The Flight Attendant Season 1, Episode 3 recap: Funeralia

In The Flight Attendant Episode 3, Cassie crashes Alex’s memorial service. Plus, we learn that Megan has her own secrets, and Cassie meets Miranda.

We start the third episode of The Flight Attendant Episode 3 in a tense moment that looks like it could be the end of the line for flight attendant Cassie Bowden. Miranda comes dangerously close to her with a knife, for what I can safely assume has murderous intentions. At the same time, an oblivious Cassie chats with Annie on the phone, filling her in on her conversation with Sabrina. Annie pleads with Cassie to let her do the lawyering from here on out.

Annie thinks she might be able to track down Miranda and convince Sabrina to go to the FBI with the same story she told Cassie. “When you get back from Rome, things might look very different.” Just as it looks like Miranda might hone in on Cassie toward the tail end of this phone call, Cassie happens to get into a taxi, and Miranda looks on in frustration.

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On the flight to Rome, Cassie is still tense and nursing from a mini vodka bottle. She notices an article on the front page of a newspaper with her Bangkok picture. The headline reads that the authorities are searching for the mysterious woman potentially connected with Alex’s murder.

Shortly after arriving in Rome, Cassie’s Google alert pings. Alex’s memorial service is being held soon at his family’s house in Westchester. “It just feels so sad,” she tells hallucination Alex.

At the hotel in Rome, Shane is rallying the troops for a night out at a discotheque, but Cassie says she’d prefer to be alone. We’ve heard this story before, and yep, right on cue, Cassie leaves her hotel room behind on a path to self-sabotage. She finds a local bar and meets with a charming barista inside who she obviously has had many a fling with in the past. He fixes her “usual” drink, but Megan interrupts before their flirtation can go any further.

She’d been having a few glasses of wine inside already. She apologizes for saying too much about Cassie and Alex to the FBI and admits she doesn’t have many friends. Oh my god, Cassie, if you don’t hug Rosie Perez right now! Megan also claims she’s been keeping “so many secrets” that it’s nice to talk about something else. Cassie questions what she means by secrets, but Megan swiftly moves on to another topic.

Back in the states, Annie catches up with Sabrina and asks her to retell the story she told Cassie, well, “Alessandra,” over drinks. Sabrina claims she doesn’t know her. “It’s a very bad idea to lie to me,” threatens Annie. Sabrina rethinks her statement. She says she does know Alessandra. She had an emotional breakdown in her office and broke an important piece of art — but she never had drinks with her, and she doesn’t know who “this Miranda” is. Annie stares coolly at her as she walks away. I would not want to be on the receiving end of that stare.

The Flight Attendant Episode 3 recap: Cassie can’t let go of Alex.

Cassie and her Roman beau walk back to the hotel with a very drunk Megan. After she goes to bed, Cassie admits to the guy that she can’t have sex with him like they usually do because she’s met someone. That night she hugs Alex’s copy of Crime and Punishment to her chest and thinks back to their night together. She recalls a conversation they had about siblings. Alex was an only child and said his mom was super controlling. He always wished he had a sibling to exert some of her attention instead of him all the time. She hated his last girlfriend (Miranda?).

Upon her return from Rome, Cassie immediately notices that someone has been in her apartment so she immediately goes to Annie’s and runs into a naked man named Max (Deniz Akdeniz) claiming to be Annie’s boyfriend. Annie says Max is not her boyfriend, something about not believing in labels. Cassie tells Annie about the break-in. She wonders if Miranda did it to leave her some kind of terrifying message — well, she’s not far off! She wants to know how Annie is coming along on the Sabrina front. Answer: Not well.

Cassie thinks they should report it to the FBI anyway to see what happens, but unfortunately, Annie gets connected to Agent Van White. He thinks Annie is just scrambling to find alternative theories at this point since Sabrina didn’t pan out as a lead when they questioned her. Annie calls her FBI source, who she has in a precarious situation due to a pending, tenuous legal charge. What’s the latest on the Bangkok murder? It’s not good.

They found what they think is the murder weapon: the broken bottle. They’re going to digitally reconstruct it and pull prints, which might mean they connect it to Cassie when she cut herself on the glass. Cassie starts freaking out, thinking she will end up in jail, but Annie assures her that won’t happen. It’s clear Annie doesn’t entirely believe that herself. Things aren’t looking good for Cassie. For now, Annie tells Cassie to stay at her apartment while she continues digging into Miranda and Unisphere.

But as we know by now, Cassie isn’t going to give up and let Annie handle everything. She revisits her hallucination room with Alex and recalls the meeting from earlier in the episode about his mom. If his last girlfriend was Miranda, then that means his mom can confirm Miranda is real. But how is she going to get Alex’s mom? Crash his memorial service, of course! Cassie enlists Shane to accompany her for emotional support. On the way there, she gets a call from Buckley, who wants to meet up with her again, but Cassie blows him off with a lie.

The Flight Attendant Episode 3 recap: Megan gets involved in corporate espionage.

Okay, so in this next scene, Megan meets with a businessman at a coffee shop, and we learn a massive piece of information. But not all the clues are dropped right away here. Let’s rewind to the last episode. When Cassie snuck into Unisphere, Jean escorted two men to meet her. We later briefly met Megan’s husband, Bill (Terry Serpico). At the time, I thought Bill was one of the men from Unisphere but didn’t call attention to it because it didn’t seem relevant in the last episode, and I wasn’t sure where the storyline was going just yet.

