Plot Synopsis

The Kilchers, led by patriarch Atz Kilcher, have cultivated and for four generations have lived on their homestead in an isolated community outside Homer, Alaska. These men and women of the wild live off the land, spending the limited months of Summer and Fall gardening, hunting and fishing for food, gathering supplies from the land and preparing their animals' safety in preparation for surviving the harsh Alaskan winters. Most live completely off the grid, with no running water and no electricity - and are proud of it. Discovery debuted the Season 2 midseason premiere on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 9pm ET/PT, starting with late Fall, when half the herd returned early from the summer grazing grounds, forcing the Kilchers to drive the rest home across icy rivers.

Discovery presented the Season 3 premiere of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER, with a season opener that picked up eight months of winter, as Eivin and Atz Lee got caught overnight in backcountry hunting an Alaskan delicacy.

ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER returned for its fourth season on Sunday, October 5, 2014 at 9pm ET/PT on Discovery. In Season 4, the Kilchers face unexpected and daunting challenges due to a historically warm winter. The Kilcher men join forces on an epic 30-mile mission over challenging terrain and dangerous melting glacial rivers to secure their hunting cabins at the Head of the Bay. Eivin and Eve juggle the demands of parenting their infant son Findlay, the latest generation to be born on the homestead, and relentless preparations for another Alaskan winter. Otto takes a novice team on the yearly cattle drive and tensions run high as the heat debilitates the herd. Atz Lee encounters a disaster when he takes Jane takes on her first black bear hunt. Atz Sr. defends the family's prized cattle herd against brown bear attacks, and Charlotte searches desperately for a missing newborn calf and its mother. Another Kilcher returns to the homestead to reclaim a simpler life for his family, while the family mourns the loss of a beloved fellow homesteader.

Season 5 of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER premiered on Sunday, October 4, 2015 at 9pm ET/PT on Discovery. This season Atz Lee calls upon his family for help as he embarks on an ambitious plan to follow in his grandfather Yule's footsteps, and build an all-new homestead from the ground up in a remote location deep in the wilderness, despite his wife Jane's strong resistance. Eve and Eivin continue to face new challenges as parents raising Findlay, their son who is now a toddler, as he begins to find his feet and explore his world on the homestead. Atz Sr.'s son Shane and wife Kelli make their return to the homestead, hoping to build their own rustic cabin with help from the entire Kilcher clan. Otto and Charlotte must take extra care in protecting their cattle, which includes camouflaging them at the head of the bay to safeguard them from predators. Also this season, the family is tested as never before when a twist of fate leads to a catastrophic accident.

Discovery premiered the sixth season of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER on Sunday, October 16, 2016 from 9-11pm ET/PT. In the new season, Jewel Kilcher, better known as "Jewel" grew up in Homer, Alaska, born into the rich heritage of homesteading. The Kilcher family has cultivated and inhabited their Alaskan homestead for generations, learning how to live off the land, hunt for food and survive the harsh Alaskan wilderness. After nearly seven years away, Jewel returns to rejoin her family on the homestead and give her young son a taste of how she grew up. Prior to Jewel's return, Mother Nature challenges the Kilcher family when a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hits, shaking the homestead to its core. In the wake of the natural disaster, the Kilchers scramble to recover, facing widespread damage in the form of dangerous landslides, muddy road collapses and the bonus of deadly gale force winds. With their way of life at risk, the Kilchers must learn to adapt to this new reality. The earthquake causes the first shakeup of the season but certainly not the last. Otto and Charlotte face their own mortality as Otto goes under the knife to fix his life-threatening hernia and Charlotte bids a final farewell to her mother. Eivin and Eve continue to focus on their own home but Eivin finds himself pulled to help his aging father more and more facing the realization that it's becoming time to step up. Meanwhile, Atz Lee and Jane remain at odds about his desire to move deeper into the Alaskan wild causing a rift in their relationship. Pushed to their limits by both nature and each other, the Kilchers must all come together as a family to sustain the free and simple life of homesteading they've chosen to proudly carry on.

Season 7 of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER premiered on Sunday, October 1, 2017 at 9pm ET/PT on Discovery. To guarantee a successful overhaul, the family will need to utilize every piece of heavy machinery in their arsenal to repair age-old structures, improve the family's water system, revamp fences, construct new buildings, and protect the animals. But first they must dig out from the worst snowstorm in four years. This season brings bigger builds and dangerous missions that could shape the future of the homestead forever. Singer-songwriter Jewel returns to the homestead and gets her hands dirty - felling trees and wrangling cattle with her father and brother. The Kilchers will face life-changing challenges that test family relationships while forcing them to think on their feet and test their limits. While the overhaul is the biggest challenge the Kilchers face this season, it certainly isn't the only challenge. The Kilchers band together and venture into the wilderness on a mission to rescue a marooned tractor that's crucial to finishing Shane and Kelli's long overdue cabin build on the homestead. Meanwhile, Otto and Jane, along with the help of their homesteading neighbors, travel over 140 miles to the distant shores of Kodiak Island for what could possibly be the most dangerous mission in the homestead's history... relocating a herd of wild buffalo by boat. Will the Kilchers finally be pushed to their limits or will they come together to ensure the family's legacy lives on for future generations?

