"The Terminal List: Dark Wolf" and "Gen V," Season 2:a two-fer review

Amazon doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, and over the past year or two, there's been a suspicion forming in my head that this is less a case of real confusion and more a case of attempting to pander to two distinctly different markets. Season 1 of "The Terminal List" performed very well and was fairly un-woke, concentrating on story/character and masculine/martial nobility without preaching either a rightie message about American global superiority or a leftist grrrl-power message about how men fuck everything up. Before Season 2 of "The Terminal List" starts up (possibly in late 2026), Amazon released "The Terminal List: Dark Wolf," a prequel "season" about Tyler Kitsch's character Ben Edwards, who ends up being the principal and final bad guy in Season 1. Edwards, a Navy SEAL, wasn't always a bad egg, but as the prequel series shows, there were signs that he was ready to be seduced by the dark side. "Dark Wolf" is an earnest exploration of who Edwards was before his fall and where he started to go wrong. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Season 2 of "Gen V" (review of Season 1 here) which, after a pretty good first season, decided to go full-on woke this time with evil or emasculated male characters, diverse "chosen one" characters, and constant messaging about Nazis, racism, and prejudice. "Dark Wolf" was a seven-episode season; "Gen V" was another eight-episode season.

"The Terminal List: Dark Wolf"

L to R: Rona-Lee Shimon (Eliza), Taylor Kitsch (Ben), Chris Pratt (James), Tom Hopper (Raife)

Chief Special War Operator Ben Edwards and his platoon commander Raife Hastings (alluded to in Season 1) are drummed out of the SEALs after Edwards shoots a terrorist who is a CIA asset. Raife Hastings (Tom Hopper) and Ben Edwards (Kitsch) are picked up by Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom), a CIA Iranian Operations coordinator with a murky history. Haverford thinks Ben and Raife, with their skills, are perfect for an op he's planning in coordination with Mossad agents Tal Varon (Shiraz Tzarfati) and Eliza Perash (Rona-Lee Shimon). Ben and Raife are initially suspicious of working with Mossad, which has its own agenda, but Ben has been promised a return to the SEALs if he completes the mission. Raife, by contrast, thinks the entire operation stinks while Ben slowly falls into a romantic relationship with Eliza. The two friends nevertheless go through with the op, which involves crippling Iran's ability to develop more nuclear weapons, only to discover that they have been pawns in a double-dealing scheme by Haverford, who is playing both sides in this conflict.

Overall, "Dark Wolf" features plenty of action, plot twists, and a deeper insight into the personalities of both Raife—a man of conscience—and Ben Edwards, whose character had always made him ripe for succumbing to temptation. Raife ends up leaving the operation in disgust, but Ben eventually manages to hand Haverford over to the authorities. Still, the seeds of betrayal have been planted in Ben's heart, and he will never be the same man again. For the most part, the show features plenty of grit and smart dialogue; I'm not an expert in warfare and tactics, so I can't say how plausible or realistic the show was; all I know it that it was plenty entertaining, and I looked forward to each new episode.

"Gen V," Season 2

L to R: Keeya King (Annabeth Moreau, Marie's sister), Jaz Sinclair (Marie Moreau), Maddie Phillips (Cate Dunlap), Derek Luh (Jordan Li), Lizzie Broadway (Emma Meyer), Asa Germann (Sam Riordan)

