Episode 6 of Dark Wolf, which they called "Pawns & Kings," basically confirmed what we all suspected, that everyone has been getting played hard but damn, not in the way I expected it to go. The whole thing with Ben Edwards and his crew thinking they were delivering fake bearings to the Iranians only to find out they were real ones all along, that was some next level manipulation stuff right there. What really got me was how Hastings was the only one smart enough to see through all the bs from the beginning, questioning everything while Edwards was too caught up in the freedom of CIA work to think straight and can we talk about that scene where they straight up murdered everyone on that private jet, including Yousef? Like damn, that was cold blooded even for this show. The reveal that Cyrus is actually the Shepherd and has been working with Haverford this whole time, you could see that twist coming from a mile away but it still felt different when Varon finally shows them the footage, now these guys are branded as rogue agents with nowhere to run and a death warrant basically hanging over their heads. But then how Haverford painted them as the traitors when he was the one orchestrating this nuclear weapon mess from the start, all under some twisted plan to create trust between Iran and the US by giving them the ability to make nukes but hoping they would not actually use them or either put a halt to building them in the first place. That logic is so backwards but here we are heading into the finale with Edwards and crew having to prove their innocence while staying off the grid. The bearings switch was probably the most confusing shit I have seen in a while, there were fake ones, real ones, fake fake ones, which set everyone thought they had at any given time, but what matters is that the Iranians got the real deal and that means they can build nuclear weapons now, thanks to Haverford and his master plan that makes zero sense when you think about it for more than five seconds.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26576161/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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Hastings walking away from the mission was probably the smartest thing anyone did in this entire season, that dude saw the writing on the wall and tried to get Edwards to come with him before everything went to hell. The whole conversation between them on the boat was some emotional drama because you can see Hastings knows this is all wrong but Edwards is too stubborn to listen, he is so caught up in the action and the adrenaline that he cannot see how badly they are being manipulated by everyone around them. When Hastings tells him that some men go to war to fight the enemy but others seek war to fight themselves, that line hit hard because it shows how well he understands Edwards and what drives him, even if Edwards refuses to acknowledge it. The fact that Hastings still shows up to provide sniper cover during the exchange proves he might have walked away but he was not going to let his friends die, even though they made the wrong choice. Landry being included in the mission despite getting caught sexually harassing Varon was weird as hell, like Edwards just brushes that off because "patriotism erases every flaw" which is such bullshit and shows how screwed up his priorities have become at this point in the story.
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Varon refusing to follow orders and doing her own investigation was the only reason they figured out what was really going on, if she had just waited for extraction like her handler wanted then Edwards and his team would have delivered those bearings and never known they had been played. Her tracking down Haverford and getting those surveillance photos of him with Cyrus came in on time right at the edge, without that evidence they would have been completely in the dark about who the real Shepherd was and how deep the betrayal went, I would like to mention that I get how part of the audience can get trigger by some of this hacking stunts because they have no context they just happen, off the sudden pictures land in Edwards chat just in time. The whole scene where she is hacking into that laptop while her handler keeps telling her to drop it and come home shows how little trust there is between different agencies, even when they are supposed to be working together on the same mission. It makes you wonder if her handler was also compromised or just following orders from people who did not want the truth to come out, either way it shows how isolated these field operatives really are when push comes to shove. The fact that she ends up joining Edwards team at the end suggests she knows they are the only ones who can be trusted at this point, even though they are all wanted fugitives now.
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The exchange scene at the airfield was intense as hell even though you knew something was going to go wrong, watching Edwards, Landry and Farooq walk into that hangar knowing they were outnumbered ten to three was exciting. The Iranians testing the bearings with that centrifuge thing was smart, it shows they were not just going to take anyones word that the bearings were real, they had the equipment to verify it themselves, I was not expecting that since for the most part nobody verified sht before, not even Farooq when he bought the first set. When the bearings passed the test and everyone realized they were authentic, you could see the panic on Edwards face because he knew they had just helped Iran get one step closer to building nuclear weapons, the exact opposite of what they thought they were doing. Yousef making that comment about Edwards should have asked for more money to betray his country was such a gut punch because it showed how the Iranians saw this whole transaction, they thought Edwards was just a mercenary selling out his own people for cash. The fact that Edwards let that slide instead of shooting the guy right there shows how much self control he still had, even though that was about to change real quick when they got Varon's photos.
The assault on the private jet was absolutely brutal and showed how far Edwards has fallen from the principled soldier he used to be, him cutting off Yousef's hand to get the bearings while the guy was still alive was some seriously dark shit that made me uncomfortable to watch but damn I repeat that entire private jet scene like five times when he gets that Machine Gun and starts rippnig on them. The way they just mowed down everyone on that plane without giving them a chance to surrender or fight back was execution level violence, not combat and it shows how Edwards has completely embraced the darker side of his nature, true to the name of the series "Dark Wolf". Hastings watching from a distance with his sniper rifle but not interfering was probably the smartest move he could make to stay clean out of this, he was there in case his friends needed backup but he was not going to be part of the massacre they decided to carry out. The fact that Yousef managed to call Cyrus while he was dying and let him hear the whole thing was probably intentional on Edwards part, he wanted the people who betrayed them to know that their plan had failed and that there would be consequences but thats just me letting my imagination fly away. Finding Havfords letter painting them all as rogue agents when they got back to the boat was the perfect ending to the episode, it shows how thoroughly they have been set up to take the fall for everything that went wrong, he got everything plan out perfectly from the begining using them as escape goats, this is honeslty the best episode of the season. I know this is the kind of action series where you have to leave your brain at the door because if you start getting too technical you just wont enjoy it so take it for what it is, a good entertaining action series although not Oscar worthy.
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