For Ben and Eliza, Episode 5 of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf (“E & E”) was an all too brief reprieve. Their heart-to-heart was genuine, but as if to prove it was a chimera, the moment was caught between two bursts of violence, and the latter killed Eliza. What’s left after the car bomb is a briefcase full of sham bearings bound for Iran, and Ben performing field medicine on himself to remove shrapnel from his leg, neither of which will stop the bleeding of this dangerous shadow world game. Ben arrives at the team’s fishing vessel rally point in Stein, Germany unsure of who to trust, but also amped to stay in the hunt. “The hunt” – whose hunt? Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. The reprieve was just that. Violence is all Ben Edwards knows. 

While Ben was in Zurich with Eliza, Raife Hastings was torturing a guy who turned out to be a friendly, which only furthered his intention to depart the murky black ops landscape he and his fellow former SEAL landed in. When Raife arrives at the rally point, he tells Ben he’s leaving. They’ve ceded too much moral high ground, a position they could justify to themselves while in the teams, but exists without a center now. We get a quick flash to Chris Pratt in Episode 1, their friend James Reece back in Mosul, saying what they were doing was appreciated. Who can appreciate what they’re inside of now? “This isn’t about answers anymore,” Raife says. It’s not about avenging their Iraqi translator’s death, or Eliza’s, or even the larger concept of protecting Reece and the SEALs. “This is about you, Ben. The fight is no longer in front of you. It’s raging inside of you.”

From Chief to Lieutenant, Edwards pleads with Hastings to stay. When that doesn’t work, his words turn bitter. “Long live the brotherhood,” he spits, turning their longtime mantra to dust. But even as Raife departs, it feels like Ben knows his friend is right. With more bitterness, he says he’d rather come home in a pine box than just walk away. And Raife hits him with the coldest farewell. “You will.” 

Jed Haverford’s at the rally point, too, and to prove it wasn’t him that double-crossed the team, he executes Vahid Rahimi, the Iranian dealmaker we met in Episode 4. Jed says Vahid was his vaunted contact, “The Shepherd,” but the man betrayed them with false intel. Their task now is to deliver the faked bearings, their last play, to Iranian representatives at a remote airstrip in Germany. “This operation, and Iran’s nuclear gambit, will end on that tarmac. What we’re doing today is about the power and the good of working without constraints.” It sounds noble! It’s also a lie. 

Mo is no worse for wear after getting shot in the tunnel ambush, and Landry is back in Ben’s good graces – apparently his attempted sexual assault of Tal Varon was not a fireable offense. But as those guys gear up and head for the airstrip, Tal herself is elsewhere in Germany. She’s still tracking Jed’s encrypted comms with The Shepherd, and the timeline does not jibe with it being the same guy Jed just killed. Over the radio, Tal’s Mossad contacts are telling her to stand down. Fuck that. Inside of whatever’s really going on, she’s not gonna let Eliza’s death mean nothing.

The airstrip meet is full of tension, guns, and a mobile centrifugal tachometer. Ben, Mo, and Landry’s ruse will hold so long as the bearings are not proven to be false, which will be tough to do with such a device on site. So they’re floored when the machine whirs to life and gives their set of bearings a green light. The Iranian minister sends digital payment, and he and his gunmen board their private jet with a briefcase that will not end the country’s nuclear program, but perpetuate it. If Ben was already thinking Jed played them, his suspicions are proven out by a text received from Tal. “Shepherd is alive – do not trust Haverford.” She’s contacting them from Geneva, where she now has eyes on Jed meeting with Cyrus Rahimi, Vahid’s brother. Cyrus is the real Shepherd, and in line to be Iran’s next foreign minister. 

Haverford and the CIA, in secret accord with The Shepherd, have orchestrated the enablement of Iranian nukes so they can manage their future use. It all sounds geopolitically unstable as hell. But evidently that is the real power and good of working without constraints, no matter how many operators die in the process.   

Ben, Mo, and Landry look at each other in frustration. They’re just gonna let the bearings fly away? Not a chance. “Even a pawn can take down a king.” They exit their vehicle, take up firing positions, and let the guys in the plane have it.

The dying act of the diplomat on the aircraft was to call Cyrus Rahimi, so The Shepherd and Haverford know their scheme failed. (We also caught a glimpse of Raife watching the airstrip through a sniper’s scope, so his farewell has conditions.) But from the minute he appeared in Dark Wolf, Jed was already selling out the team he handpicked, so why not keep doing it? As a veteran spy, he’s probably destroyed more lives for his own ends than anyone will ever know about. Haverford sends word to the CIA, and blames “rogue operators” for the entire thing. Ben, Mo, Landry, and Hastings are now marked as traitors. Staying “in the hunt,” chasing the violence that defines him, has only put Edwards in another set of crosshairs. Fog of war, indeed.

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.