Critic’s Rating: 2.7 / 5.0
2.7
The wheels on the train go round and round, and so does Hijack Season 2.
As the season nears its end, the dynamics shift, and German law enforcement decides to act.
About time!
(Kevin Baker/Apple TV)
We’ve established that this season of Hijack thrives when it stays inside the train, but this episode actually succeeds by focusing on the outside.
The Marsha-Daniel-Zahra subplots are a structural dead end that only slows this train, but Murnau and Ada finally decide to stop playing “Talk to Me” and take control of the situation.
They make numerous plans to neutralize the threat, and when one hits a hurdle, they come up with something different.
This fixes the talky problem that I’ve been complaining about for most of the season, where they kept having endless conversations with Nelson.
(Courtesy of Apple TV)
Murnau is the largest driver of this, and it’s refreshing to see someone finally take charge and make the tough calls. Without him, Ada would have been stuck delivering messages through the young woman.
However, the episode is still stuck with some of those qualities that make the season feel like a downgrade.
In a bid to create tension, the writers are omitting pretty obvious information, hoping to keep us guessing.
We know this is a prison break disguised as vengeance.
We have already figured out that John Bailey Brown is a very bad man with a wide reach, so when it’s revealed that one of the police officers works for him, I’m like, of course he does.
It’s just perplexing how much influence money can give one person, no matter how evil they are.
(Kevin Baker/Apple TV)
That said, I feel like the hold he has on these people goes beyond money. Case in point: Sam. Bailey-Brown’s people have threatened to kill his ex-wife if he doesn’t do what they want.
And while that’s a valid reason, I still fail to see how they got him on that train. We know he learned they were watching Marsha on the train, but what happened before that?
Is Hijack trying to keep the big reveal for the season finale? If so, it’s doing a huge disservice to the story.
So far, it looks like Sam is at least willing to do this if it gets him closer to Bailey-Brown.
And if that’s true, there’s still a problem. It still hasn’t been confirmed if Bailey-Brown was actually behind Kai’s death, or did I blink and miss a massive piece of exposition?
Everyone speculated that Kai’s death was Sam’s motivation, but no one really knows the facts. For all we know, Kai might have gotten hit by a car while riding his bike in a totally unrelated accident.
(Kevin Baker/Apple TV)
This gap leaves us grasping at straws when concrete information would do a better job of connecting with Sam, because, to be honest, people, I have stopped caring about him.
I just want this whole thing to be over and these nice people to go home. We wouldn’t have lost that suspicious but totally innocent lady to the stampede.
Her death and the fact that she wasn’t working with the bad guys were one of the biggest surprises in the episode.
Another surprise is that Sam and Jess work together despite what she did to Freddie.
For all its worth (which is not a lot), she seems to be experiencing emotional pain, but I don’t care about her. Anyone capable of killing another human being that violently under those circumstances does not deserve sympathy.
(Kevin Baker/Apple TV)
And as we’ve come to expect, the episode ends on a cliffhanger as a soldier fires a shot at Sam and Jess. If Jess dies, good riddance. If Sam does, I’ll be very sad, but good riddance, too. This thing needs to end.
But knowing Hijack, they might both be fine in the end.
Gut Check
“Junction” was not an amazing episode, but relative to others in the season, it was an upgrade. That makes just two interesting episodes in the entire season after Hijack Season 2 Episode 3. The police’s decision to escalate this situation makes the show feel like a proper thriller.
It’s like that classic, heavy thriller trope: a hijacked plane is turned into a weapon, and someone has to make the impossible call to shoot it down.
It makes the situation feel heavy and hopeless, so whatever happens, the feeling of relief is worth it.
(Courtesy of Apple TV)
Stray Observations
- There was a lot of German spoken in this episode. Maybe it’s because the subtitles failed and I had to watch it twice, so I didn’t notice before, but it now feels like a show set in Germany.
- I still can’t believe we were so wrong about the old lady and her husband. They were just two people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- I truly don’t get the logic behind the Marsha scenes. They’re trying to replicate the Kai arc from Season 1, and it’s just not working because we know the danger is real, and Marsha doesn’t have the same screen presence as Kai.
- At 40 minutes runtime, these episodes do not give us much to work with. Between the talking scenes and the sidequests, we get maybe 10 minutes of storyline development. Hijack is on Apple TV, so it can afford to run for an hour of the writers’ wanted. Maybe they don’t have anything more to say.
(Courtesy of Apple TV)
Over to you, Hijack fanatics. Are you ready for the final stretch, or do you just read the reviews to see how bad things have gotten? The latter’s valid too.
Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.
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