The first season of Hijack, the AppleTV thriller starring Idris Elba as a corporate negotiator stuck on a hijacked plane – where his family on the ground is also placed in danger to help ensure his compliance with the hijackers – wasn’t anything particularly special. Certainly not special enough to warrant a second season – especially after season one ended with the hijacking getting resolved with minimal bloodshed. But here we are, staring down the barrel of season two of a show that felt like a limited series from the jump. And having seen all of the second season, I can assure you that there’s no good reason to watch season two of Hijack.
The biggest takeaway I have after sitting through these eight episodes is that if I’m ever on a mode of transportation with Idris Elba, I’m getting off as soon as possible. Because where season one of Hijack was about an airplane hijacking, this time around Elba’s Sam finds himself on a hijacked Berlin subway train. The circumstances surrounding the hijacking – including who is doing the hijacking and why – I’ll refrain from spoiling here (although I suspect it’s going to get out since it’s really hard to talk about the season without touching on it), but suffice to say, Sam is having a another really bad day. All I’ll say is that this current hijacking is intimately related to what went down in season one.
Which is one of the two major flaws with this season of storytelling. By linking the season arc so closely to what happened before, it puts the audience at a disadvantage if they haven’t taken the time to re-watch season one. I hadn’t and I spent the first couple of episodes periodically checking the show’s Wikipedia to remind myself just who everyone was (and most of the major players are back in some capacity this time around, except for Eve Myles’ air traffic controller – but she gets a German counterpart who is in charge of the impacted U-Bahn line). While it would have been stretching the bounds of believably to have Sam on another hijacked mode of transport yet again, I would have perhaps enjoyed the season a bit more this hijacking stemmed from random chance or another set of terrorists trying to use Sam’s particular set of skills to negotiate for them. Allowing Elba the chance to take Sam to a different place rather than trying to hit many of the same beats from season one would have been nice to see – after all, Elba can handle whatever he’s asked to do. Let him stretch himself.
The other truly disappointing part of the season is that, unlike in season one, we learn next to nothing about Sam’s fellow passengers. Sure, we meet a couple of them. There’s an elderly woman who hints that she used to work for the Stasi during the Cold War. And a school group on a trip to a museum. But we spend so much time with Sam, Otto (Christian Näthe) the train engineer, and Karima McAdams’ mysterious medic that there’s absolutely no time left to learn much at all about the people Sam is trying to save. And that’s a huge misstep.
Thrillers only work if two key elements are present. First, there must be a threat that only our hero has the means to stop. And second, we have to care about those put in harm’s way. Here, we know that Sam is the only one who can truly stop this train. But since we know nothing about the people on the train, it’s hard to care about them. Sure, we don’t want to see innocent people die, but I honestly wouldn’t have cared too much so long as Sam and Otto made it out in one piece. They’re the people we spend the most time with, the people we know the best, and genuinely compelling characters. The rest? Well, they’re there?
There didn’t need to be a second season of Hijack. The story is less engaging and more disappointingly sprawling. (Also joining the cast this time around is Toby Jones as an MI5 operative trying to deduce just what Sam is doing on the train considering his past actions on the plane.) Elba, who had charisma to burn in season one and who commanded the screen, is reduced to a lot of grimacing and talking in circles this time around. Someone out there has to have a better part for such a great actor. If you’re looking for a thrilling series to indulge in, this isn’t it.
Hijack’s second season premieres on January 14. All episodes were provided for review.
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