The Last Frontier season 1 episode 8 ending explained: Is Sidney the mastermind behind the plane crash?

The Last Frontier season 1 episode 8 doesn’t start with a fugitive causing chaos in the Alaskan wilderness; instead, it goes deeper into Sidney’s past. In the previous episode, Frank discovered that the little kid standing next to Vincent Thiago was actually Sidney, and the episode ends with him realising that she is behind everything: the plane crash, the Archive 6, and everything that happened in Fairbanks.

The episode opens with Havlock being taken into a van, where Frank immediately calls Shaw to inform him to keep Sidney away from Havlock. However, before they could think of anything, Sidney tried to kill Havlock. Well, in the previous episode, she did save her husband from the burning car, but her plan from the start was to kill him so that his death would trigger the dead man switch and Archive 6 would automatically disclose every information in it. 

Havlock has learned Sidney’s plan through the hidden hearing device that he had planted in Vincent Thiago’s jacket. While interrogating Thiago, Frank heads out for a second, and he overhears Sidney saying to Thiago, 

“How did you allow yourself to get captured?”

This episode clears every doubt and question raised so far. It explains why Sidney caused the plane crash, what she would gain by leaking Archive 6, and how Fairbanks became the target in this scenario. Frank got played really badly this time. He trusted Sidney from the start, shared his secrets, tried to save her from the CIA, but she outsmarted him without letting him know her true motive.

When Sidney tried to overpower everyone in the van, the driver got shot in the chaos. Sidney and Havlock survive the accident, but by the end of the episode, Sidney disappears. Frank reaches the scene, and Havlock says, “She is gone.” Maybe the two of them have teamed up for another master plan to escape Fairbanks. 

The Last Frontier season 1 episode 8 ending explained: Viktor Voss revealed the truth about Sidney’s father

The story then goes into a flashback where we see Sidney and Havlock discussing how they need leverage over the CIA. Havlock is worried because the CIA keeps getting rid of its operatives once their missions are finished, and he thinks he might be the next one they remove. Sidney, however, is not in support of this until she learns the truth about her dad.

Soon after, Sidney gets a call regarding a man named Viktor Voss. He is a Russian-American who worked for the CIA for many years before switching sides to Russia and betraying the agency. He wants to meet Sidney. When they meet, he asks to talk with the cameras turned off and says he needs her help before the FSB can catch him.

At first, Sidney doesn’t trust him. But then Viktor starts talking about her father. He tells her that the CIA has been hiding a secret and that her father didn’t just die on a mission; there is more to the story. He even brings one of Sidney’s childhood drawings, where she had drawn a treasure map. This gets Sidney’s attention because it proves Viktor really knew her father.

Before they can talk more, the FSB suddenly attacks. Sidney saves Viktor, but he is badly hurt. In his final moments, Viktor tells her the truth: he had been sent to kill her father, and someone inside the CIA had ordered the hit.

Bradford is behind the killing of Sidney’s father

To protect both Sidney and himself, Havlock devises a plan. He wants access to Archive 6, the secret intel created by Sidney’s father. After Viktor dies, Sidney begins to investigate what he told her. She finds a lead that connects her to a woman named Sharon Tidwell, who used to know Viktor Voss.

When Sidney meets Sharon, she learns the truth: Sidney is Robert Scofield’s daughter. Sharon warns her to stay away from all this, and Sidney then realizes that the CIA was involved in her father’s death and that he wasn’t a hero who died for the country; the agency covered up the real story. She also understands that Bradford has been manipulating her for years. At the same time, Bradford learns that Havlock is trying to access Archive 6.

When Sidney asks Sharon, “Does Archive 6 contain the kill order for my father?” She doesn’t answer, but her silence explains everything to Sidney.

Bradford then tells Sidney to watch Havlock closely, because he tried to phish for leverage, and she has sensed it. Havlock later tells Sidney that getting Archive 6 won’t just give them leverage, it will also help her learn the truth about her father’s death. “Bradford has been running unsanctioned black book ops around the globe and placing operatives in the field with no oversight,” he says. She provides classified intel that hasn’t been approved for release and terminates the operatives once the job is done, and Sidney’s father was her first target. 

The Last Frontier season 1 episode 8 ending explained: Why did Sidney plan the plane crash

Sidney and Havlock had very different plans. Sidney wanted to stay and expose Bradford, while Havlock wanted to run away and use Archive 6 only as a means of leverage. Sidney was told by Havlock to come to a hotel when she was questioned about Havlock and his attempt to access CIA secrets by the agents. But Sidney secretly changed the plan. Instead of escaping with Havlock, she chose to stay. Before Havlock could run, he was arrested. Sidney didn’t save him; she twisted the situation to help her own goal: exposing Jacque Bradford.

Soon, Sidney learns from her mother about Vincent Thiago, who was her father’s close friend and interpreter. This helps her connect the dots. She forms a plan: bring down the plane that Havlock was supposed to be transported in. She believed that Havlock’s death would activate the dead man switch and release Archive 6. Even though she loved him, she felt she couldn’t let him escape the CIA, and she wanted to use his death to save lives in the future.

That’s where everything comes together: Vincent taking malware from Armen Zhadnko, entering Fairbanks under a fake identity, and helping Sidney. She programmed the plane to crash, but did not know that it would be carrying federal prisoners and officers (JPATS). When the plane went down and many people died, Sidney was heartbroken. She never wanted so many innocent lives to be lost.

This leads to all the flashbacks showing how the plane crash occurred and how Sidney was later sent to Fairbanks to bring Havlock back safely. But by the end of the episode, when she finally tries to kill Havlock, she discovers the dead man switch has been paused. That means killing him won’t activate anything, so his death would be useless.