Summary
The ending of The Last Frontier wildly overestimates how much people enjoy watching people being transported from one place to another while sad music plays.
I watch TV professionally, and rarely have I ever seen an episode of television as pointless as the finale of The Last Frontier. Early on, it occurred to me that if the penultimate episode included the first ten minutes of this one, the whole show could have ended there. The bad guys would have been defeated by the slightly-less-bad guys, and sure, Frank wouldn’t have had to grapple with his own conscience, but on the plus side, we’d have been spared an ending that essentially amounts to an hour-long music video. And I wish I were joking.
Episode 10, “Everything Trying”, wildly underestimates how interested the average person is in watching people being transported from one place to another in slow motion while sad music plays in the background. This happens so many times it almost feels like a joke, but it’s not, since the climax is also painfully serious. This show started with so much promise, and while it admittedly veered into completely gonzo territory, I never imagined this kind of nonsense for it.
Bye Bye Bradford
Picking up where we left off, we finally do away with Agent Bradford. The point of Sidney and Havlock’s plan is also revealed. Since Bradford would have doubtlessly pulled some strings to ensure they were both disavowed and discredited no matter what they leaked, they instead conspired to invite all of the Atwater Protocol agents to town so that they could deal with her however they saw fit. And you can kind of imagine how they’d see it.
This begs the obvious question of why Havlock and Sidney didn’t just kill Bradford themselves. Perhaps it’s because she travels with a coterie of armed loyalists, and they figured they’d be outnumbered. I guess we’ll never know. Either way, the loyalists get into it with Havlock, Sidney, and the Atwater dudes, and before long, Frank, Hutch, and a bunch of U.S. Marshals have arrived and gotten involved too. Cue what is just about the only action sequence of the episode.
In the midst of this, Sidney gets stabbed by Bradford, and then they have a really silly moment hanging off the edge of a dam before Bradford eventually falls to her death, and Havlock arrives to save Sidney. Frank then secures them both, but Sidney is in a bad way and not getting any better without medical attention.
By the Book
At this point, Frank is confronted with a dumb dilemma. While he’s tending to Sid, Havlock flees. Frank pursues and eventually catches him, but then has to decide whether to let him go in order to save Sid. But this is stupid since at this point Frank has already handed Sid off to some locals. There’s simply no way that Havlock or Frank would have known that he’d have anything to do with saving Sidney unless they’d both read the script in advance. Needless to say, Frank lets him go.
Magically, Frank does need to save Sid. She’s in urgent need of a transfusion that can’t be carried out in the backwater where she’s currently being treated, and since the fuel deliveries have been lagging, the only way to get her there is for Frank to transport her via dog sled. There’s something so performatively sincere about this moment as Frank looks all doe-eyed at the natives that it made me feel slightly queasy.
After saving Sid, Frank gets a call informing him that Havlock has been found dead in a car wreck. It’s clearly not him, but Frank is willing to pretend it is just to wash his hands of the whole matter, which he implies heavily to Sidney when she wakes up. I guess he’s perfectly willing to bend the rules now, after lecturing Havlock earlier about how he refuses to. He even gives a full-on speech about why bending the rules is the right thing to do.
A New Beginning
Frank goes home to an empty house, but before long, Sarah and Luke return, having more or less gotten over the whole Ruby thing. As a family, they brainstorm how best to proceed. Frank suggests handing over the gun and turning himself in — so I guess he doesn’t believe in bending the rules after all? What on earth is going on here? — but Sarah and Luke both agree that he should dump it so they can all move on. And that’s what he does.
The ending of The Last Frontier finds Frank having retired from the Marshals to start his dream business with Sarah. Everyone’s happy and satisfied until Havlock calls him out of nowhere to explain how he faked his death and to warn him that his “little corner of the world” is about to become “the centre of everything”. Huh?
It turns out Havlock and some of the Atwater guys are about to break Sidney free from captivity as she’s being transported by… You guessed it, the U.S. Marshals. So, I gather Havlock was just checking Frank was at home and not carrying out the transport. But why be all suspenseful about it and ruin his day? I guess we’ll never know, which is probably for the best.
