‘Hijack’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap – I Knew I Didn’t Trust Him

“Juncture” is another decent episode of Hijack, let’s just get that out of the way. It contains one major reveal and a few fun developments, and revolves around a game of cagey one-upmanship that builds a lot of effective tension. But Season 2 is still feeling rather stretched, if you ask me. A considerable amount of the runtime has been devoted to obligatory mystery-thriller red herrings — the guy watching Marsha wasn’t the real threat; the long-haired douchebag didn’t kill Freddie, and so on — to cause delays, which is fitting in a show about a train, and Episode 6 isn’t immune to these things either.

I’m on record saying that this season has improved the wider it has expanded its focus, which I still agree with, but progress in those supplementary areas is so glacially slow that it can’t help but feel like we’re stuck on the train indefinitely here. For instance, all that business with Stuart Atterton might have been pointless. Marsha is able to give her minders the slip with the classic “You must know all about this familiar local landmark that you’d definitely know if you were from here” routine, but she doesn’t get anywhere meaningful in her escape, and Beck’s investigation is really dragging its feet.

Meanwhile, Olivia and Faber are pooling their resources in an effort to deduce who sent Sam all the incriminating evidence about John Bailey-Brown that got him aboard the train in the first place. But the IP address can’t be traced without Sam’s laptop, which is in police custody, which means this was all just a diversionary tactic to eventually send these two right back to where they started. Having this season run eight episodes seems like an error.

Train-wise, though, things are better this week. “Juncture” — appropriately titled, as we’ll see — picks up right after the bomb that ended the previous episode. Sam survives with only a few nuggets of glass in his head, but the explosion has caused some damage and no small amount of panic among both the passengers and those in the control room. Despite being alive, Sam’s still on the back foot, so he instructs Jess to call whoever she’s working for and try to buy some time by assuring him everything’s still under control.

Cue the major reveal of Hijack Season 2, Episode 6 — the bad guy is MI5 agent Robert Lang, the guy who’s babysitting the convoy transporting JBB. He’s working on behalf of someone else, that much is clear, but we don’t know who yet, so for now he’ll have to suffice as the primary Big Bad. And he’s not happy. He even threatens to detonate the train wholesale, since the convoy was turned around and is heading back to where it came from.

Sam gets some decent negotiation moments in “Juncture”, and this is one of them. He convinces Lang to give him five minutes to get the convoy turned around, and he goes to Winter and does just that. It gives him a bit of leeway, but it doesn’t exactly solve all of his problems, since the passengers are becoming more and more unruly. Also an issue is the fact that Winter is working on a double cross. GSG9 are planning to storm the train when it pulls into Bergmannstrasse, where Sam intends to swap the passengers for JBB.

Thanks to something Clara said, though, Otto realises that the control room has no idea where the train is — the explosion must have damaged something. This helps to create a fun dynamic, since Lang is tipping off Jess, who’s tipping off Sam, which means he knows what Winter is planning, but has to try and get around it without giving away that he knows. He eventually decides to stop the train, jump off with Jess, switch the tracks, and then breeze right on by the station, circumventing the ambush without anyone realising.

This doesn’t go to plan. While Sam and Jess are on the tracks, Mei calls for help, since Petra, the sweet old lady who was almost caught in the bomb blast, is having a medical emergency. Sadly, she dies, which means Otto is otherwise occupied when Sam radios him to move the train. This leaves Sam and Jess stuck in the tunnel for longer than expected, giving GSG9 time to corner them.

While this is happening, the mother who was allowed off the train turns up at the control centre with the flash drive Sam gave her. It contains footage from the cab, which reveals that Jess murdered Freddie. Knowing that Sam now has an accomplice kind of complicates the stand-off in the tunnels. Wolf, the GSG9 team leader, has to creep close enough to identify Jess, who Sam has taken as a human shield. When he does, Winter orders him to take the shot, which is where the episode ends.

Tense, no doubt, but in the remaining two episodes, all of these dangling plot threads need to start coming together with a bit more urgency.