Who’s in charge of this thing? That’s the big question that hangs in the air to start the second half of this season of Hijack. It’s finally clear that Idris Elba’s Sam Nelson is being fully Jigsaw-ed, forced to do dangerous things at the end of puppet strings being controlled by a distant master. But who? Whoever it is has Marsha Nelson in his sights, and that’s why Sam has taken this train hostage. What hasn’t been explicitly said is that this master likely plans to kill Sam, framing him as someone who went mad with vengeance against the man who killed his son. Is it someone we know from this season or last? The writers are being frustratingly vague here, which has led to some of the lack of tension this season. Imagine Die Hard with Hans Gruber being held as a last-act surprise or Speed without Howard Payne. The truth is that this show could use a villain.
At least we had a big bad from last season return. Sorta. Daniel O’Farrel went to meet with the imprisoned Stuart Atterton (Neil Maskell), the lead hijacker of Kingdom Airlines Flight 29, just to see what he knows about this complex plan to use Sam to bust out John Bailey-Brown. It’s a weird scene in that it doesn’t really get us anywhere. It could be a fake out, a misdirect when it’s revealed later that Stuart really does know more than he’s letting on. Or it could be merely checking a box, eliminating a suspect that the writers think the viewer may have in their minds.
So who is in charge if it’s not Stuart or someone connected to Cheapside? Let’s talk about Peter Faber. Toby Jones is giving a solid, elusive performance as someone who has seemed shady in the first half of the season but that could be just because Jones often plays characters with questionable motives. His scenes in this episode are interesting in that he seems not to trust someone on his side, calling Olivia on the sly and telling her that he knows Sam isn’t behind this. Is he? Then why talk to Olivia? Is he setting her up? Unless the writers pull a villain out of thin air, it certainly seems possible that Faber has masterminded this whole affair, putting himself in the control center as a way to make sure it goes off without a hitch. But to what end? Is he working for JBB and Cheapside? Or does he have an agenda of his own?
Of course, the people on the train have more urgent concerns. The episode actually opens with one of its odder beats in that it feels rushed in a season that has regularly struggled to pick up steam. The writers speed through the mutiny by the passengers in a four-minute scene in which they chatter, agree, and then take Sam by force. A select group of passengers, including Mei and Jess (Karima McAdams), who we learned last episode was working for the bad guys and stabbed Freddie, chatters with Sam about what the hell is going on as the train and Bailey-Brown’s convoy heads to the meeting point. It’s a well-paced sequence of revelations to get everyone on the same page, something the season could have used earlier. Sam doesn’t have a gun, there are bombs under the train, Jess controls those bombs. Check, check, check. There’s even a blunt statement of why Sam took the train hostage in the first place: “because they have his mother.” And there it is. Sam hijacked a train because someone told him Marsha would die if he didn’t.
It’s a classic action dynamic that’s been famously used in films like Saw: the person forced into illegal behavior by the real mastermind. And, while this season has been clunky in places, the writers deserve some credit for not just throwing Sam Nelson into another truly bad day in which he has to stop another hijacking. In fact, this isn’t a “lightning strikes twice” situation as much as a direct sequel to the first hijacking (and it includes several of the same players). While that can sometimes make it feel like an echo of what worked better in the first outing, at least it respects its audience enough not to just put Sam on a plane with new hijackers and expect us not to roll our eyes.
With Sam’s motives clear, the big problem in this episode is the bombs under every passenger car, which everyone, investigators and passengers, knows something about. Detective Zoran Beck (Dejan Bucin) tracks the evidence to a pub, where a regular reveals that Sam was there meeting someone the night before. Who? Given that he says “another British guy,” my money is still on Faber. Want more evidence? “Kind of an officer type,” notes the witness. “A bit…full of himself.” Yeah, sounds like him.
The episode ends with a scuffle, the train stopping, and the handoff of Bailey-Brown being aborted. Jess gives up the codes needed to make sure the bombs don’t go off, but she’s too late for the last one. As everyone panics, Sam tries to rush people to the front of the train. As they scramble, an explosion can be heard as the episode cuts to black. Maybe next week we’ll find out who just blew up a Berlin train.
Stray observations
- • With so many streaming shows that feel the need to stretch everything to 60 minutes, props to the creators of this one for recognizing that this episode could get in and out in 39.
- • Is it possible Jess is being Jigsaw-ed too? Yes, she murdered Freddie, but McAdams is playing her just reticently enough for us to consider that she’s acting under someone else’s orders like Sam.
- • There’s a stranger-than-fiction docuseries on Netflix that this episode called to mind: Evil Genius, the story of Brian Wells, who was forced to commit a crime with a bomb strapped to his neck. It’s not a perfect series but the case is unforgettable.
- • Train movie of the week! Go seek out 1985’s Runaway Train, a film about two escaped convicts on a speeding train through Alaska that landed Jon Voight and Eric Roberts Oscar nominations.
Brian Tallerico is a contributor to The A.V. Club.