The first season of HBO Max’s Hitchcock thriller series The Flight Attendant ended in December 2020, and whether you’ve been chugging back vodka and sodas like the show’s lead character Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) loved to do throughout the first season , or dry as a bone and carefully balancing all your internal and external baggage to the best of your ability like Season 2’s new leaf Cassie. It can be hard to remember where we left off.
When we first met Cassie, we followed her booze-soaked antics as a flight attendant for Imperial Atlantic, flirted across the friendly skies during her work hours, and celebrated her blonde ponytail while she took her time off-duty. It didn’t take long to realize that these two things often conflated in Cassie’s life, which, like a thriller will sneak up on and mess with you, drove her to the totally wrong place at the totally wrong time to build the conflict that needed is to drive the rest of the season forward. And in this particular case, that conflict comes in the form of a handsome dead guy that Cassie wakes up next to.
Also Read: ‘The Flight Attendant’ Returns With Double Baggage and Showcase for Kaley Cuoco
After discovering baby-faced businessman Alex Sokolov (Michiel Huisman), with his throat slit and very dead in bed next to her, after a supposedly one-off night of debauchery that began with a dual membership to The Mile High Club and during Cassie’s stint in Continuing Bangkok, Cassie spends the remainder of the season clearing her already battered name and finding out who was behind his murder, all while trying to quit drinking and stay alive.
The second season jumps ahead with two back-to-back episodes, and in the premiere, we reunite with Cassie just days before the one-year anniversary of her sobriety, so we see that she’s coped without alcohol the whole time; But the survival part is apparently still a challenge for her as she has once again placed herself in the middle of danger.
Kaley Cuoco in The Flight Attendant Season 2 (Julia Terjung/HBO Max)Cassie, who moved from her New York apartment to a gorgeous Los Angeles cottage that would instantly catch anyone’s eye on Pinterest, has been in the longest relationship of her life for the past six months with a guy named Marco (Santiago Cabrera), who helps her her to keep AA meetings filled with donuts, and preparing for the visit of her best friend Annie (Zosia Mamet) and Annie’s fiancé Max (Deniz Akdeniz). All well and good, and nothing that could ultimately lead to her early death in this equation of life, but add in the fact that she works as a civilian CIA “asset” on the side when not working as a flight attendant, and here comes ours conflict for this season .
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When Cassie’s CIA “advisor” Benjamin (Mo McRae) sends her to Berlin on an assignment to observe the comings and goings of a man named Will (Kayvon Esmaili), she is warned not to get too close, to which she has a bad one has a habit. but of course she doesn’t care. Cassie follows her “sign” to his hotel and has an encounter in the lobby with a shady couple who stop her to say they were on her flight from Los Angeles. While one half of the couple, Gabrielle Diaz (Callie Hernandez), distracts them with pleasantries, the other half, Esteban Diaz (JJ Soria), uses a phone app called “Data Clone” to steal the information from the contents of her purse . I assume this is information contained in their phone, but who the hell knows what a “data clone” is really capable of? Either way, this is an interaction to keep in mind as this couple is sure to play a big part in the danger and intrigue of the upcoming episodes, starting with Episode 2 where they are caught trying to break into her home .
Once Cassie snuggles up to Will at the bar, she is seen struggling to push back the demons of the past. She wants to flirt with him. Maybe go to his room. But she restrains herself and continues her mission, following him onto the roof of a heavily graffitied warehouse and snapping photos of him retrieving a mysterious envelope.
She convinces the hotel receptionist to tell her which room Will is staying in and checks into the room across the street so she can keep watching. Looking over in a very “back window” manner, she is shocked to see that Will is having sexy times with a blonde woman who has the exact same back tattoo as her. Staring in amazement, she’s too late to evade the milky-eyed gaze of the man in the room below Wills, who appears to be spying on him too, and now on her.
Panicking, Cassie flees her room and makes it onto the street just in time to see Will get into a car, which shortly thereafter explodes, killing him (we assume) and knocking her unconscious. As she travels, she has visions of herself, echoes of her chaotic past, which she denies and mocks. Coming back to reality, she makes her way back to her room, but finds that her key card has stopped working. A cleaning lady lets them in, but that doesn’t bring much relief as all their belongings are missing. And as all of this is happening, we get snippets here and there that usher in a second mysterious story arc involving needy friend and flight attendant Megan (Rosie Perez), who appears to have been kidnapped, but TBD in this case.
On the same TBD front, this season introduces a couple of new characters that we’re currently not sure will end up in the Black Hat or White Hat category. Grace, played by the amazing comedian Mae Martin, is another flight attendant and appears cool and nonchalant at first, but then we see her get caught up in a sourdough lie and engage in some shady dealings involving a box of fentanyl lollipops. And then there’s Dot Karlson, played by Cheryl Hines (BRAGGADOCIOUS ALERT…a little Easter egg for any fans of the Tig and Cheryl: True Story podcast who might be reading this), who has a senior position at the CIA and appears to be doing so want to bend the truth about what happened to Will and if anyone is trying to frame Cassie for his murder.
Zosia Mamet and Deniz Akdeniz in Season 2 of The Flight Attendant (Jennifer Rose Clasen/HBO Max)In Episode 2, Cassie is reunited with Annie and Max, who come to Los Angeles to visit and don’t even have time to catch a taco cart before being thrown back into Cassie’s drama. As they catch their breath as they hear Cassie rattling off the details of Will’s murder, an airport employee knocks on the door and brings Cassie’s missing suitcase.
As an indication that it has been tampered with by the altered position of the blue identification ribbon that always ties them to it, they have a feeling that once they unzip it they will find something unsettling, and they are certainly right about that. Instead of a change of underwear and a pair of jeans, they find a blood-blonde wig and an old ViewMaster with a number of ominous photos and/or clues. One of those clues leads them to the base of the Lady of the Lake statue in Echo Park, but they don’t know what to do once they get there. The person taking photos of them remotely probably knows what’s going on, but we won’t get that information until the next episode if we’re lucky. Hopefully by then we’ll also learn what Margaret Cho’s character Utada is up to with Megan and why, aside from the fact that they’re slowly dancing to records like it’s any old Tuesday night, it seems like she’s the one kidnapping her Has ? Damned. I love this show.
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