Spoilers for The Terminal List: Dark Wolf’s finale are ahead! If you haven’t seen it, you can stream it with an Amazon Prime subscription.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf quite literally ended its run on the 2025 TV schedule with a bang. In the final episode of the show’s first season, Taylor Kitsch’s character detonated a bunch of bombs and set a house and a lot of people up in flames. It was epic, and looked pretty practical, so I had to ask Kitsch and Chris Pratt about it.
So, here’s the context: toward the start of the Dark Wolf finale, Ben is alone. He no longer has his team with him; they fully know Jed Haverford is a traitor, and he’s in a rural house setting up a trap for the people who are trying to stop him. As the countdown begins, Ben runs upstairs and watches a convoy approach, and almost immediately, one of the cars explodes. There are more explosions after that, making for an epic action scene. Kitsch also told me their team loved putting it together, as he said:
Well, our bomb guy was just in heaven.
As a massive team of adversaries shot up the house Ben was in, he ran downstairs to connect wires that ultimately led to the big bomb in the basement. He then used a tunnel to escape and get out of the house, before setting off barrels and barrels of explosives. It was a lot of bombs, and the entire house blew up.
According to Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch, when you film in Budapest, you can really pull off moments like that, as they joked back and forth:
- Chris Pratt: Listen, if you have to do movies with lots of bombs, do it in Budapest.
- Taylor Kitsch: Yeah, true.
- Chris Pratt: They’re like, ‘We added a little extra TNT.’
They certainly added the extra TNT, and the insanely explosive practical effects are one of many reasons why Dark Wolf is so good.
This really is a moment where Ben has to go big or go home, and they took that seriously and literally, as they blew up a home amid a massive shootout. It was epic and massive, and the Friday Night Lights star was here for it, as he said:
And, I mean, you see how far away I am. I mean, it was ridiculous, to be honest. And so, I mean, that's, you know, part of the show and what we do. But it's also like, when you see how many barrels are in that fucking basement, he's like, I remember, him being like, ‘This is gonna be big,’ you know.
He finished his thought by saying he “loved” that moment, and so did I. I thought it was a great set piece to lead the finale with, as it showed Ben as this lone wolf, fearlessly taking on a small army of men by himself.
However, it also showed off the power of the brotherhood he was in, because his former teammates showed up to help him succeed and make it out of this situation alive.
Overall, this season was packed with intense moments (like this one and that torture scene) that told the origin story of Ben Edwards, and it ultimately helped me understand how he got to the point he’s in in The Terminal List. It was intense and explosive, both literally and figuratively, and now I can’t wait to see how the major events of Dark Wolf impact Terminal List Season 2.
