Who is Havlock on ‘The Last Frontier’? Jason Clarke and Dominic Cooper Delve into the Apple TV+ Show’s First Big Mystery

Apple TV+‘s The Last Frontier opens with the ominous introduction of a mysterious criminal known only as “Havlock.” We see this man clad in all black and shackles, head covered and eyes blindfolded, led onto a plane full of fellow prisoners headed from Alaska to DC. Who is this man? What does he want? What is he even capable of? These are the questions that are teased out throughout The Last Frontier in thought-provoking and jaw-dropping ways…

**Spoilers for The Last Frontier Episodes 1 & 2, now streaming on Apple TV+**

Within the first few minutes of The Last Frontier, one of the prison plane’s engines has blown out, Havlock has manufactured a lock pick out of his own molar, and the aircraft is crashing in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. The surviving inmates are let loose and only one local U.S. Marshall, Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke), has what it takes to round them up. However, this insane situation is nothing compared to the threat that the enigma known simply as “Havlock” holds.

Over the course of the first two episodes of The Last Frontier, we learn that Havlock was created by CIA agent Sidney Scofield (Haley Bennett) as a way to coax out bad faith actors lurking within the American intelligence community. The problem is that Havlock began to actually believe the government should be brought down from within, turning him into a one-man national security threat.

By the end of Episode 1, it seems that Frank and Sidney have found their guy. A highly trained and dangerous inmate has taken over a local trapper’s cabin. However, when the duo arrive with a team in tow, they realize that this criminal is not Havlock after all. (He is, however, played by the episode’s actual director and real-life expert stuntman Sam Hargrave!)

As it happens, the real Havlock, played by Dominic Cooper, swapped clothes with a law enforcement agent who died in the crash. He then managed to buddy up with Frank during a violent ambush at the crash site and has been hanging out at the hospital where Frank’s wife Sarah (Simone Kessell) works. As Frank frantically calls his wife to warn her, Havlock, makes his move. He removes the bandages covering his eyes and takes Sarah hostage. It’s a moment that series star and EP Jason Clarke compared to Silence of the Lambs.

“That’s what mliss1578 Jon [Bokenkamp]’s written so well. I mean, if you saw The Blacklist, he does twists and turns well, but he’s got a love of cinema,” Clark said, also citing the Con-Air and Seven references in the show. “In this one, it’s almost the Hannibal Lecter reveal, you know what I mean?”

“As Frank realizes that, ‘Oh, my god…‘ And then the audience sees that he’s behind her taking the bandage off. I love that shot.”

Of course, that’s not the first inkling we get in The Last Frontier that Havlock is not someone to be messed with. The show’s high-octane opening plane crash sequence has the hooded version of Havlock kicking ass, taking names, and zooming effortlessly down the crashing airplane aisle in zero gravity.

Unfortunately for Last Frontier star Dominic Cooper, he was not the one under the mask for these exciting scenes. “Well, rewatching it, I was quite annoyed because I would have loved to have done the zero gravity stuff,” Cooper said. The “problem” was director Sam Hargrave was too good of a stuntman to pass the sequence on to the actor.

“Now, normally when you do a film and you learn a stunt, the directors, they’re not stunt people. They see it and they’re very impressed,” Cooper continued. “This dude, Sam Hargrave, is an incredible stuntman, and now a brilliant director.”

Cooper revealed that it was Sam Hargrave in the mask the whole time. “Because he’s in the hood, he could do [the stunts]. And he looked so good doing them,” Cooper said. “And it just wouldn’t have been as good, me doing them.”

That said, Cooper was saddled with a different challenge in playing Havlock: how to play a super-genius always five steps ahead of Frank Remnick and the audience. “I mean, he’s a Navy Seal, CIA ex-operative, mathematician, lecturer,” Cooper said. “That is just like, whoa.”

“What was quite complex about that — and this is something you shouldn’t really think about when you’re acting a role — well, what’s the audience thinking?” he said. “But it did matter, because what how the audience feels about this character is revealed at different stages.”

Cooper credited showrunner Jon Bokencamp for guiding him on set through various scenes that were shot out of order and for delivering the cast a full season of scripts before they began. Therefore, Cooper “could look at this character who is really complex.”

Meanwhile, Jason Clarke credited Cooper’s talents as an actor — specifically shouting out his past work in The Devil’s Double – when it came to tackling Havlock.

“He’s a mischievous dude with a twinkle in his eyes.” Clarke said. “You watch it and he’s got that sense of mystery. He’s ahead of Frank for the entire season, you know what I mean? He’s got something going on and Dom’s an actor capable of bringing that to the screen.”

Cooper shared with DECIDER that there was one key Havlock scene in Episode 2 that he was particularly thrilled made the final cut. It’s the one where Sidney Scofield initially drops in on pre-Havlock mathematician Levi Hartman’s lecture about the nature of trust.

“This is a fun, action-packed throwback to ’90s blockbusters, but actually there’s questions in it that it raises about trust, about government, about what does it mean to tell the truth and what has happened to our society now that no one needs to tell the truth,” Cooper said. “We’re in a seriously dangerous and diabolical state where truth means nothing anymore.”

“I think if this can get people who love the blockbuster and love the plane and the convicts and the the madness, the bonkers-ness of it, to then go actually discuss that scene where someone’s discussing what trust means…I’m glad that scene is back in it.”

Meanwhile, Jason Clarke says Frank is less concerned with the theme of trust and more obsessed with something far more personal.

“He took my wife!” Clarke yelled dramatically. “You can take it all, but not my wife.”

“And it turns out that my wife is actually [played by] Simone Kessell, who’s my best friend’s wife back in Australia. Yeah. So it was like he took both of our wives. I had to go and get him for two men, you know?”

Will Frank get his wife back? Will Havlock teach us an important lesson about trust? Will we learn more about how to pick a lock with our own teeth? Tune into The Last Frontier on Fridays on Apple TV+ to find out!