True Believer’ Series And More

One of the dark horses of 2025’s television slate has been the surprisingly excellent first season of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf. I liked it so much that included it in my Best TV Shows Of 2025 Part 1 list. The series is a prequel spinoff of 2022’s Prime Video hit show, The Terminal List starring Chris Pratt. The show was based on the novel of the same name by ex-Navy SEAL and author, Jack Carr.

Dark Wolf shifts the focus from Pratt’s character, James Reece, onto another character from that series: Ben Edwards, played by Taylor Kitsch. We learned some surprising truths about Edwards in the original series, and Dark Wolf gives us a window into how Edwards went from Navy SEAL to CIA operative, leading him down a very dark path. In the end, regardless of how much I enjoyed the show, I don’t think it took us far enough down that path. Perhaps they’re hoping to tell the rest of that story in Season 2.

One of the best and most surprising additions to Dark Wolf, however, was a character who didn’t appear at all in The Terminal List: Raife Hastings, a Rhodesian expat and Navy SEAL lieutenant played by Tom Hopper. Hastings is a major character in the books, but this is his first appearance in the TV adaptation. In many ways, Hastings is yin to Ben’s yang. Where Edwards is driven by pathos and guilt, acting impulsively, Hastings is cautious and calm, urging restraint and questioning the actions of CIA operative, Jed Haverford (Robert Wisdom).

When I spoke with Hopper, he talked about channeling Mtulivu, the character’s nickname in Swahili, which means “calm one.” Where Edwards is a raging maelstrom of guilt and passion, Hastings is the calm before the storm. It was important to Hopper to do the character justice both for his own craft and for fans of the show and books.

“I know now,” Hopper tells me, “after the show is coming out – and fortunately this show has done well – [showrunner] Dave DiGilio said to me, “Now I can tell you, just so you know, how much pressure was on us to get Raife right’. And, of course, I didn’t know that but I kind of felt it. I felt this pressure on myself to really want to deliver.”

Hopper and Kitsch worked extensively to get their dynamic onscreen just right.

“What was really important for me and Kitsch was to create this underlying tension throughout between the two of them, that they see things very differently.”

Raife and Edwards have a very different kind of relationship than either has with Reece, Hopper points out. While they’re still friends, Raife is also Ben’s superior officer. And he can tell that there’s a darkness brewing in him as the mission goes from bad to worse.

“You look close enough, and you see the strings vibrating,” Hopper says.

Hopper describes the filming of Dark Wolf as incredibly challenging. One particularly grueling scene, in which Hastings interrogates and tortures an enemy combatant who turns out to be a German intelligence officer, was made even more intense by the fact that the actor playing the character, Luke Roberts, is also Hopper’s best friend.

Nailing the very difficult Rhodesian accent was also a struggle. For one thing, regional differences in dialect are very specific. “I worked on it day and night with the scripts,” Hopper says. “And made sure I had all the pitfalls flagged down so I knew what were very specific sounds to that area, so I hit all those.” The fear was always that working on such a different accent could lead to confusion or negative feedback. “When you’re doing an accent that is so specific, you’re opening yourself up to criticism quite massively.”

The cast also worked extensively with military advisors who were available at all times. “As SEALS, they want to have your back, they’re team players, so they’re always watching out for you. It’s like a stamp of approval when those guys say ‘you got it right’” Hopper says.

In the first episode, which takes place in Iraq, “All the extra SEALs that you see there in Iraq, they are all ex-SEALS in real life, so you had this plethora of SEALs of military guys and SEALs to just talk to and ask questions about what it’s like to be a SEAL.”

One shoot was particularly intense. The final day filming the Iraq scenes, they had to film on a deadline. Chris Pratt was off to shoot something else, so everything had to be wrapped up that night. “We ended up going through until 9 in the morning,” Hopper says, “And then they started serving breakfast, and then we moved inside to carry on shooting. It must have been in the realms of 18, 19 hours.”

“There are some days on Terminal List which are kind of intense, but I kind of love it,” Hopper says. “I love the intensity of action and being up against a clock and working fast.”

Hopper, who has starred in shows like Black Sails, Game Of Thrones and Umbrella Academy, has a number of upcoming projects, including the psychological thriller, Better, where he plays identical twins. “It was an intense shoot but it’s a really fun thriller where I play two characters, two completely different twins from different lives.” Hopper and his wife, Laura, are executive producers on the film.

Hopper has also been hard at work on The Terminal List: True Believer, based on the second novel by Jack Carr, which began filming in March of this year and recently wrapped up principal photography. He can’t say much about the new season, but he’s clearly excited.

“It’s huge,” Hopper says, “and it’s taken a lot of work and a lot of people have put their heart and souls into this season of TV. It’s a big one, so I really think it’s going to do the book justice, and I don’t think it’s a mystery to know that there’s going to be some characters from Dark Wolf that will also be back playing ball in True Believer.”

You can read my review of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf here, and read why I think Hopper would make an excellent James Bond here. Watch the full interview below:

What did you think of Dark Wolf?