Holy moly, I don’t even know where to start. Well, let’s start here. If you haven’t watched The Last Frontier, go watch it and return later.
Because The Last Frontier dropped its two-episode premiere like a snow-covered freight train, and I’m still brushing ice off my face. (Spoiler alert: I’ve seen all ten episodes, and the fun never stops.)
It’s the kind of show that reminds me why I love television that refuses to color inside the lines. Two hours of chaos, conspiracies, gunfire, and Alaskan majesty — and I loved every frakkin’ second of it.
You know that feeling when a show opens with a prisoner transport and you just know everything’s about to go spectacularly wrong? Yeah, that’s The Last Frontier Season 1 Episode 1 in a nutshell.
We’ve got a plane full of convicts, a masked man who’s clearly not your average inmate, and a level of calm that screams “season-long problem.”
Before I can even finish my coffee, the side of the plane explodes, prisoners are falling through the sky, and I’m yelling, “What did I just watch?” It’s beautiful, it’s ridiculous, it’s so TV.
Then there’s Frank Remnick — our marshal, our everyman, our hero who just wanted a quiet day with his wife, a donut, and a moose encounter.
Poor Frank has no idea that within hours, he’ll be fighting cons in the snow, losing half his team, and discovering that federal agencies are the true villains of this story.
Frank’s day goes from “let’s buy a cabin” to “my entire life’s on fire,” and the show doesn’t even give him a breather.
And yet, I get it. The guy’s got that one more job energy that makes heroes both admirable and exhausting. He’s the soul of this show — steady, grounded, and just self-aware enough to make you believe he’s seen every government screw-up in the book.
The crash itself is pure spectacle. It’s Con Air meets The Thing with a side of chaos. People are screaming, on fire, falling out of the sky — this isn’t a metaphor, it’s Tuesday in Alaska.
And in the middle of it all is the guy with the lock block between his chained hands, cool as a cucumber while everyone else panics. That’s Havelock, though we don’t know it yet, and he’s about to make Frank’s life a living nightmare.
I’ll admit, when the show dropped the “Havelock was never the man we thought” twist, I couldn’t believe it.
For a solid hour, we’d been chasing this bandaged, broken victim — the guy Frank risked his life to save — only to find out he was the monster. Talk about a narrative sucker punch.
And it works because the show didn’t cheat but cheated the truth in plain sight. And a part of me knew it wasn’t that easy, and I did find it weird that the agent was so chummy with Frank. That’s why I couldn’t believe it. How could I be so stupid?
The real Havelock was right under our noses, bleeding, bandaged, quietly taking notes on everyone. I live for that kind of bait and switch — the kind that makes you rewind and question every earlier scene. Freakin’ brilliant.
The show treats Havelock like an urban legend who just happened to hitch a ride north. If Hannibal Lecter and Jason Bourne had a baby, and that baby was raised by the CIA, it’d be Havelock.
What follows is a masterclass in “how not to handle a crisis.”
Enter Alfre Woodard as a bureaucrat so smug you want to throw a snowball at her. Every line she delivers drips with federal superiority. Then there’s Sidney Scofield — played with the perfect mix of competence and hangover by Haley Bennett.
When she fills a Mountain Dew bottle with vodka at a kid’s birthday party, I knew I was in for something special. This woman is the embodiment of “I’m fine” energy, and she hasn’t been fine for at least a decade.
Frank and Sidney’s first conversation is an instant classic.
She tries to brief him with the usual CIA gobbledygook, and he just laughs: “Miss Scofield, this is Alaska. There is no perimeter.” He’s a comedian and doesn’t even know it.
Frank’s the anti-bureaucrat hero we deserve — a man allergic to red tape and nonsense. Their partnership is a ticking time bomb of mutual disdain, and I’m here for it.
He’s practical, she’s theoretical; he eats Spam chowder, she wants salad. He’s the guy who fixes things; she’s the reason things need fixing.
And because this show knows no peace, Frank’s son Luke decides this is the perfect time to skip school and take his girlfriend into the wilderness. I swear, every survival series needs one character whose poor judgment keeps the plot alive. Luke’s it.
The kid’s wandering through the snow while hardened criminals are on the loose, and I’m yelling at my screen like it’s a horror movie: “Stay in the effin’ school, you idiot!”
But no, romance calls, and off they go to a cabin that just happens to be smack in the middle of the danger zone. Teenagers, amiright? They’ll risk frostbite for a make-out session and call it character growth.
Meanwhile, Frank’s day just keeps getting worse. His team’s dying in the snow, his wife Sarah (Simone Kessell, who fans of Yellowjackets will recognize) is patching people up at the hospital, and the feds are hiding classified operations behind phrases like “Atwater Protocol.”
Turns out Havelock was part of some off-the-books CIA experiment designed to create fake defectors who’d lure out real enemies. Of course, it backfired — because it’s the CIA. These people couldn’t organize a bake sale without a body count.
Episode 1 ends with the twist we all saw coming but still gasped at: the injured marshal Frank rescued isn’t a marshal at all — it’s Havelock himself, and he’s just kidnapped Sarah.
The guy’s like a virus in human form: calm, clever, always one move ahead. The final scene, with him calling Frank to say he’s “spent some time with your wife,” is pure nightmare fuel.
I felt my jaw clench. You don’t threaten a man’s family in Alaska; they’ll track you through the snow until the end of time.
