‘The Last Frontier’ Episode 7 Recap – There’s A Pretty Big Problem Here

In many ways, “Change of Time” is the most significant episode of The Last Frontier thus far. It’s the one with the big reveal about Frank’s past, including the meaning behind the gun he’s keeping hidden in that copy of Walter Coates’s Alaska. It’s the one with the late The Usual Suspects-style twist that recontextualises everything we thought we knew. And yet a lot of Episode 7 doesn’t work, and mostly for the same reason: Haley Bennett’s Sidney Scofield.

It’s nothing personal. I like Haley Bennett generally, I just think she has been miscast here – or, perhaps more likely, is being consistently misdirected – and the character writing hasn’t been as ambiguous as it thinks. At no point, for instance, have I ever believed that Sid was up to anything other than no good, and with that point having been proven, what should land as a major twist is instead met with a shrugging “told you so”.

It’s also a bit too obvious what “Change of Time” is aiming for as it builds Frank and Sid’s relationship throughout this episode. Sure, this dynamic has been evolving throughout the season, and they’ve shared plenty of candid chats about their respective backstories that led to this point, so it isn’t completely out of left field. But as soon as Sidney expressed a vulnerable emotional sentiment, it felt so out of character that I just knew it was signposting a heel turn.

That’s the other thing about The Last Frontier Episode 7. It’s also very much about Frank, and since he, as a character, is very much intended to be the polar opposite of Sidney in terms of emotional openness and vulnerability, the difference is very stark. Sidney was introduced as a character who lies and manipulates for a living. It has been repeatedly reiterated that she has lied and manipulated consistently throughout her entire life, and just as Frank has decided to be as honest as humanly possible, even at the detriment of his own family life, Sidney is revealed to have been lying and manipulating the whole time. It’s just too clunky.

Anyway, we know what happened to Ruby, at least. In a grim cold open, “Change of Time” reveals she was shot in a drive-by shooting targeting Frank. It was an accident, but one that he has blamed himself for ever since – and it turns out for good reason. When he gets a moment, he sits Sarah and Luke down and finally tells them the truth. The gun he keeps in Alaska was evidence seized from an execution supposedly carried out by a truly bad guy named Paddy Coogan. However, it exonerated him, since the DNA on the weapon belonged to someone else. So, Frank held it back. Coogan was guilty of all kinds of things, just not that specific crime, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. But it became one when a hit was put out on Frank as a result – the hit that killed Ruby.

Sarah and Luke don’t take this well. They leave, as a matter of fact, but Frank doesn’t find out until the end of the episode, by which point he’s distracted by having put the pieces together about Sidney. I should explain that, too. So, with the Courier in custody, the only leverage that they have over him is a random photo snapped by a local paper 25 years prior that the CIA failed to detect when they were wiping all trace of his digital existence. With it, Sidney threatens to rebuild his life and expose him. But she also says some things about the photo that resonate with Frank. “That little girl could be my age now,” for instance. She’s talking about how the picture might be used to identify the people in it, but she’s really subconsciously giving away her secret. She is the girl in the picture. And next to her is her father. And next to him is the courier, whose name is Thiago.

If Sidney’s dad knew the courier, then he doesn’t work for the CIA – he works for her. Which means she has been orchestrating events since the very beginning, including bringing down the plane. She’s clearly on a revenge mission against the CIA for the death of her father, or at least that’s how it appears. I assume she’s been consciously working with Havlock the entire time. Nobody, least of all me, is surprised by this.

In hindsight, this revelation helps to clarify a couple of earlier awkward scenes, including a really noticeable, bizarre one when Frank and Sid apprehend Havlock by almost flying a plane into him. It’s silly on the face of it, but it gets sillier when Havlock’s stolen car does a few turns and Sidney rushes to his aid. She pulls him from the wreckage and cradles him in tears, even lashing out at the officers who try to pull her away, but when Havlock wakes up, she’s all like, “Hello sunshine, you’re under arrest”. It’s a whiplash-inducing personality shift that I guess was a glimmer of Sid’s real self sneaking through and then quickly being locked away for the sake of the onlookers. But it’s really clunky in execution.

Nevertheless, The Last Frontier Episode 7 provides us with our endgame. Sidney has left Fairbanks with the captured Havlock and the FBI, but Frank is onto her. Havlock was able to purloin whatever sensitive information he uploaded to a cloud server via a secret NSA listening post in another really contrived sequence, so he has, presumably, the kompromat that’ll help bring down the CIA. Can Frank stop them? Should we care either way? And, perhaps more importantly, will he be able to keep his family together in the meantime? This, and presumably more, in the final three episodes.

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