In The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, spy guy Jed Haverford’s Episode 2 pitch to Ben Edwards and Raife Hastings had the feel of a standalone work-for-hire contract. “Two shooters for a time-sensitive op” – do it, and maybe they’d get their old SEAL jobs back. But with Episode 3 (“What’s Past Is Prologue”), and after their successful capture/kill of Iranian arms dealer Massoud Danawi, these dudes’ new gig work is feeling pretty temp-to-perm. And familiar faces are growing their new crew.  

Mohammed Farooq, Ben and Raife’s old buddy from Iraqi Special Forces, also goes back with Jed to the 1990s. But when Tal drives Mo into the team’s mansion HQ in Vienna, her van’s like a clown car of other operators. Apparently Haverford’s veteran spy work has also been a talent search. We next meet Ish Reinhart (Michael Ealy, always a good casting choice), who both Ben and Raife seem to sense knows his shit. But guess who else is climbing out of the van. Luke Hemsworth is back in Dark Wolf as Landry, the mouthy ex-SEAL, private-side guy who Edwards called “a fucking lapdog” back in Mosul. But it’s water under the bridge. They’re all private now, and Haverford-vetted. 

And there’s a new target to fuck with. Danawi’s recovered phone has revealed another meet-up, this time with an academic based in Budapest. They don’t know exactly why, exactly what, or really even exactly who; as Haverford says, “rat lines rely on anonymity.” (We already like how Jed, with his cane and clouds of cigar smoke, is always dropping these little nuggets of spycraft.) But in an expository scene that feels airdopped into Dark Wolf from a CBS procedural, the entire team learns their role and prepares to hit Budapest. 

In Episode 2, Ben took a call from Amy, his unseen new wife, and even though he kept saying he’d be home soon, it felt like the complete opposite. Pair that with his keyed-up excitement during the operation to snuff out Danawi, and it was easy to think of Edwards as a guy with no interest in going home, no matter how much the concept of domestic stability – the kind James Reese has – enticed him. And well, Amy seems to have read it that way, too. Another phone call, “I heard you and Raife got kicked out,” more mumbling deflection from Ben, and then: “I can’t do this anymore.” Click. Did an -End Call- just conclude his latest marriage? 

Of course Haverford, the wise old spy, heard all of this, and puts it into context. “It’s a hard pill to swallow for a spouse, playing second fiddle to a world you’ll never understand.” On this black bag side of things, Jed continues, they have freedom to action. They make decisions on the fly “that kings and presidents only dream of.” But as with work in the teams, aligning this life with a marriage back home can be a very large ask. And besides, Ben already seems interested in Eliza. She’s fixing vintage BMW motorcycles in the garage when he starts hovering. Eliza keeps it professional, but she’s also established a pet name for this longhaired American. “Pirate.” 

In Budapest, the team discovers another angle to the departed Danawi – his daughter, who was waiting for her father but got Mo instead. “Stay quiet – if you make a sound I will kill you.” He questions her in Arabic, decides she really isn’t connected to her father’s evil. Especially when she characterizes Mo himself as being in Danawi’s club. (“My father was a killer, like you.”) Mo understands his directive. He’s supposed to kill this woman. But the screams in his head, the constant thrum of his nightmares, advise him against it. It’s a quiet act of mercy, but in the spy world someone is always watching. Tal, tracking everything on surveillance, knows Mo only made it look like an execution. She’ll keep his secret. The underlying message? They’re all killers, so maybe mercy is only possible in the margins. 

“Overwatch set. Target exiting vehicle.” Everybody’s in position for a face-to-face ruse where Mo will impersonate Danawi. Because of those rat lines, the academic, a geologist, does not know what the man he’s meeting looks like. But the team already has the sense all of this is about nuclear capabilities. (Eliza: “It’s Iran – it’s always nuclear.”) And after a bit of testing the waters, the professor hands over the goods. His custom-crafted, radiation-resistent bearings will afford Tehran “adequate uranium to build a bomb in less than a year.” Over comms, the team’s jaws drop. This is serious. But Mo’s making a cash transfer of millions when a set of unknown goons show up. 

Well, Michael Ealy, we’ll keep looking for you to be cool in other shows, because in Dark Wolf, Ish is the first casualty of the Ben & Raife Black Bag Experience. When Edwards finds him in a subway station – “Ish is KIA,” and Haverford chokes back tears – he pursues the goon onto a train. Or, in operator speak, “I’m on the hunt.” And damn, they’re not messing around. With Tal able to cut the train’s CCTV cameras, and with Jed’s order, Edwards draws his weapon and kills Ish’s attacker, right there in front of a bunch of Budapest commuters. 

This entire sequence, with Mo making the transfer, the team moving independently of one another, and ultimately with this brazen shooting of an enemy assailant, is nothing we haven’t seen in action series before. But as directed by Liz Friedlander, and with a sharp professionalism to the writing from Max Adams and Naomi Iizuka – and with the quiet intensity Taylor Kitsch is bringing to Ben Edwards – the entire thing is white-knuckle from start to finish. With the death of Ish and those nuclear-fueling ball bearings meant for Iran now in play, it has also substantially elevated the Dark Wolf stakes. Just like Ben, we’re in the groove now.

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.