Summary
The Last Frontier slows down a bit in “Wind of Change”, but it manages to deepen the mysteries and the characters while building to a major cliffhanger.
It would have been difficult for The Last Frontier to compete with its premiere in pure action terms, so in Episode 2, “Wind of Change”, it doesn’t bother. This is probably for the best, since it allows a bit of time and space to dig deeper into the characters — cue one or two explanatory flashbacks, for good measure — and tease out more of a mystery. Havlock remains a compelling villain largely by being smarter than everyone around him, though a late cliffhanger that is clearly an homage to Se7en, even if I doubt the show will wholly commit to that, suggests he’s at least capable of some pretty dark stuff.
He also might be in the right. Thus far, The Last Frontier hasn’t been especially complimentary of the CIA, which has been exclusively seen trying to cover things up at the expense of the remote Alaskan community who have been saddled with a cadre of serial killers entirely against their will. “Wind of Change” might open with a surprisingly nonviolent escapee paying off a passing family to deliver him to the authorities for initially unclear reasons, but it’s still a net negative to have a plane load of federal inmates roaming the wilderness.
This prisoner has two metal prosthetic arms like Jax from Mortal Kombat — he keeps spare cash inside them — and his name is Henry Sickler. He’s an underworld bean counter who used the pretense of financial audits for criminal syndicates to skim a small fortune off the top. That eventually caught up to him, and he was burned alive, resulting in the loss of both arms, his lips, and his sense of humour. It also compelled him to testify against his various associates, and the reason he turned himself in post-crash is that he’s about to indulge in a cushy life in the witness protection program and doesn’t want to jeopardize it.
So, why is this guy important? Well, as Bradford explains to Scofield, Havlock departed the CIA with a stolen document from its database called Archive 6, a comprehensive accounting of every target taken out under the Atwater Protocol, including current and pending missions. If that kind of document should see the light of day, the CIA would have a fair amount of egg on its face. Since Havlock, still in possession of Frank’s wife, Sarah, wants to exchange her for Sickler, the assumption made by Scofield and Frank is that he needs someone to broker the sale of Archive 6.
That all fits together rather nicely, but the idea of handing Sickler over — negotiating with terrorists, in other words — doesn’t sit well with Frank, even though it’s his own wife’s life on the line. This is one of the ways in which The Last Frontier Episode 2 explores the fundamental differences in perspective and attitude between its co-protagonists, which ties back into what I was intimating earlier about Havlock perhaps having a point. Scofield is consistently callous and unfeeling, pragmatic to a fault, dismissive and judgmental of the locals, and entirely obsessed with her own objectives and agenda. There’s no real ambiguity about who we’re supposed to be rooting for.
This is why the couple of flashbacks utilised here are a little weird. They both depict Scofield’s initial encounters with Havlock and her efforts to recruit him while he was still a civilian (albeit a very smug and successful ex-SEAL master hacker, which is quite the resume). Again, it’s easy to root for Havlock here. He sees right through the sales pitch and refuses the CIA’s offer of recruitment outright, since he knows they’re only knocking on the door because they don’t know how he’s doing what he’s doing, and are scared of him doing it to them. There’s clearly something more to the relationship between Havlock and Scofield, but I’m interested to see whether the show is interested in justifying her present-day attitude or pushing the audience more into alignment with Havlock.
Havlock’s undeniably smart, if nothing else. The whole Sickler thing is a complete ruse to lure the Marshals away from his real target, which turns out to be the van transporting the flight recorder. Fun fact: A “black box” is, as depicted here, typically orange, so it’s easier to retrieve from aircraft wreckage. I’m not sure how “fun” that fact is after seeing it written down, but whatever. Havlock wants it and gets it, and takes from it a specific chip that clearly contains information he’s interested in, though we don’t yet know what it is or why he cares.
The Last Frontier Episode 2 ends with a double whammy of potential jeopardy. For one thing, I forgot to mention in the previous episode that Frank’s son, Luke, snuck off with another student named Kira right before the school announced that they were in a lockdown, and the two of them ended up stranded in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. In “Wind of Change,” they find an unconscious convict and drag him inside to nurse him back to health, totally oblivious to how much danger they’re now in, which I’m sure won’t go down well.
But the scariest thing is that Havlock leaves Frank a gift — a bloodstained cooler with his name on that contains… we don’t know what. The episode cuts to credits when he opens it. But given it’s such an obvious homage to Se7en, we must at least entertain the possibility that it contains Gwyneth Paltrow’s — sorry, Sarah’s — head. If that’s the case, maybe we’re not supposed to be on Havlock’s side after all.
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