The 5 biggest twists from The Flight Attendant Season 1 finale

Mads Lennon

Kaley Cuoco in The Flight Attendant Episode 8 -- Photo Credit: Colin Hutton/HBO

We’re recapping the biggest twists and shocks from The Flight Attendant Episode 8.

That’s a wrap on The Flight Attendant Season 1! The high-stakes HBO Max thriller based on the Chris Bohjalian book of the same name ended with The Flight Attendant Episode 8, which debuted on the streaming service Thursday. Thankfully for the fans of the Kaley Cuoco-led series, it has already been renewed for a second season — so we don’t have to say goodbye to Cassie Bowden just yet.

While the season’s biggest twist was revealed in the penultimate episode — Buckley = Feliks = evil guy and Alex’s real killer — there were still plenty of surprises in store for the final hour, and we’ve broken them down below.

5. The Flight Attendant Episode 8 twist: Shane works for the CIA!?

4. The Flight Attendant Episode 8 twist: Buckley/Feliks survives. Could he return in the future?

Feliks tracks Cassie all the way to Rome just like he followed Alex to Bangkok. When Cassie first arrives, she smartly flips the tables on Feliks by making it look like he was attacking her, getting him taken into custody for questioning by the airport security. But he escapes and catches up to Cassie and Enrico in their hotel room later.

Cassie and Feliks get into a fight, and she manages to shoot him in the leg before Enrico and Shane intervene. Enrico takes a knife to the gut, but no one dies. The last we see of Feliks and Enrico is them being taken to the hospital. Since Feliks survived, is there a chance he might return in Season 2? I get the feeling that he’s not going to give up on hunting Cassie down if he somehow escapes from the hospital or police custody.

3. The Flight Attendant Episode 8 twist: Megan goes on the run.

Cassie and Megan finally have a much-needed heart-to-heart in this episode. Cassie tells Megan the truth about Alex and the entire debacle she’s been dealing with since that fateful trip to Bangkok, while Megan tells Cassie the mess she’s made regarding spying and her husband’s company. The last we see of Megan is her about to board a train and go on the run. She calls her son and tells him to open the ceramic rooster and give its contents to his father.

Inside, he finds all of the cash Megan made from her shady dealings, a flash drive and a note promising to fix everything. Personally, I’m not entirely satisfied with the way Megan’s storyline played out, there’s a lot of missing pieces, but hopefully, we’ll find out more in the next season.

2. The Flight Attendant Episode 8 twist: Miranda is still alive & looking out for Cassie.

Miranda and Cassie’s relationship had come a long way since their first random meeting in Bangkok and the days when Cassie thought Miranda was her main enemy. In this episode, she even admits that she’s started to genuinely care about Cassie and is worried about her safety. Unfortunately, their plan to ambush Feliks goes awry when Miranda initially takes a detour to deal with Victor.

She kills him and then races to the airport, boarding a late flight only to be attacked by Feliks in the elevator upon her arrival in Rome. It doesn’t look good for Miranda, especially because Cassie finds her shoved in her hotel room bathtub with Feliks hovering above her body later in the episode. But when she asks Shane what happened to Miranda after all is said and done, he tells her they didn’t find anyone else in the hotel room.

Later, Cassie finds Alex’s copy of Crime and Punishment with a note from Miranda and a page missing inside of her coat pocket during breakfast with Annie. Yes, Miranda stole the page with all of the codes so she could get the money, but she thought Cassie should keep the book. Cassie races outside the diner to catch up with her, but she’s long gone by then or watching from the shadows. I’d like to see their paths cross again.

1. The Flight Attendant Episode 8 twist: Cassie might be recruited to the CIA.

Now that all of the craziness in Cassie’s life is finally over, the final episode of the season marks a turning point in her life. She makes peace with her past and with Alex by accepting that she wasn’t at fault for the fatal car crash that killed her father and saying goodbye to Alex once and for all. To signify this, Cassie revisits her dreamscape of the hotel room from Bangkok and slowly turns off all of the lights. She also decides to get sober and starts attending AA meetings, happily showing Annie her two-day chip.

When she returns to work at Imperial Atlantic, she’s surprised to see Shane there. He tells her that his boss is interested in enlisting Cassie in their “human assets” program, so she should expect a call soon. In the final moment of the episode, Cassie sits down in preparation for takeoff and looks happy and optimistic about her future for the first time in a long time.

What did you think of The Flight Attendant Episode 8? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

All eight episodes of The Flight Attendant Season 1 are now streaming on HBO Max.

Mads Lennon

Maddy is the Editor of 1428 Elm, covering all things horror on the regular. She has been a member of the FanSided network since 2019 and has contributed to multiple sites across the entertainment division, including Hidden Remote, Amazon Advisor, and Show Snob, and previously serving as the Associate Editor of Netflix Life. She's been religiously watching horror movies and related media for the majority of her life. Apart from horror movies and shows, she also loves reading and video games.