The eighth season of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER premiered on Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 9pm ET/PT on Discovery. For more than 80 years, Yule Kilchers homestead legacy has survived in the Alaskan wilderness on perseverance and commitment of his family. This past year, the Kilchers endured severe weather conditions, damage to the homestead and unexpected setbacks, but with spring around the corner, the family is gearing up for new opportunities and fresh adventures. After months of darkness, spring and its brighter days are a welcome change on the homestead. The Kilcher family celebrates the warmer weather by exploring new, remote Alaskan terrains to source different game and learn new homesteading skills. After a long winter, the Kilchers need to restock their meat supply, so Jane and Atz Lee venture to Adak Island in search of caribou while Otto and Eivin head to Red Mountain for fresh game. The start of the season brings the return of familiar faces to the homestead - Levi, Otto's oldest son and Eve's childhood friend, Tela return in hopes of passing their homestead upbringing on to their children. Singer-songwriter Jewel also returns home so her son Kase can learn valuable skills in the wild from his grandfather. Pursuing his father's pioneer spirit, Atz Sr. embarks on one of his biggest challenges - building the family's first floating homestead. He finds an abandoned barge and sets out to make it an extensive floating homestead that he and the family can use to travel. Also, for the first time in the homestead's history, Otto and Charlotte's livestock face mysterious predator attacks. Will the Kilchers continue to thrive in the deep Alaskan wilderness, or will unpredictable setbacks hinder the Kilchers homestead legacy? In the season opener, "New Frontiers," Otto and his son Eivin's hunt for Ptarmigan ends in disaster; Atz Lee and Jane tour Jane's past and travel to remote Adak Island in search of Caribou; Atz Sr.'s pioneer spirit leads him to an abandoned barge.

ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER returned for its ninth season on Sunday, October 6, 2019 at 8pm ET/PT on Discovery. Weather on the homestead has become more unpredictable than ever and the Kilchers must strike back against a rapidly changing Alaskan wilderness. A warmer, earlier spring has prematurely melted most of the winter snow, turning the homestead pastureland into a life-threatening muddy swamp for their cattle. To help their livestock thrive, Otto Kilcher uses a spark of his mechanical genius to get his heavy-duty dozer, a workhorse of a machine with a long history of helping build Alaska, working again so he can clear new grazing land for the cows. Throughout the season, the family will need to use proven Kilcher ingenuity on their quest for survival. A primary goal for the Kilchers is to expand their grazing land to remote Perl Island, an area without predators that will keep their animals safe. But the island's tumultuous weather and perilous seas make it dangerous for the Kilchers to travel there safely. In addition, for the first-time ever in the series, Kilcher women Jane and Eve embark on the first hunt of the season, making their mark as leaders of the Kilcher family. This season is a true test of the tribe as the Kilchers continue to balance the need for progress while holding strong to family tradition.

Season 10 of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER premiered on Sunday, October 25, 2020 at 8pm ET/PT on Discovery. With a potentially explosive summer wildfire season on the horizon and a global pandemic reaching Alaska, the Homer natives must work together to ensure that they can continue to survive and thrive on the homestead that Yule Kilcher established 80 years ago. Life is always unpredictable on the homestead, but this season when the COVID-19 pandemic hits Alaska, the Kilchers must adapt and rely on each other like never before. When film crews must be evacuated, the Kilchers step up to the challenge and decide to continue to self-film their lives and the day-to-day mayhem of the homestead, and we see the family in a whole new way. This season, with hunting off the homestead put on hold during the pandemic, Jane works to help fill the family's freezer with fish and becomes the main provider of meat this summer. And after seeing so many locals hit hard economically, Eve plants a massive summer garden that is large enough to supply both the homestead and Homer's food bank with fresh fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, August takes the opportunity to follow in his grandfather Yule's footsteps as a filmmaker and document this unprecedented time on camera. And the Kilchers work to overcome other difficulties as well. As Atz Sr. plans to rebuild the first cabin his family ever lived in on the homestead, he suffers from several health scares that threaten to sideline this important project. Atz Lee devotes the summer to building a new off-grid cabin in the backcountry, but is plagued by crippling episodes of PTSD from his life-threatening fall several years ago. Helping Atz Lee with both the build and his PTSD is his 19-year-old son, Etienne, who became a man in his father's eyes this summer. Otto, Charlotte and their 23-year-old son August must contend with two complicated cattle drives during the pandemic, as well as an emergency on Kilcher road after a rainstorm threatens to wash out the only passage to the homestead. And Eivin, with his wife Eve and two young children at home, severely cuts his leg and must be rushed to an emergency doctor for help. This year, for the first time ever, the outside world comes crashing into the homestead, and the Kilchers rally to protect their way of life for the future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 9pm ET/PT, Discovery Channel premiered the eleventh season of ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER. Season 11 begins when Otto Kilcher is critically mauled by a steer during a severe snowstorm. With doctors unsure if he will recover, his wife Charlotte is left reeling with grief and the family overwhelmed with homestead work. Life has always been unpredictable yet rewarding on the homestead but now the Kilcher family is faced with a hard truth after Otto's accident: the younger generation must step up and take on more responsibilities or the homestead will not survive. Other stories this season include Atz, with the help of his daughter, singer-songwriter Jewel, mobilizing a group of military veterans to do good deeds for others and bring water to a local homesteader; Eivin considering expanding the Kilcher's reach in the state by becoming a bush pilot; Charlotte leaving the homestead for the very first time since Otto's injury; August and his brother Eivin taking a trip to Red Mountain; and Atz's son Etienne enduring a homestead rite of passage in the wilderness before he leaves the homestead for college.