Critics shrugged, 100 million people watched anyway: Chris Pratt's Prime Video thriller is back October 21 — all 8 episodes at once
In July 2022, a show came out in which Chris Pratt played a Navy SEAL who returns from a botched mission, discovers a conspiracy, and proceeds to work through a list of people responsible in a manner I'll describe as "thorough."
Critics were not into it. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus called it no meat and all potatoes, which is a great line, and the critics' score parked around 40 percent.
Then the audience score hit 94 percent, Nielsen counted 1.6 billion minutes watched in its first week, and everybody involved got very smug, very fast.
Four years later, it's back
The Terminal List Season 2 arrives on Prime Video on October 21. All eight episodes at once, in more than 240 countries, per Amazon's own announcement. The company also says the franchise has pulled in more than 100 million viewers so far, a number that comes from Amazon and has not been checked by anyone who doesn't work there. Still. It's a big number, and the prequel series they slipped in last year didn't hurt.
What's actually changed:
- The book. Season 1 was Jack Carr's first novel. Season 2 adapts the second, True Believer, which trades revenge for espionage.
- The map. Reece goes from a very personal, very domestic hit list to a globe-trotting mess that runs through the Indian Ocean, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, with a conspiracy that ties Moscow to Langley and, because this is a thriller, to his own family history.
- The deal. The trailer sets it up plainly: a full pardon in exchange for one more job with the SEALs and the CIA. Nobody in the history of television has ever accepted that offer and had a nice time.
Season 1 was a man with a list. Season 2 is a man with a passport, a pardon and a much bigger list. Evolution.
Who's in it
Pratt, obviously, still executive producing through his own shingle with Antoine Fuqua and showrunner David DiGilio. Around him:
- Constance Wu is back as the journalist Katie Buranek.
- Tom Hopper, Dar Salim and Luke Hemsworth carry over from the prequel.
- New faces: Gabriel Luna, Costa Ronin, Olga Kurylenko, Yul Vazquez and Arnold Vosloo, which is a genuinely great lineup of people who are good at looking like they know where the bodies are.
Taylor Kitsch's Ben Edwards, for reasons Season 1 viewers already understand, is not on the call sheet.
About that critics-versus-audience thing
The gap became the show's whole marketing identity, and the people behind it leaned all the way in. Carr, the author and an executive producer, went on television in 2022 and said the reviews didn't bother him because "We made it for those in the arena." Pratt posted a Dr. Evil meme with the viewing numbers. Subtlety was never on the table.
Here is my honest take, as a person who watched Season 1 in two sittings while telling herself she was doing research: the critics weren't wrong that it's grim and humorless, and the audience wasn't wrong that it's extremely watchable. Both things are true. A show can be, as one reviewer memorably put it, a charred hockey puck, and still be the hockey puck you want to eat at 1 a.m.
The reviews called it a revenge fantasy. The audience called it a Wednesday night. Both accurate. Neither one was going to stop 100 million people.
The binge plan
Season 1 (eight episodes) and the prequel Dark Wolf are both on Prime Video now. You have seven weeks. That's plenty of time to remember who everyone is, work out who's still alive, and get to October 21 with a clear conscience and a full list.
