Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Flight Attendant season 2.
A subtle Megan (Rosie Perez) detail in The Flight Attendant season 2 hints that Utada (Margaret Cho) may be a second spy. Kaley Cuoco’s Cassie Bowden may be the titular character in the HBO Max thriller, but her former Imperial Atlantic Airline also has her own arc in the show. Megan is currently on the run after she got busted for engaging in corporate espionage; luckily she has found some allies throughout this whole ordeal, including her brief lover, Utada.
Picking up a year after the events of the critically-acclaimed The Flight Attendant season 1, the dark comedy sees Cassie now based in Los Angeles. She has been sober for a year and is continuing her stint as a flight attendant. Simultaneously, Cassie is also serving as a civilian informant (CI) for the CIA which puts her in new and dangerous situations. In her latest mission, she discovers that someone is intentionally impersonating her. But while she has been initially invested in hunting down her body double, her attention has been diverted as Cassie opts to help with Megan’s issues instead of tackling her own woes.
Utada is introduced as Megan’s partner in Reykjavik, Iceland, and is one of the new The Flight Attendant season 2 characters, She is also the owner of the pub, Blue Sincerely. Not much has been revealed about the character thus far in the series, but in the brief time that she has been in the show, it’s clear that Megan trusts her. So much so that Utada was a part of Megan’s plans to kill the North Korean spy that was hunting her. Despite Utada being a traditional Japanese last name rather than Korean, Utada speaks fluent Hangeul (with the correct accent), hinting at her ties to South Korea. It seems too much of a coincidence that Megan was taken in by a person of East Asian descent during her run from the North Koreans. It’s possible that Utada is a stealth operative sent by the South Korean government to keep an eye on Megan.
Before they separated in The Flight Attendant season 2, Utada gave Megan her necklace, it’s possible that instead of a simple trinket, it’s a tracking device that will help her keep an eye on Cassie’s troubled friend. It’s difficult to believe that Utada is willing to go through the lengths that she has for someone that she has just met in the past year. The Flight Attendant season 2 has given the pair very little screentime to develop their relationship, and without more background on the pair, it can be easy to question whether there might be something else at play here. As the owner of Sincerely Blue, even after Megan has gone back to the US, Utada cannot just reclaim her old life in Reykjavik because the North Korean government, the CIA, and even the local government will be all over her establishment. That means that she, too, will have to be on the run, and for some reason, that doesn’t seem to bother her.
As The Flight Attendant season 2 continues on HBO Max, Utada has seemingly ended her part in the show at this point. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t return later on. Assuming that Utada ends up being an actual spy, it’s curious if she’s a good or bad one. Perhaps she’s just waiting for Megan to lead her to the evidence that could fix this big mess.
The Flight Attendant season 2 airs Thursdays on HBO Max.
