Review: The Terminal List, season 2 on Prime Video

The review contains spoilers from the first season and a few scenes from the second.

There is something enormously satisfying about watching a Danish actor step into a big American action series and instantly look like the person everyone else should be worried about.

Dar Salim does not even need to do very much. He just has to be there. Then I start wondering which objects in the room could be used to kill someone with. After the piano-wire scene, musical instruments have also made the list. I do not know whether I was supposed to become uneasy around a piano, but it has certainly worked.

Salim plays Mohammed “Mo” Farooq, a former Iraqi special operations soldier and old ally of James Reece. So no, he is not a former Navy SEAL, but he has clearly been paying close attention whenever the Americans have been teaching. Now he is suspected of working for the terrorists Reece is sent after. And every single time he is on screen, the series gains a volatility no expensive explosion could ever buy.

I want more of him. Ideally an entire series. Less would do as well, but let us start negotiations in the proper place.

Before we get that far, we find Chris Pratt's James Reece out at sea. The opening on the boat is excellent. Beautiful, unsettling, and a surprisingly good way to rediscover a man who ended the first season by making himself deeply unpopular with the American authorities.

Taylor Kitsch also returns as Ben Edwards in Reece's memories and haunted consciousness. That genuinely made me happy. The two of them have a chemistry I would still very much like to spend far more time with. A bit like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, if their shared passion were ammunition rather than filmmaking.

Reece later seeks refuge in Mozambique, where a wildlife reserve offers something that, with a little goodwill, might resemble a fresh start. It immediately made me think of 24: Redemption, the 2008 TV film in which Jack Bauer also tries to keep to himself in Africa. Things go about as such things usually do when the protagonist is better at fending off attacks than at taking time off.

Reece does actually try. He helps out. Finds a little direction. But the headaches and the ghosts of the past have followed him, and it quickly becomes clear that a quiet life will be hard to fit in among all his other qualifications.

That is also one of the things I like best about the season. The first round had a list. The names had to be crossed off. Now the question is what remains of the man once that task is done. What do you do with a person who has built his entire life around revenge when there is nobody left on the page?

Fortunately, the CIA has a jobs program.

A new terror network and the connection to Mo pull Reece back into service. In return, he gets a chance to clear his name. First he is a wanted killer. Then it turns out someone needs precisely his skills, and suddenly the paperwork can be handled.

’Murica, baby.

The season is based on Jack Carr's True Believer and opens the story up into an international spy thriller. We move around the world, into new conspiracies and closer to the links between arms dealing, terrorism and people with access to significantly nicer offices than their morality deserves.

Tom Hopper plays Raife Hastings, the tall companion who looks like a man the security door opens for out of pure courtesy. He brings both weight and convincing loyalty to the team. Gabriel Luna joins as Freddy Strain, a former SEAL and now CIA operative. In short, there are more people here I want to follow. That is no small quality in a series where you can start to worry a little about their employment conditions.

Russia's war against Ukraine becomes part of the backdrop to the story of weapons ending up in the wrong hands. It gives the conspiracy a link to a recognizable world, even if the series of course quickly finds its way to the solution involving Chris Pratt and a gun.

At one point, an axe is planted in a Russian chest beneath a Ukrainian flag.

Pretty fresh, I thought.

Showrunner David DiGilio and the team certainly have not made that particular image difficult to read. That does not necessarily tell us everything about their private political convictions. But the scene's sympathies hardly need a long panel discussion.

The story is unlikely to win prizes for originality. Nor will I ever care as much about the consequences of the grand conspiracy as I did about Reece's personal revenge in the first season. The world has become bigger, while the emotional pressure on me has, strangely enough, become smaller.

But demanding refined political complexity here also feels a bit like ordering a toasted hot dog at the sausage stand and then asking for elderflower foam and chanterelles.

I came for a very specific reason. It delivers.

God, I still buy Chris Pratt in the role. After sixteen episodes, I still have not had enough of the grim-faced man. He makes both exhaustion and force of action feel credible. Even when the body should have filed a formal complaint several continents ago.

And Salim gives him something to play against. Mo carries that same dangerous mix of loss, conviction and military skill. It makes the meetings between them more interesting than a standard competition over who gets to their gun first. I may be uncertain where the conspiracy is heading. I am never indifferent to what Mo will do next.

The series has become darker and nastier. At the same time, it is so generous with great scenes, hard-hitting action and new faces that my objections rarely get a chance to shrug off their coat. Two seconds later we are on a new continent. Someone has found a bigger rifle. I am back in.

So what?

God, I was entertained all the way to my toes. The Terminal List hits that old Jack Bauer joy with handsome images, brutal action sequences and actors I want to keep following, even when the story takes a shortcut. I am ready for a third season. And if anyone at Prime is sitting on the budget: Please, give us more Dar Salim.

Watch season 2 on Prime Video · Watch the official trailer