Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 13, 2025
Apple TV’s eight-episode action thriller The Last Frontier might be another reminder for the streamer to stay in its lane. Apple is at its best with warmhearted comedies (Ted Lasso, Trying, Shrinking), cerebral puzzle boxes (Severance, Silo, the forthcoming Pluribus), and prestige historical dramas (For All Mankind, Pachinko, Chief of War). Even when Apple aims to channel old-school HBO energy (Your Friends and Neighbors, The Morning Show), it usually works.
The Last Frontier, like Idris Elba’s Hijack, feels more like Prime Video Dad TV or basic cable fare. It’s fine, watchable but forgettable, the kind of series that would’ve worked far better as a movie.
In The Last Frontier, a prisoner transport jet carrying hardened criminals is sabotaged midair by one particularly nasty inmate, Havlock (Dominic Cooper), the sort of guy who can blow a hole in a jet and just assume he’ll survive the crash. And he does. So do a few others (Johnny Knoxville, Clifton Collins Jr.), who scatter into the Alaskan wilderness after the plane goes down.
Jason Clarke plays Frank Remnick, the Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal for the District of Alaska. He’s outmatched and outgunned by the escaped prisoners, but has one advantage: he knows the terrain. He’s also personally invested after his wife, Sarah (Simone Kessell), is kidnapped by Havlock and his son goes missing at the worst possible time.
There’s also Sidney Scofield (Haley Bennett), a CIA agent whose mission is to find Havlock before his secrets leak. Her career depends on bringing him in. Though she and Frank are ostensibly on the same side, they’re constantly at odds — lots of shouting, lots of ego. At one point, Frank insists she call him by his first name, only to later demand she revert to “Mr. Remnick” once she’s pissed him off. Aside from a clever reveal at the end of the first episode, that’s about as sharp as The Last Frontier gets.
Mostly, it’s a collection of familiar beats: “You have no jurisdiction here,” “You might not like me, but you need me,” and so on, punctuated by snowbound shootouts and fistfights. To pad out the runtime, there’s a CIA conspiracy humming beneath it all, keeping viewers guessing whether Havlock is the true villain or just maybe he’s on the right side of … justice?
The cast, which includes John Slattery, Alfre Woodard, and Dallas Goldtooth, among others, is strong enough to elevate the material, though most could perform it in their sleep. The plane crash sequence that opens the series is nifty, but once the story settles in, it quickly grows dull. As a two-hour movie, The Last Frontier might’ve been serviceable in-flight entertainment. At eight episodes, it’s a plodding cat-and-mouse chase broken up by the occasional twist meant to sustain a binge. But it becomes clear early on that every cliffhanger leads to another 45 minutes of shuffling through the snow until the next reveal drops. It’ll pass the time, but it won’t make it fly.
‘The Last Frontier’ airs weekly, after the first two episodes dropped last week.
