The Final Name
What is Hartley’s side of the story?
Episode 8 of The Terminal List begins with Katie agreeing to do the interview with Hartley. She’s taken up to the Secretary’s house, where Hartley reveals that everything. Apparently, they’re being led to the wrong conclusions. According to Hartley, she did greenlight the RD4895 project but didn’t benefit from the cover-up thereafter. She also tells Katie she didn’t do it for profit either. Apparently she tested RD4895 to because she wanted to try and solve the trauma. She was being sent regular medical reports from Admiral Pillar but he’d fudged those to hoodwink her into believing the drug was working, when it very clearly wasn’t. When Hartley heard Katie ranting at Steve Horn on TV, that’s when she knew there was more to this story than meets the eye and decided to look into this in more detail. Hartley conducted her own investigation into the events that went down in Syria. Apparently she was just as upset over what happened as Reece.
Does Katie believe Secretary Hartley?
After telling her story, she lets Katie go and encourages her to do what she will with the information given. Is Hartley telling the truth Or is she lying to save face? That’s something Katie needs to try and determine. And determine she does. When questioning Lorraine that night, Katie does change her story to accommodate Hartley’s story but still has doubts over the timeline of events. Now, it would seem that Lorraine Hartley’s actual story deviates from what she earlier told Katie, in that she started taking action against Steve Horn and the others before the confrontation in the street. Katie talks Hartley into a corner, with her aware of the issues with RD-4895 and how Hartey saved face by letting Reece’s men die in combat.
Does James get his revenge on Secretary Hartley?
Meanwhile, Ben and James head out but end up stuck at a routine check on the highway. James hides out in the back and it’s touch and go for a while but they thankfully manage to come out of this unscathed. They don’t find James and it doesn’t turn into a bloodbath. Well, not yet anyway. After Katie learns the truth about Hartley’s story, Ben and James storm the compound all guns blazing. James is blinded by rage and heads straight into Hartley’s safe-room. Katie tries to calm him down, pointing out she has audio evidence of Hartley’s deception.
How does Hartley die? Is James Reece captured?
While they talk, Secretary Hartley grabs a handgun she has stashed on the table and scoops it up. Just to solidify her guilt in all this, she shoots herself in the head to avoid the shame of being dragged through the mud. As for James Reece, he’s been badly wounded from the earlier fighting and stumbles outside. Bleeding out, he’s approached by a soldier but the guy thinks twice about shooting, letting Reece go instead.
How does The Terminal List end?
Three weeks later, Katie’s story spreads and it brings about real reform in the Pentagon. Not only that but Reece is still alive, with Katie (and the rest of the world) still trying to hunt him down. James Reece is actually off in Peru, having earlier tracked Ben Edwards down. Remember that final name on the list? It’s Ben. He’s the one who fed the bad intel. Ben does reveal that he had nothing to do with James’ family being killed and wanted to take them out just as much as he did. Still, Ben is the final name on the list so James decides to finish the job, shooting his brother in cold blood.
The Episode Review
So The Terminal List bows out with a conclusive final chapter, wrapping everything up with a neat little bow and clearing out all the names on the kill list. This has been a long, drawn out series that could easily have been condensed down to around 4 or 5 hours or so. The recurring flashback involving James and his family, with that fallen bird, has been overplayed and the names on the list ultimately lead to one final kill in Ben, which is a nice twist in the tale to be fair. However, there’s been a lot of unnecessary filler in this, with some of these episodes losing their intensity and drama because of the run-time. Did we really need a full 55 minutes of James on the run in the woods? That could easily have been knocked down to around 30 minutes and made much punchier. Likewise, everything involving the board meetings and the Cap Tables, as well as the Steve Horn and Saul drama, could have been squeezed together with tighter editing as it felt like they were the main players rather than just another cog in the machine. The show has also struggled with originality on top of all this too and ultimately, while the ending does conclude everything nicely, it hasn’t been a particularly memorable journey to this point, especially when you compare it to shows like Reacher. Either way though, we at least get a conclusion to this story and not a baited cliffhanger ending so that is at least a bonus!
