What year does The Terminal List take place? Its prequel is locked to 2015 — and the math from there doesn't add up
Dark Wolf opens in Mosul in 2015. Amazon says that's seven years before The Terminal List, which puts season 1 in 2022. A Hollywood Reporter interview with the showrunner put the gap at five, which would make it 2020.
The Terminal List franchise on Prime Video now spans two series: The Terminal List, which premiered on July 1, 2022, with Chris Pratt as Navy SEAL James Reece, and the prequel The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, released in 2025 with Taylor Kitsch as Reece's friend Ben Edwards. Season 2 of the main show arrives on October 21, 2026. Before it does, it's worth sorting out when any of this happens.
The one fixed point
Dark Wolf is precise about its starting date. Its first episode opens in Mosul, Iraq, in 2015, during Operation Inherent Resolve, with Ben leading a SEAL platoon against ISIS. The covert plot that follows runs through Europe against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear deal negotiations of the same year.
That date was a deliberate choice. Showrunner David DiGilio told The Hollywood Reporter that the writers wanted a setting that "deliberately predates all these current conflicts" and built it with input from cultural consultants.
The prequel's later episodes push forward from there. Reece arrives at the base three months after the opening sequence, and the finale picks up months after the season's climax, so by the end of Dark Wolf the calendar has moved into roughly 2016.
Where the numbers split
The trouble starts with how far Dark Wolf sits from The Terminal List. The official sources give two different answers:
- Seven years — Amazon's own materials. USA Today's first-look coverage, which Jack Carr reposted on his website, described Ben and Reece as SEAL brothers seven years before the betrayal, and the episode description for the Dark Wolf premiere calls Ben seven years away from betraying his SEAL brothers. Collider reported that Amazon confirmed the prequel is set seven years before the opening of The Terminal List.
- Five years — The Hollywood Reporter's interview with DiGilio, published as the prequel premiered, describes Dark Wolf as taking place five years before the events of season 1.
Seven years from 2015 lands on 2022, the year The Terminal List premiered. Five lands on 2020. As far as we can find, no one involved has publicly addressed the discrepancy.
The seven-year figure comes from Amazon's own copy and matches the year the show aired, which makes it the stronger claim. The five-year figure is the outlier, but it appeared in an interview with the man running the show.
Why it matters for season 2
The gap isn't just trivia. Season 1 hinges on Ben having spent years inside the CIA, long enough to be recruited into the conspiracy that wiped out Reece's platoon and to take $20 million he never spent. Dark Wolf ends with him joining the CIA's Ground Branch. Seven years gives that turn plenty of room. Five years makes it tighter, but still possible.
Season 2 adapts Carr's second novel, True Believer, and picks up after season 1, with several Dark Wolf characters, including Raife Hastings, Mo Farooq and Jules Landry, joining Reece's story. If the show ever puts a date on screen, the arithmetic will settle itself. Until then, 2015 is the only year the franchise has committed to, and 2022 is the best-supported answer for everything after it.
Previously we wrote: Embassy release date on MGM Plus: Anna Kendrick is trapped in a Die Hard-style siege, and Sam Heughan plays her ex-fiancé
