Take everything you read about Hijack Season 2 so far and throw it right out the train window. Technically, it’s all correct, but there’s a twist revealed in the first episode that you won’t see coming. Does it work? It helps justify a second season for a show that was supposedly intended to only to be a miniseries. After all, how could we possibly believe that the same man would end up on a hijacked mode of transportation again? They found a way to do it and tie it back to Season 1 in the process.
Note: This review is based on Episodes 1-6 of Hijack Episode 2. There are 8 episodes in total.
What is Hijack About?
Before diving into Hijack Season 2, it’s important to understand what the show is about. Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) is a corporate business negotiator. In Season 1, he’s on a flight from Dubai to London when he and the other passengers learn that it has been hijacked. At first, it’s believed to be terrorists. But it turns out to be a bunch of people from a criminal organization hijacking the plane on orders from the boss. The crime boss wants to negotiate the lives of everyone on board in exchange for his release and force the airline’s stock prices to plummet in the process. Sam uses his fantastic negotiating skills to manage communication with the hijackers and officials on the ground as the intensity and danger builds on board.
Season 2 picks up two years later. Sam is in Berlin and he’s aboard a train when, lo and behold, it’s hijacked again. “In the thrilling second season of ‘Hijack,’ a Berlin underground train and its commuters are taken hostage, while authorities scramble to save hundreds of lives,” reads Apple TV’s official logline for the season. “Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) is at the heart of the crisis on board, where one wrong decision could spell disaster.”
Hijack Season 2 Tries to Justify Itself
Hijack takes Sam into unchartered territory and will leave fans bewildered. The story starts out slowly, setting the scene in the train station before Sam boards, then on the train and back in several other locations, including the train control station, similarly to how Season 1 depicted air traffic control. There’s also the embassy in London, and what appears to be a drug house that police have raided for a reason that’s clearly connected in some way. We also get a glimpse of Sam’s ex Marsha (Christine Adams), though there’s clearly something odd going on with her.
As with Season 1 and any other show where you know something terrible is about to happen on a moving mode of transportation (think the opening scene of Bodyguard and Season 1 of The Night Agent), we get acquainted with random passengers we know will eventually become a bigger part of the story once all hell breaks loose. There’s a chatty man with his bicycle and a woman who’s a combat nurse (of course there needs to be someone with medical experience on board). There are two young male teachers with a group of high school students, a man traveling for the first time with his baby, and an annoying businesswoman who was an intern on a job Sam worked years ago and won’t stop talking his ear off once she recognizes him.
The stage is set when Clara, a young woman new to the train control station, is asked to work an extra hour because the guy who was supposed to work later is sick and can’t make it in. “Nothing exciting ever happens on the U5 anyway,” the boss tells her. This poor new girl doesn’t know what’s about to hit her, but everyone watching at home does.
From there, the journey becomes as confusing for viewers as it does for the passengers. The big picture slowly comes into focus, bit by bit, episode by episode. But the story is so fantastical, it’s tough to buy into in a serious way. It’s evident this is a story written to justify a second season of a show that was initially supposed to be a single-season miniseries. We’re all for it since Season 1 was filled with intensity and action. But there’s something missing this time around. Sam just isn’t the same.
There’s a magic in Season 1 that Season 2 doesn’t manage to capture. Part of it has to do with Sam, who is in a different headspace this season than he was in Season 1, which makes him a less likable protagonist. The supporting characters, but for the train’s driver Otto (Christian Näthe), are annoying background noise versus adding anything meaningful to the plot, even the ones who end up getting bigger stories. Shouldn’t we feel like we want to help these people de-board to safety and not wish the train would just explode and stop their incessant complaining?
In Season 1, the cuts to individuals on the ground provided a welcome break from the intensity on the plane. But in Season 2, these such scenes following what’s going on outside of the train are more interesting than what’s happening with Sam and the others. I was struggling at times to really get into the plot, wondering when something more exciting might happen to keep me invested, my attention locked on the screen. But it didn’t come.
Should You Watch Hijack Season 2?
I recall watching Hijack Season 1 and being at the edge of my seat for the finale, excited and eager to find out what happened. After watching the first six episodes of Season 2, I am in a take it or leave it mood. Would I want to finish the story? Yes. I don’t like leaving shows unfinished and have only ever done so on very rare occasions. But wanting to watch just to finish is not an encouraging reason. I feel like if I didn’t watch and never found out how it ended, I wouldn’t be any worse for it nor feeling like I was missing out on anything.
Season 2 of Hijack has some positives, including a great cast and a unique perspective. But the story doesn’t deliver in the same way Season 1 did. It’s too far-fetched, the wonderful cast led by Elba not given the right material to show off their skills. It feels like the show has taken elements from other popular series of the same ilk and smashed them together haphazardly to create this storyline designed to bring back Elba’s Sam with a twist that falls flat, despite his tremendous performance.
I think Hijack might have been better off ending things after its first season, letting Sam Nelson get back to his boring corporate job. We could reminisce about the stories he tells others about the time he saved hundreds from terrorists in the sky. Season 1 was fantastic, but when it comes to Season 2, the train has left the station.