I’m genuinely surprised how much I’m enjoying The Terminal List: Dark Wolf. The prequel spinoff of the Chris Pratt-led Terminal List takes place seven years before the main show, and follows the story of Ben Edwards (Taylor Kitsch) who we first met in The Terminal List.
While the first episode of the show is very much a military thriller, with our heroes taking on ISIS bad guys in Mosul, Iraq, the rest of the show veers off in another direction entirely. It’s very much a spy thriller in the vein of James Bond, Mission Impossible and, quite honestly, Call Of Duty (the first episode feels like a Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare campaign but after that it’s much more Call Of Duty: Black Ops).
While Kitsch is terrific as Edwards, the show’s dark horse is Tom Hopper, who plays Navy SEAL Lieutenant, Raife Hastings, a Rhodesian expatriate. Raife is a cool cucumber, a sober-minded and cautious operator who is very much the opposite of the emotional and brooding Edwards. While Edwards is driven by passion and impulse, Hastings is fueled by reason and doubt.
Hopper is terrific here. His Rhodesian accent is excellent, for one thing. I can’t imagine that’s an easy accent to pull off. But his performance in the latest episode is what really convinced me that he’s the right man for a much bigger role: James Bond.
I won’t go into the details as I don’t want to spoil the episode. Suffice to say, it was a very difficult scene to watch and Hopper absolutely nailed it, giving us one of the most powerful moments in the show so far. This is mostly an over-the-top spy thriller with wild shootouts, great suspense and some really intense action, but this scene took it to another level entirely.
It was an earlier episode (pictured at the top of this post) that I first thought Hopper would make a great Bond. The episode takes our heroes to a European night club on a black ops mission to intercept an arms dealer. As you can see, Hopper is dressed very much like our dapper Agent 007. The episode felt very much like how I’d like a James Bond TV series to play out.
Hopper is 40, which is a pretty perfect age to start playing Bond, especially since he’s clearly in great physical shape. That’s two years older than Daniel Craig and two years younger than Pierce Brosnan. He’s a bit taller than your average Bond at 6’5″. Daniel Craig is just 5’10″ while the tallest Bond, Sean Connery, was 6’2″. Of course, I see no problem with a tall, physically fit James Bond.
Hopper is about the right age, has the acting talent and physicality needed for the role, is suitably handsome and is already in a hit Amazon show (Amazon-MGM Studios purchased the rights to the Bond franchise for $1 billion earlier this year, and just typing that out made me think of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, which I think is a sign that I’m onto something here). He’s also not super famous, which makes him something of a blank slate for the next James Bond. I see no downsides to this casting choice.
You can read my review of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf right here.
Watch the trailer for Dark Wolf below:
What do you think? Who else would you cast as the next James Bond?
