The Last Frontier episode 5 ending explained: Did Frank and Sarah find Luke?

The Last Frontier episode 5, “Arnaq,” finally shows a short moment of peace and celebration for the people in the Alaskan town, but it won’t last long. After Luke made a smart move to escape from the inmate Isaac Romero, Kira was found by a man named Cal, who was taking a hunted reindeer back to his community.

Luke did have his chance to escape, but the kid lost his courage when the inmate asked him to shoot him, and he stepped back. Luke gets stuck with the dangerous convict, and Sarah informs Frank that the kids are not at the cabin and Officer Clint is dead.

With that, Frank and Sydney’s attempt to catch Havlock still doesn’t progress in this episode, but he left the Archive 6 for the marshals. Soon after, it turns out that the hard drive wasn’t the actual Archive 6 they were looking for, as it was filled with flight navigation data.

Amidst all the investigation and constant search for Luke, Frank’s team had to deal with Issac Romero, a Naval Academy graduate who is now clinically paranoid and criminally insane. He killed six people and his neighbour, hinting that Luke is now in grave danger.

Frank and Sarah found Luke in The Last Frontier episode 5

Luke, who drove his car off the road in the previous episode, helped Kira to escape, and she identified the convict who had held him hostage. Sarah and Frank are desperately searching for him, and the convict has his own personal plans to deal with. Issac was an engineer at DARPA who used to build surveillance machines. Now, due to the signs of schizophrenia and severe mental instability, he believes that the government is spying on people and begins to hate the machines that he once created. 

He made his plan clear: to destroy HAARP, High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (a U.S military research facility). When Frank and Sarah headed to find Luke, they met a guy on their way who told them that a man had taken his road-salting truck, and there was a kid with him, too. They traced them with the help of the salt trail that the vehicle was leaving behind. Romero, who once worked for DARPA, had guilt over invading people’s privacy that eventually drove him insane.

He now believes the government is secretly using HAARP to spy on people, and he wants to destroy it and expose the truth to the world. First, he attacked a power substation. This substation powers HAARP, and he took the power backup system with him.

When Frank and Sarah reached the substation, they found Luke’s gloves, proving Luke was here in the last few minutes. When they learn that it provides the power to HAARP, they understand what the convict is up to. But before he could go ahead with his plan, Sarah and Frank arrived. Romero holds Luke at gunpoint and tells Frank to drop his weapon, promising to let the boy go. As soon as he released Luke, Sarah sped in with the car, hitting Issac and killing him instantly.

Luke is now safe, but for Sarah, the concern is not over. The family has already faced a loss when their daughter died, and now they barely saved Luke. Sarah even made Frank choose between work and family, raising tensions in their relationship. 

Havlock leaves a dummy hard drive of Archive 6 in The Last Frontier episode 5

Since the very beginning, we see that the CIA is desperate to get their hands on Archive 6, a hard drive that contains their deepest secrets, threatening national security. Havlock calls Frank and asks him just one question, ‘’Can I trust you?’’ Well, what does that mean, and what Havlock is now up to is yet to be seen. While connecting the dots, Frank and his team understand that Courier, the man carrying Archive 6, arrived in Alaska right before the day the plan crashed. 

The team traced his call and led them to a motel room where he was staying. However, as soon as they arrived, Havlock had left, but he left a dog and the hard drive. Hutch sends in the hard drive to the FBI, despite Sydney’s attempt to stop him. He believes that they have already failed to get their hands on the flight recordings, and losing this evidence again is not something they can afford. 

Havlock tricked them again. He never really left the area; he was hiding, waiting for a chance to see his wife, Sydney. He asked her to leave everything and go with him, but she refused. Sydney felt a bit of relief when Havlock told her that the Archive 6 the officers found was fake. Still, she didn’t tell anyone on her team that she had met him, quietly trying to protect her husband.

The town’s people gathered up at Mecca Bar for a potlatch — a traditional Alaskan gathering to celebrate the life of Donnie (Frank’s friend who died when they headed to the scene where the JPAT’s plane crashed). When Sarah and Frank were searching for Luke, she revealed to him that she had kept a secret and had not been completely honest with him, to protect their family. She handed him the evidence, a memory chip that Havlock gave to her when she was kidnapped. It was the flight deck recordings. This makes Frank and Hutch realize something huge: the plane crash might’ve been part of a government cover-up involving the CIA and the Courier, and not Havlock. 

With that, amidst the celeration, Sydney deals with her personal battles, as the CIA has been spying on her family and questioning her mom. Meanwhile, Cole discovers that Romero had posted old conspiracy videos about HAARP. In one, Romero mentions a dangerous flaw in HAARP’s backup system: if the main and backup power run together, it could cause massive damage.

Towards the end of The Last Frontier episode 5, Fairbanks stands still in the dark. The entire city loses power, and the chaos is about to get worse as the people need to protect themselves from the convicts amidst the darkness. Also, Havlock has been threatening the CIA using something called a “dead man switch” — a backup system that activates if he’s caught or killed. But CIA agent Jacque has assigned Junie, a top tech expert, to stop him.