Since the first episode of Kaley Cuoco’s new show, we’ve had one question: Who killed Alex Sokolov in The Flight Attendant on HBO Max?

The Flight Attendant, which premiered on November 26, stars Cuoco as Cassandra “Cassie” Bowden, a flight attendant who meets a man named Alex Sokolov on her flight to Thailand. Alex, who was a passenger on Cassie’s flight, invites her to dinner before he departs the plane. That night, she joins him for a date and the two return to his hotel room to have sex. When Cassie wakes up, she’s hungover with almost no memory of what happened the night before. She discovers that Alex is dead with his neck slit open in bed next to hear. Freaked out and scared, Cassie doesn’t call the police. Instead, she cleans up any evidence she was there and joins her flight attendant crew on a flight back to New York City. However, awaiting her at JFK are two FBI agents who suspect that she knows more than she says. The show continues with Cassie investigating the real killer of Alex Sokolov in order to clear her name.

Image: Courtesy of Doubleday.

So…who killed Alex Sokolov in The Flight Attendant? For those who can’t wait for the show’s finale, here’s what happened in the book the show is based on. In 2018 Chris Bohjalian’s novel, The Flight Attendant, Miranda, the woman who Alex and Cassie had drinks with the night before he died, is the one who killed Alex. Miranda, whose real name is Elena, is hired by Russian intelligence to kill Alex for information. When Miranda’s boss, Viktor, learns that she left behind a witness, Viktor tells Miranda to find Cassie to finish her off. In the end, the reader learns that Miranda a.k.a. Elena is a secret agent for the U.S. and is ordered to bring Cassie to the C.I.A. for information.

In the end, Elena is killed while waiting for Cassie in her hotel room in Rome. Who killed Elena? Well, none other than Cassie’s part-time lover Buckley, who meets at a club in New York. Buckley is a Russian spy who knew that Elena is a double agent. When Cassie returns to the hotel room with her Italian beau, Enrico, Cassie and Enrico are attacked by Buckley. Eventually, Cassie and Enrico are able to escape, and Buckley kills himself. The end of the book reveals that Cassie gets sober and becomes a mother to a kid she conceived during her one-night stand with Alex. She also then gets a job with the C.I.A., working undercover as a flight attendant to get information. Cassie’s flight attendant friend, Megan, is also revealed to be mole for the Russians.

“The Flight Attendant novel is a thriller, but to me, it was always more about a character study. It’s all about Cassie Bowden,” Bohjalian told Burlington Free Press in 2020, noting he’s OK with any changes from the book. “The TV series in ways that are just so beautiful gives you a sense of how you grow into a hot mess like Cassie Bowden and asks the question, ‘Can you find redemption? Can you get out of this mess alive?’”

However, that’s what happens in the Flight Attendant book. You’ll have to watch HBO Max’s series to see if the endings match up.

The Flight Attendant is available to stream on HBO Max. The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian is available for purchase on Amazon.

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