Summary
“Baggage”, easily the best episode of Hijack Season 3 thus far, gives us a few welcome answers and massively ups the dramatic stakes and tension.
The train has finally left the station, so to speak. In this case, the train is Hijack, and the station is Season 2, in case that wasn’t clear. Despite a few early delays, the journey started to pick up steam, and Episode 3, “Baggage”, gets things rocketing along nicely. To bring this analogy to its rather tortured conclusion, we finally feel like we’re getting somewhere.
Are there still flaws? Absolutely. The new premise, despite being a neat inversion of the first season’s that justifies another run of episodes without relying on the contrivance of the same sh*t happening to the same guy twice, has lost a lot of what made Sam Nelson compelling in the first place. And a train remains much less interesting than a plane, which is probably why so much of this season has taken place on and around the tracks, platforms, and control centres, rather than the locomotive itself. But the good is beginning to outweigh the bad, mostly.
We begin with a fakeout. Despite my being adamant that there wasn’t really a bomb in the briefcase that Sam made Freddie carry onto the platform, “Baggage” begins with enough smoke and fire to imply that there was indeed an explosive in there. Has Sam finally lost the plot? Nope, it’s a trick. The briefcase didn’t contain any explosives at all. The smoke is simply that — smoke. Freddie ends up back on the train, back in the cab, while the authorities start to panic that they’re losing control of the situation.
Meanwhile, Olivia fills in Winter — and indeed the audience — on who Sam is and what he wants. The new information here is that Sam and Marsha’s son, Kai, was killed exactly a year prior, and Sam believes John Bailey-Brown is responsible. Clara begins using this information, with help from Faber, to negotiate with Sam over the radio.
Sam seems kind of receptive, but things keep complicating matters. News of the hijacking spreads like wildfire across social media and eventually makes its way back to the train, making the passengers unruly. And since Sam is in such a bad mood this season, he isn’t well-positioned to assuage their suspicions. This is clearly a house of cards, and it’s about to come tumbling down.
But Sam’s right about one thing — John Bailey-Brown is indeed in Germany. But the records of the Hamburg border crossings at the time that Sam’s CCTV still suggests JBB arrived have been deleted, from an IP address located at a residential address Winter recognises. It’s a nondescript building loaned by the German state to the British, for clandestine purposes. It was Faber who deleted those records, because MI5 is holding JBB and protecting him. Winter threatens to blow the whistle, so Faber gets on the phone to one of his agents, Lang, and instructs him to take a photo of JBB and send it across. Oh, and to find out who talked.
Sam receives that photo and is immediately relieved. He thinks the situation is about to be over, which is a little weird since there’s no evidence that the photo was taken recently — it could have been taken from JBB’s Facebook page for all he knows. But it doesn’t matter anyway, since this is far from the end of things. In the next big twist of Hijack Season 2, Episode 3, it’s revealed that Sam is being pressured by someone else — someone who is currently watching Marsha and sending Sam threatening messages and instructions. The latest one is to get JBB onto the train with him.
Sam is clearly being strong-armed and framed, which he shares with Otto and Freddie, but crucially not Clara and Winter, even though they begin to get a sense that something is amiss when GSG 9 sends a robot into the station and realizes that the explosion was a hoax. It doesn’t seem like Sam wants to hurt anyone. But it doesn’t help his case for them to believe that, as will become clear.
There’s a contingency plan, you see. When the train loses power, Sam and Otto get out and explore the tracks, and discover a substantial explosive device mounted underneath it. If Sam doesn’t accomplish his mission, it’s not only Marsha who will die — it’s everyone on the train, too. While this is happening, someone breaks into the cab and murders Freddie. Mei discovers his body and immediately assumes Sam did it, causing even more carnage amongst the passengers.
Sam manages to turn all this to his advantage, though. He dumps Freddie’s body on the platform and tells Winter about the bomb, to convince her of his seriousness, which gets the train moving again and forces GSG 9 to back off. We’re moving in the right direction. But there’s still a long way to go before Sam can ensure Marsha and the train’s passengers are safe.
