The Flight Attendant ending explained: Who killed Alex Sokolov?

With a second series now officially confirmed, we've broken down The Flight Attendant's final episode to clear up any possible confusion around the show's big questions – from who actually killed Alex Sokolov to the true identity of Miranda.

If you haven't finished the series yet, proceed with caution – there are many many spoilers ahead – and check out RadioTimes.com's The Flight Attendant review.

Who killed Alex Sokolov?

In the final episode, we find out that it was Buckley – real name Felix – who was hired to kill Alex (Michiel Huisman) by Victor (Ritchie Coster), Miranda's shady boss at Lionfish. It turns out that prior to his trip to Bangkok, Alex had found out that his family business, Unisphere, was doing illegal business related to missile smuggling with Lionfish and decided to move $200 million from the Lionfish accounts to an offshore bank.

Buckley was sent to threaten Alex into giving him the information about where he'd hidden the money and ambushed him in his Bangkok hotel room while Cassie was drunkenly asleep in the corridor outside. Alex told Buckley that he kept the cryptocurrency login details in a book on the sofa, but Buckley slit his throat before looking for the book and didn't manage to find it. After Buckley left, Cassie must have drunkenly returned to the hotel room and climbed back into bed with Alex's dead body.

Did Max die?

Fans of Annie's boyfriend and expert hacker Max (Deniz Akdeniz) had a scare at the end of episode five when someone working for Victor tried to intentionally run over Cassie with their car but hit Max instead. Max is admitted to hospital in need of serious help and remains unconscious until episode seven, when he finally wakes up and chats to Annie.

In the last episode, Annie (Zosia Mamet) reveals that Max needed surgery and would be left with a huge scar from the hit-and-run, but will ultimately be OK.

Who is Miranda?

We spend most of The Flight Attendant wondering who the elusive yet dangerous Miranda Croft (Michelle Gomez) is and by episode seven, we finally get some answers.

When Cassie is arrested for trying to steal a stationary pony ride, Miranda posts her bail before ambushing her and threatening to kill her – however when she finds out that Cassie didn't kill Alex, she doesn't have the $300 million and that Cassie found Miranda's real name Elena on Lionfish's database of people they were planning to kill alongside her own, they go for coffee to exchange information.

Miranda reveals that she was a business associate of Alex's from Lionfish and that they went for drinks one night and she complained about her boss Victor, letting slip to Alex that his family were laundering money for Lionfish. Outraged by his family's criminal activities, he decided to move $300 million from the Lionfish account to a hidden offshore deposit and flew off to Bangkok.

She tells Cassie that she met up with Alex, whilst he was with Cassie in Bangkok, to convince him to return the money – however the next day, Victor had already hired her enforcer Felix (who turns out to be Cassie's one-night-stand Buckley) to kill him.

Now aware that Victor is trying to have Miranda killed for causing the mess, Miranda and Cassie decide to work together, with Cassie convinced that Annie can negotiate immunity for Miranda in exchange for tip offs about Lionfish. However, Miranda tells Cassie not to get Annie involved as Felix will go after her as well, and they try to flee the country. But Cassie decides she can no longer run away from her problems and whilst experiencing a flashback, she remembers where Alex hid the money encryption key – inside his copy of Crime and Punishment which Cassie took with her when she fled his Bangkok hotel room.

They return to Annie's flat to grab the book but are followed by Felix. They climb onto the roof but Miranda drops the book whilst jumping from one building to another. Cassie realises that Felix is actually Buckley as he picks up the dropped book and leaves the scene.

Cassie and Miranda then hatch a plan to catch Buckley, deciding that Cassie should work the flight to Rome the next day and that Miranda will be a passenger as Buckley will most likely be following Cassie. Once in Italy, Cassie will retrieve an extra room key for her hotel room to give to Miranda and when Buckley breaks into Cassie's suite, Miranda will ambush and kill him.

However, Miranda decides to confront her boss Victor before the flight, accusing him of sending someone to assassinate her. She kills him and takes the book, but not before he manages to shoot her in the leg. Miranda subsequently misses Cassie's flight to Rome when airport staff notice she's bleeding, but catches the next flight over, tracks down Buckley and a fight ensues.

Unfortunately, when we next see Miranda, she's lying unconscious in the bathtub in Cassie's hotel room, where Buckley is hiding in wait to ambush Cassie. After a tense struggle, Cassie manages to fend off Buckley before her colleague Shane, who turns out to be a CIA agent, arrives and shoots him. When Cassie later asks Shane whether Miranda received medical attention, Shane tells her that the police didn't find anyone else in the hotel room.