My experience with Season 2 of "Gen V" was a lot rockier. The season definitely had what the kids these days call its "WTF moments" (WTF = what the fuck), consistent with the main show for which this is a spinoff, "The Boys." One of the actors in "Gen V" (Chance Perdomo as Andre Anderson) died between seasons, and his death had to be written into the show. The plot focuses on the group of college friends at Godolkin University (nicknamed "God U") as they deal with a new dean nicknamed Cipher (Hamish Linklater) who, true to his nickname, is a mystery to the kids and has some kind of agenda. Main character Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) becomes the object of Cipher's project: Cipher wants to work with her exclusively to develop her powers, but Marie is too savvy to give Cipher her trust. Still, she cautiously agrees to some degree of training, which involves pressure-testing her in various stressful situations until she reaches a point where she is able to use her hemokinetic/bloodbending powers to bring people back from the dead and to heal brain injuries. Marie's friends begin to look upon her with awe, and Cipher is constantly whispering into her ear that she has the potential to become an even more powerful Supe (superhero) than Homelander, the most powerful Supe in existence. As time goes on, we begin to realize that Cipher's ultimate goal is the overthrow of Homelander, who dominates the US through a combination of fear, paranoia, Christian fundamentalism, and sheer physical intimidation. Various subplots involving how the remaining kids relate to each other provide plenty of opportunity for lowbrow humor (one college kid has a pocket wormhole in his anus that allows him to pack people inside him, then shit them out in a different location) and various shenanigans. And what the kids eventually discover is that the university's founder, Thomas Godolkin, is in fact alive and an extremely powerful telepath who can manipulate others into doing whatever he wants, and he has been puppeteering Cipher this entire time: Cipher is actually just a normal human named Doug Brightbill posing for years as a doctor and a dean, performing horrific experiments on various Supes and acting out Godolkin's agenda. All hell breaks loose when Godolkin manipulates Marie into healing his ancient, burned body, restoring him to health.

While Season 2 proved to be eye-bleedingly woke and PC in its messaging, the final few episodes of the season became much less preachy as the story's focus narrowed to something more personal. The kids realize they all need to work together to stop Godolkin, and the battle to defeat the now-healed and mobile telepath is actually pretty clever and even hilarious at times. Overall, though, I found this season to be too on-the-nose with its message, and it felt almost like a woke counterweight to the somewhat more right-leaning "Dark Wolf." The final three episodes of "Gen V," Season 2 almost made up for the politically correct sanctimony of the first half or two-thirds of the season, and some of the new characters, like Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas, who does an excellent job), bring new and interesting abilities into the mix. Polarity is the father of the deceased Andre; Andre was killed by a cranial hemorrhage after inheriting his dad's telekinetic powers and pushing himself too hard, and Polarity is on his way to suffering the same fate when Marie miraculously heals him. Polarity also develops a warm, almost father-daughter relationship with Emma Meyer (Lizzie Broadway), the girl who can shrink or grow huge, causing her to need new clothes. The season ends with the kids teaming up with Starlight/Annie January (Erin Moriarty) in a paradoxical anti-Supe resistance. This means the "Gen V" series will be crossing over into the plot of the upcoming fifth and final season of "The Boys," which is about how the Vought Corporation (this universe's version of Omni Consumer Products) has been creating Supes through a drug called Compound V and controlling its Supes by getting them hooked on social-media rankings, celebrity culture, and the drug itself, which some Supes need to retake regularly.

So "Dark Wolf" and "Gen V" represent the woke and un-woke faces of Amazon, which seems to be trying to appeal to two very different audiences. I had a few moments where I was tempted to stop watching "Gen V," but the final few episodes concentrated less on preachy messaging and more on driving the plot forward, and I admit it was an interesting plot. "Dark Wolf" had no trouble hooking me; in some ways, it was a better season than "The Terminal List," Season 1 had been—less predictable and more about character development. Actor Tom Hopper, in the role of the huge and muscular Raife Hastings, a South African who became an American who then became a Navy SEAL, is the spitting image of a Hemsworth brother (in fact, the show has a Hemsworth brother—Luke, the bargain-basement Hemsworth); Hopper is a British actor affecting a South African accent, but he ends up sounding a lot like Chris Hemsworth doing Thor's accent, deep voice and all.

Will Amazon ultimately pick a side? It has other woke and un-woke shows as well: "Jack Reacher" comes to mind as another un-woke series (even though actor Alan Ritchson is himself an obvious leftie), and then there's the woke, steaming turd that is "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." I haven't seen any other Amazon series unless you count "The Expanse," which started off as a SyFy series. Maybe this strategy of Amazon's will be sustainable for a while, but ultimately, I think the gambit will fail, and Amazon will have to pick a side.