In “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf,” the prequel series to Prime Video’s “The Terminal List” premiering Wednesday, Taylor Kitsch reprises his role as Navy SEAL Ben Edwards — yes, the same Ben Edwards previously revealed to have committed an unthinkable sin against “the teams.”
The new action-espionage series’ arcing story traces Ben’s seemingly impossible journey from true believer to someone capable of betraying the original show’s James Reece (Chris Pratt) and company.
But for those thinking, “Haven’t we seen Taylor Kitsch in uniform a few times before?” — you’re not crazy. Even he isn’t sure how many times he has played military or military-adjacent roles.
“Oh God, man. Well, we can count ’em, I guess,” he says, when asked how many are in his CV. “Obviously, ‘Lone [Survivor],’ ‘Savages,’ ‘Terminal List’ … I played a pretty tweaked fictional guy in ‘American Assassin.’ Does a cop count as military? ‘True Detective,’ Season 2. So roughly five.”
He missed a few: Lt. Alex Hopper in “Battleship”; the titular Confederate soldier in “John Carter”; and the criminal (ex-military) Ray Jackson in “21 Bridges.” Whew. The question is, how did Kitsch become a go-to guy for such roles? Why do we instantly buy him in that context?
Taylor Kitsch as Ben Edwards, left, and Chris Pratt as James Reece in the prequel series “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf,” which explores Edwards’ backstory.
(Justin Lubin / Prime)
“He absolutely embodies it, sells it — which is a huge part of why we have this prequel season,” says Jared Shaw, a former SEAL who plays Boozer in both series and serves as a technical advisor.
“Taylor comes to the table every single day wanting to get it right,” he adds. “It’s so apparent to us that he wants to honor the community that I come from, the Navy SEAL community. I have so much respect for that, that he’s willing to put in the time and effort and ask the questions and give his thoughts.”
Ray Mendoza, another former SEAL who has previously worked with Kitsch, and whose experiences are the basis of the recent film “Warfare,” says along with Kitsch’s acting ability and the high-level physicality he maintains, “There’s his passion. He wants to understand it instead of just mimicking me. There’s only a handful of actors [with] all those components. That’s what separates him from the average action star.”
That seriousness of craft isn’t lost on those in that community, who are painfully aware when it’s absent.
“I’m trying to invite them into my world, to share what I’ve learned,” Mendoza says. “Unfortunately, a lot of what I’ve learned is written in blood, in the blood of people before me. So it’s frustrating when someone’s not willing to put in the effort. When they gloss over that stuff, you can feel like you’re invisible or they don’t care. With Taylor, that’s not the case. I love [working] with him.”
Forming a brotherhood
Kitsch’s introduction to the rigorous training required to even play-act as a Navy SEAL came on “Lone Survivor,” the 2013 film that dramatized a mission in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of several SEALs, including his character, Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Michael Murphy. He says writer-director Peter Berg “did a brilliant thing and brought all 19 families” of the fallen SEALs to set. “Man, I was so nervous, because it hits you and you’re not ready for that.”
He says Murphy’s father, Dan, is “a veteran, Purple Heart recipient, and you’re just looking for acceptance. You could say, ‘I promise to do him justice,’ but when you’re staring across at a father who’s lost his son, who left the mark that Mike did, you’re just trying to tell him you’re going to give it everything you’ve got.
“And to Dan’s credit, he’s been amazing. He’s like, ‘I’m so pumped you’re the guy playing my son.’ He lifted me up. He gave me Mike’s fire patch, gave me some beautiful stories of their relationship.”
Taylor Kitsch’s introduction to playing a Navy SEAL came with his role in 2013’s “Lone Survivor,” where he played Lt. Michael Murphy, a Medal of Honor recipient.
(Guerin Blask / For The Times)
That fire patch was from New York Fire Department Engine 53, Ladder 43, which Murphy wore as a remembrance of 9/11.
The actor gained a deeper understanding of the SEAL brotherhood through Mendoza and Marcus Luttrell, who wrote the book on which the film was based. Kitsch refers to them as “brothers now,” having gained their trust and respect, and the warmth is returned.
