REVIEW: ‘The Last Frontier’ Episode 6 — “The Devil Wears A Suit And Tie”

This review features spoilers for The Last Frontier Episode 6. 

Community resources. One thing that I like about The Last Frontier is that, for all its faults, its episodes are all about something. They all have a thematic throughline that connects all of their stories together. That’s not always easy for a show to do, and The Last Frontier isn’t always great TV, but it’s admirable that it tries all the same.

In “The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie,” those themes are community and the allocation of resources. How much do we spend to get what we want? What is the cost of a human life? Can we rely on each other when times are hard? What is “the right thing?” Big questions this week from a show like The Last Frontier, but it manages to acquit itself fairly well.

The action starts when Escaped Convict of the Week Dr. William “Doc” Wigg (Damien Young), a brilliant doctor who is also a serial killer, abducts an EMT and tries to get out of Fairbanks. And, he does it by posing as her partner (he murdered him). When that fails and he’s caught by Frank (Jason Clarke) and Sidney (Haley Bennett) with an assist from Sarah (Simone Kessell), he plays his trump card: one of the pilots from The Last Frontier Episode 1’s plane crash has survived, and Wigg knows where he is because he saved his life.

The Last Frontier Episode 6 focuses on questions of community. 

But the pilot’s brain is swelling, so they’re on a timetable. And he has demands that the power outage, which lingers from the last episode, is going to make it difficult.

The Last Frontier Episode 6 is one of the best episodes of the season, largely because of Young’s portrayal of Wigg. He’s smart, smarmy, confident, and knows the game, and Young steals every scene he’s in. It’s great work, a performance you can’t take your eyes off of. But it also challenges Frank and Sidney because, as Wigg notes, this is a matter of resources.

He’s written extensively about how they spend too much time trying to keep people alive when it’s not worth it. What’s the pilot worth to them? Well, if he knows why the plane went down, and what’s really on that hard drive that Havlock (Dominic Cooper) gave them, quite a bit.

“The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie” is one of the best episodes of the season. 

Especially since Sidney is worried that the CIA is going to pin everything that’s happened on her, so begins a manhunt, and they race to find the pilot themselves while realizing they’ll probably have to comply with Wigg’s demands.

Speaking of Havlock, he’s mostly relegated to flashbacks this episode, though Frank and he do have a cool exchange about the pilot’s fate that requires Frank to trust him. He’s also setting up a rendezvous in Fairbanks with one of the guys we saw him talking with earlier.

Oh, and he’s bringing friends. The metaplot moves. In the flashbacks, he and Sidney discuss the fate of an informant that the CIA has decided to give up, and Havlock can’t abide it. What’s a life worth? Who should take the fall? Parallels, we love to see it.

The Last Frontier Episode 6 excels at telling a contained story. 

Elsewhere, also at the hospital, Luke (Tait Blum) is beginning to believe he’s cursed, but Kira (Kya Rose) is there to convince him that none of this is his fault. It’s a good little scene. That, and one more later on where the community comes together to help out, is a good reminder that The Last Frontier is about the town of Fairbanks as much as anything else. They help each other out, and if the town gets through this, that’ll be why.

It all comes to a pretty satisfying conclusion while leaving us some mysteries to chew on and advancing the overarching plot just enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re spinning our wheels. I’m not a “plot above everything else” guy, but I do think that The Last Frontier is better when it keeps its eyes on the prize.

The Last Frontier Episode 6 does a very good job of that, while providing a self-contained story that slots into the overarching themes nicely and sets up the new stuff. It also comes in at a clean fifty-three minutes, so it never feels too long. The Last Frontier is getting better as it goes.

The Last Frontier Episode 6 is streaming now on Apple TV (formerly Apple TV+) with new episodes every Friday. 

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