The final season restructures the old bargain: instead of a handler in a white limousine, the new Airwolf operation carries its government minder on board. Jason Locke is the Company's man in the crew — the officer who connects the team to official sanction, intelligence and cover, and who has to answer upstairs when the team inevitably ignores all three.
That tension peaks in 'Rogue Warrior', when the crew's defiance inside Soviet airspace brings the Company demanding Airwolf's return — and Locke has to choose, definitively, which side of the hangar door he stands on. He chooses the crew. It is the quiet hinge of the season.
Locke also suffers the final season's most unsettling fate short of the grave: in 'The Puppet Master' he is captured and implanted with a mind-control device aimed at Airwolf — forcing his own teammates to fight the friend without harming the man. Anthony Sherwood gives the character a watchful steadiness that makes the betrayal-that-isn't genuinely uncomfortable.