Online Detectives May Have Figured Out Nathan Fielder’s Big Twist for ‘The Rehearsal’ Finale

This article contains potential spoilers for the Season Two finale of The Rehearsal. 

After ruining a co-pilot’s relationship, creating a the music of Evanescence, what could Nathan Fielder possibly have in store for the finale of The Rehearsal? 

While the climax of season two won’t air until Sunday night, some intrepid fans seem to have figured out where it might be headed…

The overarching theme of this season has obviously been aviation safety, specifically, whether or not Fielder’s elaborate role-playing scenarios could help train co-pilots to be more assertive in the cockpit during critical moments. The idea that the man who invented the validated his strategy to some extent. 

Well, now it seems as though the big question of the season, whether or not Fielder’s theories could actually help to improve the performance of real-life pilots, may be answered in the final episode of the season, thanks to the participation of an actual FAA certified pilot. And in a shocking twist, that pilot may be Fielder himself. 

Several fans of The Rehearsal recently shared an interesting discovery: The FAA’s online Airman Certification records contains an entry for a “Nathan Joseph Fielder,” who was certified as a “commercial pilot,” capable of piloting a 737, on February 20, 2025. So either Fielder hacked the FAA’s website (possibly with the help of a Johnny Depp lookalike), or he actually went to the trouble of obtaining his pilot’s license for the show. 

Okay, it’s not a total shock that Fielder would work overtime to gain an impressive new skill purely for a bit in one episode of a comedy series. In Season Three of Nathan for You, he trained for nine months in order to learn how to wire walk between buildings in the identity-swapping episode “The Hero,” simply because he “couldn’t figure out a funnier way, or another way, to do it.”

Still, this pilot stunt is quite the feat. Although it should be noted that, according to the FAA, they only require 250 flight hours for certification, while commercial airlines require “1,000 or 2,000 hours or more” for their pilots. And presumably, masturbating in a stationary aircraft doesn’t count toward said hours.

This isn’t to say that Fielder’s achievement isn’t wildly impressive, it obviously is, but just don’t expect Fielder to be piloting any U.S. Airways flights with an iPod on hand in case of emergency.