The Last Frontier Season 1 Episode 2 picks up right where the madness left off. Frank’s running on fumes and fury, trying to keep order while the entire system around him collapses.
He’s got the kind of grim focus that makes you root for him even when you know he’s doomed to be let down by everyone in a suit. And sure enough, the CIA’s still tripping over itself.
Bradford’s out here making speeches about “the integrity of the mission” while people are literally dying in the snow. Girl, please.
This hour leans harder into the psychological chess match between Frank and Havelock. The CIA wants to treat it like a negotiation, but Frank knows better — it’s personal now.
When he says, “This isn’t a mission, this is my wife,” it’s the most grounded moment in the entire show. All the bureaucracy melts away, and you remember there’s an actual human being under that parka.
That’s what I love about old-school TV like this. It’s melodramatic, sure, but it means it.
Meanwhile, Luke and his girlfriend are still out there, proving that Darwin was onto something. They find a frozen convict and, in true teen-logic fashion, decide to thaw him out by the fire. Because what could possibly go wrong reviving an unknown criminal in the middle of nowhere?
OK, to be fair, because of their earlier poor choices, they have no idea all hell has broken loose on the tundra. But still.
This is the part where I started talking to my TV again. “Just no. Put him back outside. Let nature do its job.” But no — she’s tending to him like it’s a science fair project while Luke’s lighting candles and queuing up The Scorpions.
Somewhere, Frank’s paternal instincts are screaming.
Back at HQ, the CIA and Marshals are circling each other like wolves. Scofield keeps saying “trust me” like it’s a magic spell, and Frank’s face says he’s one vodka-Mountain Dew away from strangling her.
Every conversation between them feels like an ideological boxing match. She’s drowning in guilt and secrets; he’s clinging to rules and promises. It’s messy and human and exactly the kind of dynamic I crave. You can’t fake that kind of tension.
Havelock, of course, is busy being ten steps ahead.
He’s holding Sarah hostage in some taxidermy nightmare cabin, monologuing about morality like he’s auditioning for a TED Talk. His calmness is infuriating — it’s that quiet kind of gray-area evil that TV doesn’t do enough anymore.
When he makes his “dead man switch” threat — if he dies, the CIA’s dirty laundry goes public — it’s such a perfect, pulpy twist. Of course, he’d automate blackmail. He’s the kind of guy who backs up his apocalypse plan on multiple drives.
By the midpoint of Episode 2, we’ve got subplots on subplots: escaped prisoners forming mini-gangs, federal infighting, and Luke trying to throw a homecoming dance in a cabin of doom.
It’s absurd, but it works. Because underneath all the snow and explosions, The Last Frontier is about control — who has it, who’s pretending to, and who loses it completely.
The show gives Frank these small, quiet moments that break through the noise. His talk with Scofield about Alaska’s values — tradition, accountability, community — is something to think about.
It’s rare for a show this action-heavy to pause and remind you what’s at stake beyond the body count. Frank’s pride in his town isn’t corny. He’s earned it. When he says, “This place isn’t a mistake. People choose to be here,” it’s practically a thesis statement.
Then we hit the final act, and everything goes to hell.
Havelock manipulates them into moving their resources away from the real target, blows up communications, and probably ruins Frank’s blood pressure forever. When Scofield finds that bloody cooler marked For Frank, I swear I stopped breathing. Who among us didn’t scream, “What’s in the box??”
We don’t see what’s inside, but the look on Frank’s face says everything. It’s either the world’s worst care package or proof that Havelock’s playing a game no one else even understands.
And really, who the hell is this guy? You don’t just reroute a federal prisoner transport midflight, break a titanium lock with your damn tooth, and stroll off into the Alaskan wilderness without serious inside help.
Everything about that crash screams premeditated. The reroute, the fake manifests, the fact that the Marshals weren’t even looped in — it’s too clean to be a coincidence.
Havelock isn’t just a rogue asset gone bad. Yes, he’s a ghost built by the very system that lost him, but the deeper mystery here isn’t just where he’s going, but who set the pieces so he could get there.
Frank senses it — that creeping awareness that this whole thing was designed to fail — but he’s still playing catch-up in a game Havelock wrote. And that, more than the body count, is what’s going to keep me watching.
By the end of The Last Frontier Season 1 Episode 2, my emotions were everywhere. I was angry, amused, impressed, and a little heartsick for Frank.
That’s the beauty of episodic TV when it’s firing on all cylinders — it lets you feel everything at once. You don’t watch a show like this for subtlety; you watch it because it’s unapologetically alive.
And that’s why I hope people find this show — and our coverage. It’s a gas.
It’s the kind of throwback action drama that doesn’t pretend to be prestige; it just is what it is: big, loud, heartfelt television.
Shows like this remind me why I fell in love with TV in the first place. You can keep your sleek, algorithm-polished thrillers; give me Frank Remnick eating cold chowder while the CIA self-destructs any day.
There’s no guarantee The Last Frontier will keep this energy forever — these high-concept series can burn bright and fast — but for now, it’s a wild ride worth taking.
Between Frank’s grit, Sidney’s chaos, and Havelock’s unnerving genius, I’m strapped in for whatever Alaskan insanity comes next.
Bring on The Last Frontier Season 1 Episode 3. I’ve got my parka, my patience, and my popcorn. Let’s see how deep this snowstorm goes.
If you made it all the way to the end here with me, I sure hope you’re ready to share your thoughts in the comments. Please, oh please, let’s have a blast with this one!
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