The remains of Vivian Lynn and her plane are found in Philly, prompting the team to look into her disappearance in 1944 while she was serving as a WASP in World War II.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Wolf didn't want to kill anyone when he sabotaged Edna's plane but she died in the resulting crash.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The flashback scenes are in black-and-white.
- Distant Finale: The surviving pilots Betty Jo and Louise visit the old air base and imagine seeing Vivian on their first day.
- Evil Counterpart: Iris to Louise. Both disliked Vivian for her arrogance and witnessed the crash which killed Edna. Vivian's friendship with Edna and anger over her fate mellowed Louise's attitude towards her but Iris did not feel the same way. They are also both considered feminist pioneers in the present day.
- Fallen Hero: Iris's celebrity status is sure to take a hit now that she's been revealed as a murderer.
- Finally Found the Body: Vivian's plane crashed into a reservoir. She was finally found when the place was drained to make room for a bird sanctuary.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Viv and Louise are rivals who are competing for the right to fly a jet, but bond over their shared grief when their squadron mate Edna dies in a crash.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Frank is a brave, considerate, and responsible training officer, while his brother Wolf is misogynistic and immature.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Vivian at first seems to be the type to sell out her friends to get to the top (as demonstrated when she abandoned Edna to finish the Oxygen Deprivation test), yet she becomes a mentor for less experienced pilots. The image of Vivian being a jerk makes it easier for Iris to kill her.
- Long-Dead Badass: Viv's father, although it's unclear how long he's been dead. He taught her to be a crop duster, and insisted on flying bombers during the war even though the government offered to make him a training instructor due to his age. He was killed in action as a result.
- Manipulative Bitch: Iris pretended to relent on Vivian reporting Herbert and convinced her to directly inform their superiors in New York in order to set Vivian up for her death. She then doctored the logs to hide where Vivian was going and even led the search party to confuse everyone.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Herbert "Wolf" James sabotaged Edna’s plane as a joke to scare the WASPs into quitting, thinking that she would bail before she got hurt. But Edna couldn’t get out in time, and died in a fiery crash. Even sixty years later, Herbert still has nightmares about what he did.
- Frank didn’t listen to Vivian’s suspicions against his brother. When he finds out that she might have been right about Herbert, he is horrified that not only did his surviving brother really commit murder, but he brushed off the girl he loved, possibly leading to her death.
- She Knows Too Much: Iris was afraid Vivian trying to file a report and accuse a soldier of sabotaging Edna’s plane would have given the higher-up men incentive to shut down the WASP program. So she, too, sabotaged Vivian’s plane, setting her up to crash before she reached the office to make her report.
- Smug Snake: Iris explains to Lilly that the WASP's customary greeting is "Happy landings, always". This was the last thing she told Vivian and is her low-key way of dangling her crime in front of a police detective.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: Viv's commanding officer Iris calls her selfish while being interviewed, even though everyone else paints a better picture of Viv. Iris is also the killer.
- Taking the Heat: Wolf mentions that several other people helped him tamper with the planes of female pilots (it's unclear if he was the leader or just an accomplice). However, he refuses to reveal their names to lessen his own punishment, saying that they're dead and he won't disgrace their memories.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If Herbert hadn’t sabotaged Edna’s plane, Vivian wouldn’t have tried to file a report against him, motivating her supervisor to silence her for good to save the WASP program.
- Villain Has a Point: While Iris was in no way justified in what she did, she did have a point that
Values Dissonance in the forties meant the men in charge would take the scandal as an excuse to shut down the WASP program.
