HBO The second season of Max’s The Flight Attendant ended with a tinnitus-inducing explosion, but that wasn’t Cassandra Bowden’s (Kaley Cuoco) biggest showdown of the episode. Cassandra has spent the entire season battling different versions of herself, from someone impersonating her across the globe to the worst traits of her personality manifesting inside her mind palace. It turns out that the blonde wigs worn by the doppelgängers in the first eight episodes were really red herrings; the actual dangers came from the real blondes.
Who’s Trying to Frame (and Kill) Cassie?
“No Exit,” the penultimate episode, eliminated both of Cassie’s bewigged doubles as suspects. While Gabrielle (Callie Hernandez) and Esteban (J.J. Soria) Diaz were being tased at the pier by Annie (Zosia Mamet) and Max (Deniz Akdeniz), Cassie ended up on the ferris wheel with another flight attendant named Grace St. James (Mae Martin), who turned out to be a hired murderer. Grace obviously didn’t want to be doing this, but her enigmatic employer knew something about her from when she was in the Army. She shot herself in the head in front of poor Cassie since there was no other way out.
Who, though, was threatening to kill Grace? It turns out that Dot Carlson (Cheryl Hines), the CIA’s Regional Manager, was the mastermind behind everything. She was the one who detonated the car bomb (Will the mark had also attempted to blackmail her), and she was also the one who falsely accused Cassie of committing several murders throughout LA. Cassie’s psychiatric evaluation revealed that she couldn’t resist a riddle, so Dot knew she could blame Cassie for selling her own CIA secrets (ouch, but not wrong).
Dot’s plan, however, was purely based on her perception of Cassie and what she thought she could control rather than anything personal. Cassie uses the personal alarm Miranda gave her to activate Dot’s complementary tinnitus and avoid being shot, but this is only the first time in this finale that she will do so. It seems that our flight attendant is the target of someone else who has much deeper personal grievances…
Who’s Also Trying to Kill (and Replace) Cassie?
It turns out that Jenny (Jessie Ennis), an AA member who we all initially thought was a little strange, is actually Single White Female Cass. It was the assassin Feliks (Colin Woodell), whom Jenny had met in jail while posing as the host of a true crime podcast, who she kept bringing up in discussion.
Even if the podcast was a hoax, Jenny’s hideout has a striking murder board that uses stolen items and surveillance footage to link every person in Cassie’s life. Because she’s attempting to commit a murder rather than try to solve one: despite their frequent correspondence and phone calls while he’s in jail, Feliks wouldn’t stop talking about his “ex” Cassie. Feliks has influenced Jenny into wanting to get rid of Cassie under the pretence that he would be able to fall in love again if she is gone. Jenny even appears to be aware that Feliks is manipulating her in this way. However, at this time, she has also come to despise Cassie, so she is only too eager to carry out the plan.
Cassie has nowhere else to go but inside as she is trapped in this home and a smiley murderer is moving in on her.
Annie & Max
…marry in a hasty ceremony in Las Vegas, perhaps because Max fears Annie may alter her mind if given too much time to consider it. They’re thinking of starting a private investigation agency, which would be adorable and very them.
Cassie &…
…nobody! Cassie wisely draws a lesson from her mistake of rushing into her relationship with Marco at the start of her rehabilitation and concludes the season single. (She and CIA handler Benjamin Berry decide to put their steamy encounter in his office behind them and return to their handler/asset arrangement.) At Annie’s wedding, where she dances by herself and celebrates 30 days sober, she appears completely content.
Cassie’s Family
This season, Davey’s storyline was unclear because he was primarily reacting to Cassie’s life’s growing disintegration. His projection of his OCD (which he claims is getting worse) into his need for her recovery to be going flawlessly appears to be having an effect on his marriage. But for a brother and sister, being truthful with one another about their flawed lives—not to mention cooperating to stop a murderer—is a positive step. Along with visiting Al-Anon.
While on an Imperial Atlantic flight, Cassie calls her mother Lisa (Sharon Stone) to apologise and admit that she was wrong: Cassie doesn’t like herself either, but she has accepted who she is and is working to improve every day. Lisa appears willing to communicate more frequently than once a year, and the mother and daughter exchange “I love you”s as a first step in mending fences and improving their relationship.
Like before, Cassie’s flight takes off as season 2 comes to a close. The Flight Attendant season 2 finishes with Cassie focusing on how to improve her current self rather than chasing the shiny new thing, in contrast to last year when she was preparing for an exciting new career and a major life change by working more formally for the CIA.
Whether or not there will be a third season of Flight Attendant is unknown, but season 2 finishes with optimism and a positive outlook.
Escaping the Mind Palace
Cassie acknowledges that her mind palace is a part of her after spending so much time thinking of it as a trauma reaction to either chronic tinnitus or alcoholic binges. Because of a peculiar brain anomaly, she has been able to enter her subconscious and unravel a number of mysteries, not to mention use it as motivation to repeatedly save her own life.
But to do that, she only needs to silence her inner critic. Fortunately, the key to accomplishing this is to ascend. After spending the entire season in the hotel bar, she drags all of her other selves—the suicidal Bender Cassie in black, the glittery Thrill-Seeker Cassie, and especially her younger self, who has already been harmed by her alcoholic dad’s attentions—into the elevator. Each aspect of herself vanishes as they ascend to the seventh floor, leaving simply Cassie.
This is similar to what she says to Jenny, which is also intended to be a diversion so that Davey may surprise her with a cast-iron pan. However, after lying to herself for a season, none of it is false:
You are accurate about me. I am an incredibly imperfect, depressed alcoholic, egotistical adrenaline seeker, and I don’t really like myself. But it is enough for me because it is who I fucking am.
The floor number appears to be a tribute to Alcoholics Anonymous’ Twelve Steps. Getting rid of character flaws is Step Seven’s practise of humility, which AA describes as the process’s cornerstone: “For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all…. Without it, individuals are unable to live meaningful lives or to muster the faith necessary to handle any emergency when faced with difficulty.
If there is a third season, I’m interested in learning how a more modest Cassie will approach unravelling the riddle.
Megan in Witness Protection
Megan Briscoe (Rosie Perez), Cassie’s flight attendant closest friend, is prepared to stop running after dispatching the North Korean agent pursuing her (by knocking him unconscious and putting him in the trunk of her new automobile). She may rejoin Cassie and Shane (Griffin Matthews), who is healing from his stabbing injury, with one more flight to Los Angeles. In exchange for safety, Megan approaches him brandishing a laptop with information on the North Koreans.
Megan consents to enter the Witness Protection Program, where she will start anew with a new life and a nice house. She doesn’t anticipate, however, that her son Eli (David Iacono) and husband Bill (Terry Serpico) will also decide to start anew with her.
Shane’s Back to Work
Cassie and Shane are still colleagues in two distinct industries. While he can’t always discuss their second joint assignment with her, it does offer the possibility of them working together on future missions rather than just him having to mop up her messes.
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