“When I first met Taylor, he was new to this community,” says Mendoza, who consulted on “Lone Survivor” with Luttrell. “What I see in him now is, he’s taken on the ethos, the brotherhood, the loyalty. He’s taken on this sense of responsibility, when you’re a leader on this [‘Dark Wolf’] set — making sure, just as we would look out for a brother or sister, ‘Hey, are you OK? How’s the crew doing?’ It’s your team, your teammate and then yourself.”
Mendoza says that, for many actors he has trained, “It was just for the movie. They don’t really follow up with the family [of real-life veterans they played]. They don’t do the events on Memorial Day.”
But it’s different with Kitsch, who took an active interest in the veteran community. “He cares,” Mendoza says. “It’s not a thing he just did for [‘Lone Survivor’]. It’s a lifelong commitment for him and we embraced him as a brother because he does it on his own.”
The wolf in his eyes
“Terminal List” and “Dark Wolf” showrunner David DiGilio says when the creators are casting characters like Kitsch’s Ben, they start with the actor’s eyes. “Do you feel a certain level of danger, a willingness to sacrifice, unpredictability and intelligence?” he says. “All of these things add up to the complex emotional and physical strength that is embodied in real-life special operators.”
Recalling his first meeting with Kitsch, held over Zoom, DiGilio knew they had their Ben almost immediately: “I think within two minutes, [executive producer] Antoine Fuqua texted me on the side: ‘That’s Ben.’ I said, ‘Yep.’ And it all began in those eyes.”
“But even more than that, we try to capture the mindset of a modern-day warrior,” says Jack Carr, the former Navy SEAL who wrote the “Terminal List” books. “We’re not writing anything that’s rah-rah, pro-military at all.” He says he didn’t develop Ben Edwards deeply in the first novel, believing it would be the character’s only appearance. However, he says Kitsch was able to bring humanity and depth to the character.
“He accepted the role if he could do that,” Carr says. “Taylor really wanted to make this character his own … some of the physical manifestations are his tattoos or the sunglasses he wears. Without him, we certainly wouldn’t be having a spinoff like we are.”
“Dark Wolf” showrunner David DiGilio says he knew Taylor Kitsch was their Ben: “I think within two minutes, [executive producer] Antoine Fuqua texted me on the side: ‘That’s Ben.’ I said, ‘Yep.’ And it all began in those eyes.”
(Guerin Blask / For The Times)
Kitsch says one of his conditions for taking the part was being allowed a “long leash.” “It’s so f— tough to root for a SEAL who does what he does [in ‘The Terminal List’],” he says. “So that’s a huge reason I signed on, just the challenge to [anchor] that emotionally.”
He says he had surprising conversations with Luttrell and other SEALs exploring Ben’s rationale for fatally betraying Reece’s unit; that, in the eyes of some, Ben might have been not completely wrong for “letting them die with their boots on” rather than them suffering through incurable brain tumors.
“It’s right there in the title, ‘Dark Wolf,’” DiGilio says. “We realized that Ben really embodies the parable” about each person having two wolves inside them — a light wolf and a dark wolf.
“And the wolf who wins is the one you feed. So in order for that parable to resonate, you need to see him when he was a light wolf,” he says, which is why the new series opens with Ben still a true believer, a core member of his SEAL team in Afghanistan. “You don’t want to progress him too fast because then it’s too easy. If you get someone to a place where they believe they can use their dark wolf for good, you can justify a lot, right? That’s a slippery slope.”
Whereas “Terminal List” had the almost Rambo-like resonance of a highly trained killer unleashed on domestic soil, “Dark Wolf” is more like a harder James Bond series, with former SEALs immersed in messy espionage in exotic locales.
“Obviously, Reece is the all-American; he could have potentially been the next president before the s— hit the fan,” says Kitsch of the differences between Pratt’s “Terminal List” lead and his in “Dark Wolf.” “He’s very celebrated, does the right thing, has the family.”
Taylor Kitsch describes Ben Edwards as a wild card.
(Attila Szvacsek / Prime)
Kitsch says his character is the opposite — he’s a wild card and more lawless. He describes a scene in “Dark Wolf” on a subway where Ben encounters an operative who has just killed one of Ben’s teammates.
“It was written [that] they were going to have a knife fight on the subway. But there’s no leash on Ben; he really doesn’t give a f—. ‘Why am I going to get in a knife fight with this guy when I’ve got a pistol on me?’” he says.