At the end of the episode, Cassie is having coffee with Annie when she reaches into her coat pocket and finds Alex's copy of Crime and Punishment with the cryptocurrency details ripped out and a note from Miranda which reads: "Took the page and the money but you should have the bok. See you soon. M x"

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Did Buckley/Felix track down Cassie?

At the end of episode seven, we learn that Victor has sent a trained assassin named Felix to retrieve Alex's offshore bank details from Cassie and Miranda before killing them, and Cassie then realises that Felix is actually Buckley (Colin Woodell) – the one-night-stand she met in a club who she went on a drunken date with.

When Cassie travels to Rome, as part of her plan with Miranda to ambush Buckley, she's surprised at the airport by Buckley. She quickly acts as though Buckley had grabbed her and calls for help, drawing the attention of the Italian police and allowing her to escape. She meets up with Enrico, the Italian barman she has a romantic relationship with when in Rome, and asks him if he can find her a gun. After obtaining one from Enrico's grandmother, they head to Cassie's hotel room and while Buckley is out of the room, Buckley jumps out from behind the shower curtain and attacks Cassie. He reveals that he's been stalking Cassie since her time in Bangkok and was prepared to run away with her but she broke up with him.

Enrico arrives and attacks Buckley, but Buckley stabs him in the stomach. He then tries to garrotte Cassie, but she manages to grab Enrico's gun and shoots him but fails to kill him. Just as Buckley is about to pounce again, Shane – Cassie's airline colleague – bursts through the door with a gun and shoots Buckley.

While Shane explains that he actually works with the CIA and joined Cassie's airline to keep tabs on Megan, who was selling information from her husband's company to the North Korean government, we see paramedics wheel Enrico out to an ambulance, followed by a wounded Buckley.

What happened with Megan and her husband?

Cassie's airline colleague Megan, who lives a suburban life with her husband Bill and teenage son Eli, longs for some excitement in her life and becomes entangled in corporate espionage when she starts stealing blueprints from her husband's computer to sell to another company.

While her husband becomes suspicious, it's not until his company accuses him of being involved with North Korean espionage and finds spyware on his computer that he realises what Megan has been doing. He confronts Megan, who only just realises that she was selling state secrets to the North Korean government.

Megan works the flight to Rome and when there, she tells Cassie about the espionage she's been involved with and goes on the run. Whilst waiting for a train, she calls her son and asks him to look in the ceramic rooster on their kitchen table, revealing that whatever is in there will help get Bill out of trouble. When Eli looks inside, he finds thick wads of cash, a memory stick and a note which reads: "Dearest Bill and Eli, I love you. I will fix this. I'm sorry! xo Megan," – all of which is likely to exonerate Bill.

We later find out that Shane, who'd been working as a flight attendant alongside Cassie and Megan, was actually a CIA agent tasked with monitoring Megan and her espionage activities. At the end of the episode, he reveals to Cassie that Megan has gone on the run.

Did the FBI convict Cassie?

Throughout The Flight Attendant, FBI team Kim Hammond (Merle Dandridge) and Van White (Nolan Gerard Funk) have been investigating Alex Sokolov's murder, suspecting Cassie of being the culprit.

While Van has been convinced throughout that Cassie knew Alex beforehand and was also responsible for the murder of his colleague Sabrina (Stephanie Koenig), Kim is irritated by Van's cocky attitude and suspects that there is something else going on with Alex's case.

In the final episode, Van reveals that forensics have found Cassie's fingerprint on a broken bottle in the Bangkok hotel room, which he believes was the murder weapon. Cassie's friend and lawyer Annie then arrives with the Hello Kitty memory stick, which Cassie and Max used to download files from the Lionfish servers before dropping it outside the Lionfish building when Max was hit by a car.

Annie went to the building, found the memory stick and took it to the FBI to show them the numerous Lionfish files which confirm Cassie was telling the truth about Unisphere's shady activities. While she's in the FBI offices, Annie sees surveillance footage from Bangkok on Kim's computer screen and recognises Buckley, who is seen walking through Alex Sokolov's hotel. Kim realises that he was arrested the day before with Cassie after they drunkenly tried to steal a stationary pony ride and finds out that he boarded the same flight to Rome as Cassie, realising that he's stalking Cassie and plans to kill her.

While we don't see Kim and Van after Buckley is arrested, we assume that Cassie is exonerated and that she's no longer considered a suspect in the murder. At the end of the episode, Shane tells Cassie that the CIA is interested in recruiting her for a human asset programme.

The Flight Attendant airs tonight at 9pm on Sky One and all episodes are available to watch on demand and on NOW TV. Want more? Check out our TV Guide or our Drama hub for all the latest news.