Well, in The Flight Attendant Episode 3, we learn Megan is caught up in some corporate espionage. The flash drives she acquired from Mason in Episode 2 are to download files from Bill’s computer. The mysterious coffee shop man tells Megan the company isn’t treating her husband well, so she shouldn’t feel guilty for this little bit of sabotage. Now it seems very likely that Bill works at Unisphere, especially as the coffee shop man tells Megan that if anything got “sticky” or they were caught, his company in Seoul would step in and clean things up. So now it looks like Megan is inundated in Cassie’s conspiracy, although it’s not clear what capacity she’s involved in yet.

Back at Annie’s, she hits a brick wall when digging into Unisphere and Alex Sokolov. She coaxes her criminal, not-boyfriend Max into hacking into the Stalwart’s account and company for her.

The Flight Attendant Episode 3 recap: Cassie makes a mess of things at the memorial service.

Cassie and Shane arrive at the memorial service. As if going to the memorial wasn’t a stupid enough decision, Cassie doesn’t even tell Shane the truth about it being Alex’s memorial. He’s not cool with that and ditches her to flirt with the caterers instead. Meanwhile, Cassie is left to roam the house, searching for Michael’s mother, Janet (Ann Magnuson).

Oh, and Agents White and Hammond obviously staked out the memorial service. White thinks Cassie is an idiot for showing up and is also convinced that Cassie is the murderer — despite not having enough evidence, this guy is so annoying. Hammond is more interested in doing things the right way, i.e., doing the legwork so they can extradite a U.S. citizen from the Thailand police.

During the memorial service, Annie relentlessly calls Cassie to warn her that Max discovered something big about the Sokolovs and Unisphere. The Sokolov family owns the entire company, it’s a front for a money-laundering scheme, and they launder money for some very scary people. Some of whom are Annie’s clients, and she knows they tend to get violent when need be. After learning Cassie is in the lion’s den at the memorial (Cassie still hasn’t turned off Find My  Friend), she warns her friend to leave the house ASAP, but Cassie refuses to leave until she talks to Janet and learns more about Miranda. “If she f—king dies, I’m going to kill her.” Same, Annie.

While all of this is going on, Megan swiftly does some subterfuge of her own to steal files from her husband’s computer and download them to the flash drives. Once finished, she delivers them to her contact, Mr. Hak. At the drop-off, Megan leaves Cassie a voicemail. She wants to get on the next Tokyo-Seoul flight and asks if they are still bid buddies for their flights.

The memorial triggers Cassie’s memory of her father’s wake. Alex shows up in her head and notices her sitting on the couch at the wake. “What are you doing in my childhood memories!?” She freaks out because she tries hard not to think about her childhood and starts drinking everything in sight at the memorial. It doesn’t work. We go back to Cassie’s childhood, where she’s sneaking a beer out of the fridge while adult Cassie and Alex watch. Young Davey takes the beer from Cassie to keep her from drinking it. “Your brother has the right idea.”

In the present, Cassie is basically having a panic attack, especially as she keeps seeing the same guy around the house — earlier, she thought he followed her and Shane off the train. She runs into a waiter, knocking a plate of food onto the floor, and continues draining every glass of champagne.

Again we see young Cassie. She’s taken refuge in her room and drinking from a flash in the aftermath of her dad’s death. “My dad used to only give me beer. That was my first sip of hard alcohol.”

The Flight Attendant Episode 3 recap: The truth about the Sokolov family.

Rushing through the house, Cassie accidentally stumbles on Alex’s mom while alone. She jumps at her one opportunity to ask about Miranda and is shocked to learn from Janet that Alex supposedly never dated Miranda. In fact, Janet is offended that Cassie even brought her up.

“If you never dated Miranda, then what the f–k is going on?”

Janet goes upstairs to take a phone call, and Cassie follows her to eavesdrop. The guy she’s been seeing all over the house definitely follows Cassie upstairs. On the phone call, Janet tells the mysterious person on the other line that she was accosted by a strange woman asking about Miranda and that she will not let “Victor, Miranda or Lionfish” use her son as a scapegoat. She then asks her assistant for the files on Lionfish that Alex left behind, and he assures her they’ve been shredded.

The guy following Cassie through the house works with the FBI. He tells White and Hammond that she’s drinking heavily and made a public spectacle of herself at the service. They’re interrupted by Janet, who isn’t happy to see a “federal battalion” in her driveway during her son’s funeral.

Left to her own devices, Cassie tries to track down the paper shredder, bypassing a room where Shane and cater-waiter Michael are hooking up. She finds the shredder and balls up the trash bag, quickly tossing it out the window. It’s a good thing, too, since several men with guns come in after her, followed swiftly by Janet. Alex’s father assumes Cassie is one of Alex’s “good-time girls,” but Janet thinks she’s one of “Victor’s incompetent field mice” since she asked questions about Miranda. Cassie is genuinely clueless as to what that means. So yes, Alex’s family is genuinely terrifying.

But then Janet leaves the room to talk to someone, and when she comes back, she says Cassie is free to leave. She grabs Shane and the shredded paper. They make their exit, but not without a spat. Cassie finally apologizes to Shane for making some offhanded remarks about the cater-waiter and for being crazy enough to come to the memorial in the first place. She asks Shane not to tell anyone she was there. “I can keep a secret, Cassie.”

Toward the end of The Flight Attendant Episode 3, on the train ride home, Cassie finally texts Annie that she’s safe. From the conversation Annie has with Max, it sounds like Annie called in a massive favor with one of her clients, and that’s why Janet let Cassie leave scot-free.

Since Cassie can’t go very long without booze and she can’t seem to stop reliving her childhood traumas, she goes looking for the bar cart and on her way finds — MIRANDA! She immediately recognizes her as the woman from that night in Bangkok, and all Miranda can say when she sees Cassie is, “F–k.”

What did you think about The Flight Attendant Episode 3? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

The first five episodes of The Flight Attendant are now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes release on Thursdays.