Apple TV+’s ‘The Last Frontier’ Serves Up Food For Deep Thought In An Explosively Action-Packed Premise
Apple TV+’s latest action thriller, “The Last Frontier”, makes its debut this Friday (10/10), and the series combines at least three different concepts that could work on their own as a standalone premise, but co-creators Jon Bokenkamp and Richard D’Ovidio blessed us with the whole kitchen sink.
Anyone gutsy enough to kick off a pilot episode with a plane crash knows they’re following in the footsteps of iconic series like LOST and Yellowjackets, but I think that’s an intentional move which serves as both a statement and an invitation. Bokenkamp and D’Ovidio are telling us, “I know what a great, original television series looks like, and this is going to be one of them.”
But instead of a commercial jet full of travelers, or a high-school soccer team, we have a prison transport plane full of inmates, one of whom is under such a high security detail—head bagged and chained, with duct-taped goggles and noise cancelling headphones—it would put Houdini himself to shame.
Trailers teased the explosion that happens right next to this “boss-level” passenger, but episode director Sam Hargrave, who has an extensive background in stunt work and coordination that includes several MCU films, delivers one of the most graphic, terrifyingly realistic, and elegantly choreographed plane crashes ever seen on television. It is both a thing of nightmares and visual beauty.
So, we’re diving head first into explosions and plane crashes, in a very 24 meets J.J. Abrams kind of way, and then, we pivot, hard, to Fairbanks, Alaska where U.S. Marshal Frank Remnick (Zero Dark Thirty‘s Jason Clarke) jogs down snowy residential streets before breakfast with his wife and teenaged son.
Alaska is as much a main character of “The Last Frontier” as Wyoming was to “Longmire”, and Frank embodies the same ethos of the middle-aged lawman who ensures justice prevails in the harshest, most remote parts of the country.
For fans who love a law enforcement drama, but get all of their agencies mixed up, that’s okay, we Googled it for you. The U.S. Marshals are the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the country, dating back to 1789. In TV and film, you’ll find them in the old Westerns like “Gunsmoke” and True Grit and modern action counter-parts like The Fugitive.
It’s a genius pick for “The Last Frontier” because it evokes the untamed wilderness of its title, while bridging the gap between “everyman” Frank and the larger-than-life, action-packed plot: U.S. Marshals are in charge of fugitive apprehension and transportation.
Frank has to jump into gear and respond to one of the least likely catastrophes he could have ever expected to encounter—a planeload of escaped convicts in the middle of the Alaskan tundra. Fire, ice, and carnage converging into the complete and utter chaos of a zombie movie without any of the science fiction.
A crisis of this scale means all hands are on deck, from the FBI to the CIA, who introduce all of the secrecy and inter-agency drama that comes with them. Frank must collaborate with illusive CIA agent Sidney Scofield (Haley Bennett) as she hunts down the ominous “boss inmate” known as Havlock, while Frank is responsible for tracking down all eighteen who survived the crash. It’s here where the series finds its heart and reveals its genius.
Bokenkamp and D’Ovidio could have made an entire series about the inmates, or Frank and his backstory, or CIA intrigue (the series is ripe for prequels and spin-offs), but this convergence of law enforcement from the local, national, and international level carries so much weight as the lines between the individual and the collective are blurred, distorted, and at times come into direct conflict with each other.
Frank is responsible for protecting his family, his community, and his country, and the shear weight of that load, against the backdrop of the harsh Alaskan wilderness begs the question of what “we” owe each other in order to survive.
This is a series I truly look forward to writing about and discussing, as I sincerely believe it will bring fans of so many disparate genres together—first to the living room for pure unadulterated entertainment, and then to the group texts and the Reddit threads or the dinner table for some really deep discussions about justice and ethics, community and survival. Shows that can balance that kind of philosophy and pleasure are few and far between, but this is one of them.
