The Flight Attendant Season 1, Episode 4 recap: Conspiracy Theories

Cassie follows a lead that takes her on a secret flight in The Flight Attendant Episode 4.

The Flight Attendant Episode 4 kicks off right where we left the third episode, with Cassie coming face-to-face with Miranda on the train. Her first impulse is to literally kick her shoe off of her foot and fling it in Miranda’s general direction — which makes for a very GIF-worthy moment. Beyond that, Miranda chases Cassie through the train, but just as Cassie reaches the police, Miranda vanishes.

Cassie makes it back to Annie’s in one piece, albeit barefoot, wearing Shane’s socks over her stocking-clad feet. Cassie and Max are way more excited about the paper shreds than Annie is, and they stay up all night piecing together the files related to Lionfish. Come morning, they have a few papers pieced together.

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One is of particular interest as it relates to one of the Sokolov companies, Minute Jet. Each day a jet departs New Jersey and flies to Maine at 3:00 p.m., stops at 4:55 p.m., and then leaves Maine to return to New Jersey at 5:11 p.m. Why would they fly an hour just to refuel and turn around? They also notice a name that starts with “MI” on the passenger list. Cassie wonders if that could be Miranda.

If Cassie wants to find out, she’ll need to pull a favor with Nate, who moonlights for Minute Jet. He gets her on the flight crew for that day in return for some cold hard cash to ease his gambling debts.

Before she can board the flight, Cassie is set to meet her brother and his family at the aquarium. For the most part, they spend a normal day together, although Cassie does drink vodka and guzzle mouthwash beforehand. Then there is a small discrepancy regarding stuffed whales at the gift shop. Both girls want one, but Davey says no.

He and his husband are trying to teach their daughters that just because you want something doesn’t mean you need it. Cassie sneaks back into the gift shop later to buy them anyway and tells the girls to keep their gifts a secret from her brother. Then she leaves to catch her flight, promising to meet Davey for dinner later.

On the Minute Jet flight, Cassie learns there are no passengers on the flight despite the roster listing eight. When she asks Nate about it, he says that he sees eight passengers on the plane, doesn’t she? Yes, they fly an empty plane every day, but he’s getting paid too much money to say anything about it.

Cassie notices men loading cargo onto the plane at the pit stop and sneaks off to get a peek inside the crates. She thinks that these mysterious plane rides were some kind of weapons smuggling ring that both Miranda and Alex were part of based on devices she finds — which are used to power rocket launchers.

Surprisingly, Cassie does make it to dinner on time, and Davey is the one who shows up late. Alone. He found the whales in his daughters’ backpacks, and he’s not happy with Cassie for buying them behind his back and undermining his parenting. He’s really not okay with her telling his kids to keep a secret from him.

For Davey, the instance brought back all the bad memories of their childhood. Davey and Cassie’s dad was an alcoholic who constantly belittled Davey and called Cassie the “son he never had.” He was obviously an emotionally abusive man, and he’s the one who got Cassie into alcohol at such a young age. Davey also knows that Cassie was drunk when she went to the aquarium because she smelled like mouthwash, just like their dad used to.

Davey accuses Cassie of editing her memories to look better than they were. She recalls a time when she and her dad were doing an egg-and-spoon race. In her original memory, it looked like a fun day between her and her dad. In reality, their dad was drunk and shoved Davey to the ground so Cassie could win. In many of Davey’s memories, Cassie would laugh at him and do what their dad said, so Davey often felt like it was them-against-him.

But the problem is, Cassie was a kid, even younger than Davey. So, while I understand Davey’s frustrations at adult Cassie, a lot of his anger toward her in this scene felt unwarranted. He gaslighted her into feeling guilty for things she did as a young girl who was also abused by their father, and that’s really not okay. Both of them were obviously traumatized by their dad, and it doesn’t sit right with me that Davey blamed Cassie for things she did as a literal child. Cassie even points out that Davey left the second he turned 18, leaving her alone with their dad and making her feel like he abandoned her.

All of Davey’s grievances from when they were kids were really toward his father, not Cassie. So there’s obviously misplaced blame there because their dad died before Davey could confront him or settle his issues with him.

Well, the massive fight with Davey triggers another panic attack for Cassie, and she desperately calls all of her friends to find someone to hang out with so she doesn’t have to be alone. No one answers, so she finally takes Buckley up on his offer to hang out again and goes to his apartment.

I think Buckley is a spy/working for the people who killed Alex, here’s why:

• Plot-wise, he doesn’t have much of a purpose, but he keeps coming back.
• He had a framed picture of a rabbit hanging up, and in this show, the rabbits seem to symbolize something bad.
• Buckley is an actor, and this could be his big gig — Victor told Miranda there was a contingency plan in place to deal with Cassie. I think it’s Buckley.
• Buckley knew that Cassie was a big animal-lover. Yeah, she could have said that while she was drunk, but that’s also something easy to say to Cassie when in reality, he probably has a lot of intel on her that the people he works for have found out.
• He’s persistent in his texts and desire to hang out with her!

After sleeping with Buckley again, Cassie regroups in her hallucinatory hotel room with Alex. She realizes that the next person she needs to talk to is Sabrina. She’s the only person who might have information on the Minute Jet thing. The bad news is, Miranda is thinking along the same lines.

Earlier in the episode, we finally meet the mysterious Victor. He surprises Miranda by ambushing her in her apartment. He’s not pleased with her sloppy work as of late. It seems confirmed that Miranda did kill Alex, but letting Cassie go was her first huge mistake. The public train chase didn’t help matters. Victor decides to bench Miranda and tells her to get on a plane back to London. As mentioned above, he says they have a contingency plan in place to clean up her mess.

Miranda argues that it’s her mess to clean, and she wants the chance to fix it, but Victor is adamant she leave and not get obsessed with this. Also, funnily enough, Miranda seems to think Cassie is a spy of some kind and not just a flight attendant who accidentally stumbled into a huge conspiracy. Cassie’s movements are making her look suspicious to everyone.

But Miranda is already obsessed with this situation, Cassie included. She visits Sabrina. By the time Cassie arrives, it’s too late. She hears a scuffle behind Sabrina’s apartment door and starts screaming for her to open it. Cassie runs outside to call 911. Moments later, Sabrina plummets to her death, her body landing directly in front of Cassie.

Megan continues working with the Seoul guys & Annie gets a warning in The Flight Attendant Episode 4.

Two other subplots in this episode are important to note. Megan continues working with the Seoul guys. She accepts her first significant payout from them in a mall food court exchange. Later, her husband suggests that her eBay dealings on his computer have given him a virus. Megan claims it was porn — either from their son or him — that is likely slowing the computer down. She’s not bad at coming up with lies to hide her shady dealings off the cuff.

Elsewhere, Annie meets with her boss, Diana Carlisle (Bebe Neuwirth). Remember that favor she called in to save Cassie in the last episode? Diana warns her that now she will have to return it, and it will probably be unpleasant. When she gets the call, Diana doesn’t want to know anything about it. She just wants Annie to take care of things, to clean up her mess.

Ironically, Annie is getting pulled into bed with the Seoul guys against her will while Megan is all gung-ho and ready for bigger and better action. These two characters are two sides of the same coin and opposites in many ways, which is fitting as they’re two significant characters in Cassie’s life.

What did you think about The Flight Attendant Episode 4? 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 are available on Thursdays.