Beginning along with his big-screen Hollywood breakthrough within the early 2010s, Taylor Kitsch‘s profession has been quite famously overshadowed by business flops. Notably launching to worldwide recognition by way of the back-to-back box-office failures of John Carter and Battleship in 2012 (to not point out X-Males Origins: Wolverine or the disappointing second season of True Detective), Kitsch has by no means actually headlined an enterprise that was a slam dunk. He is usually garnered essential reward for his work in initiatives as various as Lone Survivor, The Regular Coronary heart, and Netflix’s current Western hit American Primeval, however there’s additionally been a way that Kitsch has extra star energy than the encircling materials has allowed him to display. It is a pleasure to announce that the star who’s at all times been fascinating and dependable, even as his filmography has seen plain ups and downs, is entrance and middle in a big-budget, extremely entertaining motion collection.
The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf is a prequel to Prime Video’s 2022 streaming smash The Terminal Listing, which starred Chris Pratt and was primarily based on the novel of the identical identify by Jack Carr. If something, Dark Wolf is even higher than the unique collection, compulsively bingeable and hanging a steadiness between grittiness and escapism. It is more likely to please followers of the flagship collection and gasoline curiosity in additional Terminal Listing installments.
What Is ‘The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf’ About?
The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf fleshes out the unique collection’ supporting character, Kitsch’s Ben Edwards, a Navy SEAL-turned Chief Particular Warfare Operator who’s a longstanding colleague and classmate of Pratt’s Lieutenant Commander James Reece. The motion kicks off in 2015, throughout the staff’s deployment in Mosul. The crew is monitoring an ISIS chief, and issues go south in a serious means when a hot-headed Edwards kills a CIA asset in chilly blood (although not with out cause that hooks a viewer’s sympathy). Edwards and Lieutenant Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper) are stripped of their standing, and each are thrust right into a extra shadowy stage of warfare as the present strikes additional into the spy style.
Dark Wolf opens as a battle collection. It is usually solemn, and at all times respectful of those that serve. It in the end dips a toe into different genres over its seven-episode run, together with the second episode’s prolonged spy set piece that our protagonist aptly dubs “straight-up James Bond sh*t.” But the symmetry of the critical parts and what borders on motion fantasy at instances is commendable, and really works.
‘The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf’ Has Higher Action Than Most Action Films
The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf is well-acted throughout the board, with performers who seem like really of their wheelhouse and filmmakers who acknowledge their strengths. The unique Terminal Listing represented Pratt’s best dramatic efficiency ever, and he is a welcome presence within the Dark Wolf‘s bookends, however on the middle of all of it, Kitsch is terrific. As has at all times been the case, even in films that did not deserve him, he is an uncommonly fascinating motion presence with many contrasting qualities. He is a nimble bodily presence, however he speaks in a growl that can fill any sound system. He seems like a film star, however he is chameleonic. It is easy to sympathize with Edwards, however that does not make him much less intimidating, and Kitsch is a superb match for this type of antihero. Hopper can be spectacular, a really imposing, towering bodily presence in distinction. The relationships between Edwards, Reece, and Hastings are additionally unpredictable, however by no means lose their authenticity.
As was the case with the unique collection, probably the most underrated facet of Dark Wolf is the feminine characters, who’re well-defined, robust, and plausible. Rona-Lee Shimon and Shiraz Tzarfati usually upstage all the opposite characters as Mossad operatives Eliza Perash and Tal Varon, respectively, and Tzarfati’s close-quarters combat to the loss of life towards a would-be assailant is the collection’ most memorable and smallest-scale motion sequence.
‘The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf’ Units Up a Bigger Universe for Prime Video
When assessing Dark Wolf purely as an leisure, as it is meant to be, there’s little or no to gripe about. It feels somewhat unclear how a lot we’re meant to sympathize with Edwards, particularly within the context of the primary season and its ending specifically, although maybe this ambiguity is by design. The ultimate stretch of Dark Wolf maybe strains a bit in establishing the bigger Terminal Listing universe, however it is also straightforward to be enthusiastic about future installments in mild of how enjoyable this enterprise has been.
It is completely attainable, maybe even probably, that The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf will not be universally hailed. The unique collection was one of the crucial divisive in reminiscence, with a 40% approval ranking from critics on the Tomatometer at odds with a 94% viewers rating, and viewership that broke a number of streaming information for the service. The reality is that that is big-budget Dad TV accomplished about as effectively as humanly attainable, nothing roughly. The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf has little interest in reinventing the wheel or actually being significantly revolutionary past its exemplary craftsmanship, and it is easy to get caught up in admiration for a present that takes this a lot pleasure in presenting the sort of old-school motion leisure that feels more and more uncommon as of late.
The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf is now streaming on Prime Video.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
The Terminal Listing: Dark Wolf is a extremely entertaining thriller collection with nice motion and powerful performances from Taylor Kitsch and Chris Pratt.
- Launch Date
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August 27, 2025
- Community
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Prime Video
- Writers
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Jack Carr, David DiGilio
- Franchise(s)
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The Terminal Listing
- The Terminal Listing is just a extremely entertaining and bingeable motion thriller collection that is more likely to enchantment to a big viewers.
- Taylor Kitsch and Chris Pratt are as good as ever right here.
- The feminine characters performed by Rona-Lee Shimon and Shiraz Tzarfati are well-written, well-acted, and plausible.
- The motion is constantly superior to a whole lot of theatrically-released films.