Instead, he simply shoots the man dead in front of a train car full of witnesses, photographs him with his phone and calmly leaves.
Kitsch also mentions the astronomically high divorce rate among SEALs. “Ben’s been on the family side of it where he’s just, ‘I gotta keep doing this,’ and she’s not willing to stay around, understandably, so he keeps pushing forward,” he says.
He adds, “If I’m uncuffed and you let me go do what you’ve trained me to do. … Let’s see what I’m capable of. I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost my wife, my family, my brothers [in the Navy], so I may as well just keep pushing.”
Lessons learned in training
Kitsch says one of the most important things the SEALs taught him came in the early days of training for “Lone Survivor.” Because he was portraying the unit’s leader, Murphy, he was tasked with leading the actors in a drill in which they would be ambushed in the woods by the SEALs training them. If that weren’t scary enough, all were using “simunitions” — nonlethal training ammunition. But nonlethal doesn’t mean nonpainful.
Expecting perhaps a 12-minute gunfight, it instead lasted only two as the actors’ discipline fell apart, and the SEALs cut them to shreds. Kitsch says he laughed, happy to blame one of his co-stars for not following his orders, and Luttrell — whom he did not yet know well and who was regarded as Murphy’s best friend — wasn’t having it.
“He ripped me so hard, man,” says Kitsch, adding an expletive as he recounts what Luttrell told him. “‘Is it funny that everyone’s dead? You’re the leader here, you wanted him to push right, and he slowed down. This ain’t no joke.’
Taylor Kitsch, left, as Michael Murphy and Mark Wahlberg as Marcus Luttrell in 2013’s “Lone Survivor.” Luttrell, whose book is the basis of the film, was on set with Kitsch, who advised him to take a simulated gunfight seriously: “He ripped me so hard, man.”
(Gregory R. Peters / Universal Studios)
“And when you have the lone survivor giving it to you like that, you’re like, ‘OK, the stakes. Don’t forget the stakes.’ It was a really good moment that I’ve taken with me.”
In “Dark Wolf,” there’s an unexpected shootout in which Ben’s team must retreat from an ambush under heavy fire. Kitsch remembered Luttrell’s lesson.
“I took [the actors] aside and was like, ‘Understand the stakes here. You cannot overact in this. Don’t forget. Don’t hold back. If you don’t tell me there’s someone on my left that’s about to put one in me, I’m going to die, so act accordingly,’” he recounts.
“I think that helped everyone. Just a reminder that I got in a harsh manner that I’ll give these guys because I’ve been through it so many times. We’re all so conscious of not overacting and being rooted, which is a great thing, but when the stakes are at an 11, be at an 11.”
Giving back, on and offscreen
The actor’s philanthropic efforts on behalf of veterans aren’t lost on the SEALs who work with him. “He’s not just doing it on the screen; he’s living it in his personal life and he truly puts his money where his mouth is,” Shaw says. “He’s building a whole charitable foundation.”
Kitsch’s dream project is Howler’s Ridge, a nature retreat focused on trauma healing, not just for veterans but also for victims of domestic violence — and for the sober community. He has been open about taking time off from acting to help his sister Shelby Kitsch-Best through drug addiction. “She relapsed over seven times, died twice, Narcan twice, and she’s nine-plus years sober now,” Kitsch says.
One of the people who helped them most was Luttrell, who has a ranch in Georgia, and immediately offered her a place to stay: “He’s like, ‘Bring her to the ranch. There’s no heroin, no fentanyl here.’”
That positive experience influenced Kitsch to convert 22 acres of land he owns in Bozeman, Mont., for Howler’s Ridge. Conscious of the dangers certain settings can pose for traumatized people, he hopes to “create an environment that’s very safe for them and very predictable. It’s at least the start of what I think can help reset their brain.”
The retreat isn’t officially open yet, but Kitsch says his sister plans to host a weeklong yoga seminar and other activities for sober women. “Obviously, just because you’re sober doesn’t mean you’re not in the fight anymore,” he says. “She’s a certified drug counselor now. It’s insane.
“I’m probably prouder of this than anything I’ve ever been a part of.”