The Terminal List – Season 1 Episode 4 Recap & Review

Hunting Horn

Episode 4 of The Terminal List starts with a look at Marcus Boykin, the other name of James Reece’s list. He updates his profile and heads out onto the open road. As he does, we cut to James Reece, who waits for him to leave, overlooking all of this through his sniper lens.

With a high vantage point, he shoots the guy in cold blood. The car tips over, Marcus is left a bloody mess upside down.

James Reece heads down and takes the guy’s phone, using the facial recognition software to hack in and take everything Marcus may be hiding. And with that, he crosses Marcus’ name off the list and prepares to go for the head of the snake – Steve Horn.

However, police forces begin to close in on James Reece and, in particular, the footage of him and the “unknown female” during the shootout in the streets. This is, of course, Katie.

As the officers begin to run tests to try and find who she is, our reporter continues to lay low. Secretary Hartley is also being kept in the loop too, and decides to televise the upcoming hearing on the matter, deciding to open it up for the senators to have on record that they prefer special interests to special operators.

Meanwhile, Steve Horn holds a big board meeting with the members of his group but they’re losing faith in him. After what happened with Saul, he’s in the market for a new VP and that means faith in his merger and big business ventures are starting to waver.

Katie messages James that night, letting him know that she believes there are others in the platoon also suffering from tumors. However, in the morning she’s stopped by the police, who show up and begin asking her about James Reece.

Katie throws it back at the officers though, pointing out Saul’s connection to this. But then, with Josh Holder and Saul Agnon now both dead, the officers guilt-trip her into revealing what she knows. It’s not much, in truth, and she eventually tells the officers she’ll be in touch if she finds out where James Reece is.

Steve Horn repackages his deal with Richard, the agent working alongside Secretary Hartley. It’s hard to know exactly what the end-goal is here but suffice to say, it would appear that the two are in collusion, potentially working behind Hartley’s back. We shall see.

At the same time, James Reece learns that young sicarios are being trained in a warehouse by a man known simply as Navajas. This is the guy who killed Reece’s family. While the best plan here would be to snipe him out from afar, James is blinded by rage and revenge, wanting to dish out a much more personal attack for this guy so he knows exactly who’s coming for him. Ben agrees to follow him in but there’s a problem – James Reece passes out.

When Reece regains consciousness, he finds himself talking to a doctor who encourages him to get his life back in 6-9 months after treatment for his tumour. The alternative could well be death. As a compromise, Reece decides to take drugs to stave off the symptoms temporarily, delaying treatment until he finishes the job he’s determined to see through to its conclusion.

So the mission goes ahead, with Ben and James going in hot with machine guns, spraying the area with bullets and storming the warehouse, killing several assailants before finding and torturing Navajas to death.

Meanwhile, Katie receives a crucial call. She learns that Steve Horn bought a holding share of Nubellum Pharmaceutical company 6 years back, shifting the entire slate into military nootropics when the business wasn’t doing too hot.

Steve Horn has been helping to ship meds to all the different branches of the company since then. Rumour has it that Steve Horn is on the verge of buying everything outright for $70 billion. If that’s the case, it could cause massive shockwaves across the business world. Katie makes a decision off the back of this, and decides to leave.

The Episode Review

That was a long episode, at least it felt that way anyway. This entire chapter could easily have been condensed down to around 20 minutes or so, which would have made the whole affair much more punchy.

The series has really struggled when it comes to pacing, and this episode is a perfect example of why. I understand that this is to give time for James Reece’s personality to come out and show him struggling with the ghosts from his past… but we’ve also had that now for almost a half a season.

It’s essentially retreading familiar ground – and it’s also the same flashback being used too, with this bird slamming into the window.

However, the story is still intriguing and learning that this is actually linked to the acquisition of a pharmaceutical company profiting from military meds, is a nice angle that explains Steve Horn’s stake in all this.