoots you in the back. So where does a team guy go when “team” has been rendered nebulous as a concept? Edwards was always fighting for his teammates, working to protect his brothers. But inside Jed Haverford’s play, the latest team Edwards believed in – wanted to trust, to keep himself whole – was just another phantasm. 

“You betrayed us,” Ben accuses Eliza, once he catches up to her in Zurich, after his incapacitation. But despite his gun in her face, Eliza’s like: Us who? “There is no you, no me,” she says. “In this life, we share the same methods but serve different masters.” Eliza admits she was working for Mossad from within the Haverford group. His dealings with Iran, the bearings – that was her target. But the ambush outside the tunnel that left Mo wounded and the team scattered? She swears it wasn’t her. “You’re right that something’s off. But it’s not me. It’s Haverford and the Shepherd,” she says, referring to Jed’s unknown asset inside Iran. We thought Edwards getting double-crossed in the tunnel would be the catalyst for his “dark wolf” emergence. But now Ben and Eliza just look at each other. Two dark wolves in search of a team.

Episode 5 of Dark Wolf is very cool because it spends time with these two people as they unpack what’s left. But first it’s gotta get them to someplace secure, which involves Ben forcing himself to trust Eliza again. They’ll have to protect each other’s six, because a hit team has found them in Zurich, and they’re outnumbered. The hostel where Eliza took a room is now full of hostiles. 

Professionally, nearly silently, they shoot their way out. It’s another assurance of how well they work together, and their personal chemistry. This duo might have been a couple somewhere else, in some other timeline, and not in the decrepit movie theater in Zurich where they eventually hole up. In there, Eliza and Ben are two warriors, surrounded by mildewed signifiers of a Cold War past, when the elements of what their countries still fight over were forged. Over Ben’s shoulder looms an oversized poster for The Third Man, lit at an angle and crossed with harsh shadows.

“In another life, we’re not the ones fighting. We’re not strangers to our loved ones back home. In another life, someone knows us.” Hours ago, Eliza shot Ben to knock him down. Now, she’s speaking directly to his soul. It’s a close few scenes Rona-Lee Shimon shares with Kitsch, and they’re both great. The moments they share are full of their mutual attraction, but also the existential pressures of their work. It could be a sequence for something like The White Lotus, if it didn’t take place after they fought through a pitched battle in a hostel, and before they had to return to their professional lives. Lives where, as Eliza says, “this is the only work we know. The only place on Earth we belong.” (With these words, unbeknownst to her, Eliza also summarizes why Ben’s latest marriage failed.) The Mossad operative who shot him in the back, who is working against what he thought was their common interest, is also the only woman to ever see and understand Ben Edwards for who he truly is.

For Raife Hastings, whose concerns about what they’re fighting for were already on record, the fallout from the tunnel assault involves a remote cabin and his torture session with a prisoner from the attack. “How did the Khalid Network know we were coming,” etc. But even as Hastings rigs him to a truss, and pours lye in his wounds, the guy makes a point Raife might not be ready to accept. They were both trained as soldiers. But now? “You are a mercenary, just like me.” When the prisoner he tortured for what he thought was vital information is revealed to be an operative for German intelligence – technically an ally, a “friendly” – Hastings, like Edwards, is again left to wonder what it is he’s fighting for.

And while we don’t see Jed Haverford in this episode, or learn any more about Mo’s status, we do check in with Tal. She’s in Munich, where she tracked Jed’s encrypted comms with The Shepherd to an apartment in a housing block. She waits for the burly guy monitoring the computer traffic to leave, but Tal didn’t clock the camera left behind. He barges in like a bull, they fight, Tal holds her own, but soon he has the upper hand. Briefly. Howabout a butane torch to the face, Ethan Suplee?

In Zurich, Ben and Eliza steal a car together. They will drive the suitcase full of bearings to a rally point north of the city, meet up with Haverford. Maybe there is still a team to be salvaged. Ben turns up Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” on the radio. (This couldn’t be more on the nose, as an acoustic cover version of that song graces the Dark Wolf opening credits.) They look at each other and smile. In another life, this would be their first road trip as a couple.      

And then Eliza dies in a car bomb attack.

Two guys on a motorcycle, who knew where Ben and Eliza were, knew which car in the traffic jam to target. Eliza’s side of the vehicle bears the brunt of the blast, and when Ben exits, dazed, he manages to kill their attackers as the bike turns around for a pass. All we see is smoke, torn scraps of metal, shattered auto glass, and a gathering pool of blood. But Eliza, a pro to the end, threw the suitcase with the bearings from the vehicle. As Ben gathers it up and prepares to run alone, he removes the charm from Eliza’s wrist. It was a gift from her daughter, meant to keep her safe. In this silent Dark Wolf scene, Taylor Kitsch puts more emotion into Ben’s face – sadness, confusion, too, and the deadly certainty of this work – than Chris Pratt could muster in an entire season of The Terminal List. 

“In another life, someone knows us.”

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.