Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 ending explained - Who is the real Shepherd?

Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6, Pawns & Kings, answers the headline upfront: the real Shepherd is Cyrus Rahimi, not his brother Vahid. The hour opens on Jed Haverford’s riverboat with Vahid bound and “confessing,” then being executed as a decoy to protect Cyrus’s cover. On the ground, Ben, Mo, and Landry move the centrifuge-bearing exchange in courier disguises.

A tachometer check proves the bearings are real, tipping Ben that the team has been played. Tal traces Haverford’s comms, pulls imagery of Haverford meeting Cyrus, and drops it mid-op, just as the minister’s jet lifts for exfil.

The team rips the runway apart, the minister dies while calling Cyrus on speaker, and Ben hacks off the cuffed hand to secure the briefcase. Back on the boat, a pre-drafted email pins everything on the unit, framing even Raife, who had refused to participate. Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 is directed by Paul Cameron, with Taylor Kitsch, Tom Hopper, Robert Wisdom, and Rona-Lee Shimon leading a cast created by Jack Carr and David DiGilio.

Who is the real Shepherd in Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6?

The reveal lands in two stages that Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 uses to snap the season’s spy math into place. First, Haverford “solves” the mystery by producing Vahid as Shepherd, squeezing a confession that he fed false intel to steer German authorities off Iran’s nuclear path, and shooting him execution-style. The episode then intercuts Haverford’s quiet meet with Cyrus, confirming Cyrus as Shepherd and clarifying the motive: deliver authentic bearings, win a promotion track for Cyrus, and, in Haverford’s longer game, keep Iran’s nuclear option as leverage rather than a trigger while improving ties with the West.

Across this sequence, Raife’s ethics break. He steps off the op after the boat execution, convinced a bigger con is running. In parallel, Tal back-traces Haverford’s supposedly dead portal and secures a drone image of Haverford and Cyrus together, forwarding it mid-mission to Ben.

That proof collides with the trade itself, where the bearings survive the RPM test, confirming a swap to the real thing. The twist is simple, but the timing, proof dropping as the deal goes live, turns it into a trap the team can’t sidestep. Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 ties the Shepherd identity to character turns: Raife’s refusal, Ben’s slide into cold pragmatism, and Haverford’s belief that statecraft justifies the bodies it stacks.

Eliza said,

“You’re right that something’s off. But it’s not me. It’s Haverford and the Shepherd."

It's a line that now reads like episode-6 foreshadowing for Cyrus’s unmasking. Ben Edwards stated,

“Even a pawn can take down a king.”

It's a motif that Pawns & Kings literalizes with Vahid’s sacrifice to shield Cyrus.

Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 ending explained: How Pawns & Kings detonate the board

The last act of Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 plays the proof and the handoff on intersecting rails. While Ben, Mo, and Landry endure the tachometer check, Tal traces Haverford’s live contact to Cyrus and transmits the photo. The second that verification lands, the minister’s party boards. Over comms, Haverford hears the dying man call Cyrus as the team riddles the jet and ground security.

Ben’s choice to take the briefcase by severing the cuffed hand marks his point of no return. When they reconvene on the boat, the room is empty, save for a screen showing an email that frames the entire unit. Raife, who stayed off the op and watched through a scope, gets burned too, sealing him to the same fate.

Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 thereby closes with identity exposed, mission perverted, and the protagonists branded as rogues, positioning Haverford as the enemy who insists he is saving lives by managing the bomb he helped deliver. Jed Haverford remarked,

“What we’re doing here is going to echo through time.”

It's a mission creed that now doubles as an indictment.

What Pawns & Kings sets up for the finale

The fallout from Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6 is twofold: character and chessboard. Ben’s heel-turn accelerates. He accepts the framing as a temporary cost and redirects his rage at the handler who engineered it, aligning him with the harder operative fans know from The Terminal List. Raife’s moral line hardens. Episode 5’s torture error and the riverboat execution push him into opposition, yet Haverford’s email tethers him to the same fire. Tal now holds chain-of-custody proof, the portal trace and the Haverford-Cyrus image, which can either pry institutional backing from Mossad or force her into an off-book alliance with Ben. Expect the briefcase contents and Haverford’s self-justification to collide with Ben’s need for accountability. Ben Edwards said,

“You go tell my men what you just told me!”

The kind of command voice he will need when he turns this burn notice into a counter-op. Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 6, Pawns & Kings, ends not with closure but with a target: the Shepherd’s political ascent, and the handler who lit the fuse.

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