TL;DR: Hijack season two swaps altitude for underground tension and proves that the formula still works. Idris Elba remains the most watchable man in crisis television, the pacing is razor sharp, and the show’s commitment to high-stakes nonsense makes it one of the easiest, most addictive binges on Apple TV+ right now.
Hijack season 2
I still remember exactly where I was in the summer of 2023 when Hijack first landed. I wasn’t on a plane, thankfully, but I was glued to my couch in the same sweaty, time-dilated way the show insisted its characters were glued to their seats at 30,000 feet. Seven episodes. Seven hours. One increasingly stressed man with the calmest voice in televised crisis management history. It was nonsense. Glorious nonsense. And it might have been the most effortlessly bingeable thing Apple TV+ has ever slipped into my watchlist without asking.
Now, against all odds and a fair amount of logic, Hijack season two exists. And yes, Sam Nelson is back. Same man. Same face. Same impossibly ironed jacket energy. This time, instead of a commercial airliner, he’s trapped underground on the Berlin U-Bahn, because apparently Sam Nelson has the worst luck with public transport in the Western world. If you sit next to him on a bus, I strongly recommend getting off immediately.
From the first few minutes, Hijack season two understands exactly why season one worked. It wasn’t realism. It wasn’t plausibility. It wasn’t even the plot, which involved stock manipulation via airborne hostage situation and somehow got away with it. What worked was presence. Specifically the presence of Idris Elba, operating at maximum movie-star density, anchoring a narrative that would otherwise collapse under the weight of its own “wait, what?” moments.
Sam Nelson remains, gloriously, not a cop. Not a soldier. Not an intelligence operative. He is still a business negotiator, which in Hijack logic is the most powerful class in the character select screen. He reads people the way other shows read bomb schematics. He spots inconsistencies in behavior like he’s running a live TED Talk on microexpressions. He de-escalates armed lunatics with the calm authority of a man who once talked two boardrooms out of mutually assured financial destruction.
Season two wastes no time throwing him back into chaos. Sam is in Berlin on business, because of course he is, heading to a meeting with a German government official. There is something deeply funny about the show generating tension simply by reminding us that Germans do not like lateness. That’s not stereotyping. That’s narrative efficiency.
Then comes the rucksack.
You know the rucksack. Red. Aggressively red. The kind of red that screams narrative significance. The kind of red that exists purely so the camera can glance at it one too many times. Hijack season two is extremely comfortable with this kind of visual shorthand, and honestly, so am I. This is not prestige TV pretending to be cinema. This is a pulp thriller wearing an Apple TV+ budget like a tailored suit.
Sam clocks the disturbance, clocks the man, clocks the vibes, and still gets on the train, because if Sam Nelson avoided suspicious situations, we wouldn’t have a show. Also boarding is Mei Tan, an overly enthusiastic junior colleague who wants to talk shop. Sam gently but firmly dodges the conversation and moves to another carriage, and I have never felt more spiritually aligned with a fictional character in my life.
Once underground, Hijack season two assembles its pressure cooker. We’ve got students who talk too much, teachers who look like they regret every career choice that led them here, a goth who clearly knows more than she’s letting on because this is television, a claustrophobic kid whose panic attacks double as a ticking clock, a mother with a crying baby, a creep who absolutely exists only to justify later violence, and of course a volunteer medic, because Chekhov’s First Aid Kit must be honored.
The train driver, Otto, deserves special mention. The man spends most of the opening episode looking like he’s aged five years every time someone makes eye contact with him. His increasing distress, bathroom breaks, and missed signals are a masterclass in visible guilt. When he tries to divert the train into an off-grid section of the network, Hijack leans fully into its own madness, and I mean that as a compliment.
Above ground, the show splits perspective, just like season one, and again it works better than it has any right to. We check in with Sam’s wife Marsha, isolated in the Scottish Highlands, radiating unresolved tension like a narrative Geiger counter. The show knows we’re not here for domestic scenes, but it also knows they give the action emotional ballast, so it doles them out sparingly, like vegetables hidden in a very indulgent meal.
In Berlin’s metro control room, we meet Clara, a tired employee who agrees to stay late because “nothing ever happens on the U5.” This line deserves to be framed and hung in the writers’ room. It is the purest distillation of thriller irony. Clara’s growing realization that something is very wrong is handled with admirable restraint. Hijack season two is good at showing systems failing not because of incompetence, but because no system is designed to deal with deliberate chaos.
There’s also a German government minister, some very suspicious photographs, and connective tissue that pulls directly from season one without alienating new viewers. The returning cast, including familiar faces like Archie Panjabi and Max Beesley, slot back in seamlessly, expanding the show’s world into something that feels like a franchise rather than a fluke.
Technically, the season is sharp. The cinematography uses the confined space of the train brilliantly, alternating between claustrophobic close-ups and disorienting wide shots that remind you how little room there is to maneuver. The sound design deserves credit too. The screech of rails, the muffled announcements, the hum of underground electricity all contribute to a low-level anxiety that never really lets up.
What impressed me most, though, is how confident Hijack season two feels. It doesn’t over-explain. It doesn’t apologize. It assumes you’re here for the ride, that you understand the rules of this universe, and that you’re willing to accept a certain amount of heightened reality in exchange for momentum. This is a show that understands pacing as its primary weapon. Every episode ends with just enough escalation to make stopping feel like a mistake.
And then there’s Elba. Look, I could write another thousand words just on his performance. He plays Sam Nelson like a man permanently running five simulations ahead of everyone else in the room. His stillness is the point. In a genre full of shouting and sweating, Sam lowers his voice and somehow becomes more dangerous. When he finally does lose his temper, it lands like a controlled detonation.
Hijack season two isn’t reinventing television. It’s not trying to. It is refining a very specific, very watchable formula: trap charismatic man in moving vehicle, surround him with escalating threats, let him talk his way through hell. If season one was Die Hard on a plane filtered through corporate negotiation theory, season two is Speed filtered through EU bureaucracy and commuter frustration.
By the time the credits rolled on the opening episodes, I was already mentally clearing my schedule. This is the kind of show that turns “one more episode” into a lifestyle choice. It’s absurd, yes. It’s convenient, absolutely. But it’s also tightly made, sharply acted, and deeply aware of exactly what kind of thrill ride it wants to be.
Hijack season two doesn’t just justify its existence. It doubles down on its identity. Louder. Tighter. Underground. And if this keeps up, I fully expect season three to strand Sam Nelson on a ferry, a space station, or possibly a particularly tense elevator.
