Summary
Hijack Season 2 reaches its peak in “Contact”, with all of the subplots dovetailing nicely and the best stretch of tension yet to effectively close things out.
There’s a slight “too little too late” quality to the tail end of Hijack Season 2 — I think we can all agree that this probably didn’t need to be eight episodes long, and arguably didn’t need to be commissioned at all — but it’s tempered by the fact that things are really heating up. There’s a solid case to be made that Episode 7, “Contact”, is the best episode of the season thus far, bringing multiple subplots together in meaningful ways, and providing a genuinely tense and engaging suspense sequence towards the end. Sure, it’s similar to the last one, but the natty visuals and higher stakes help to sell it more.
Speaking of that previous sequence, when “Contact” picks up back on the train, it’s a little unclear what went down. Wolf definitely shot someone — it turns out to have been Jess — but I have no idea how she and Sam got back onto the train, or how Otto got the whole thing moving again without Wolf just pumping them full of bullets. But maybe the logistics aren’t really the point.
Either way, the pressing issue is that Jess is bleeding out, and Lang needs her constant confirmation that she has the situation under control. In her injured state, she’s beginning to lose faith in the idea of staying alive, since even if she somehow manages to escape, Lang will kill her anyway. For now, though, she plays ball. Not that Lang is particularly satisfied, but he has problems of his own, including a German intelligence agent, Linder, who is asking a few too many questions. Lang manages to kill him in a little room on the platform where he’s waiting with John Bailey-Brown, but it’s not something he’s going to be able to cover up for long. The clock’s ticking.
Elsewhere, Marsha manages to evade capture long enough to get in touch with O’Farrel using Nick’s phone. O’Farrel is still convinced that Stuart and the Cheapside Firm are pulling Sam’s strings, but he can’t prove it, since Stuart won’t say anything and his cell in HMP Belmarsh comes up clean, albeit with some obvious interference from a prison guard on the take. Marsha, at least until a backup police helicopter gets there, is on her own.
She does, though, manage to make another call, this time to Sam, or at least Sam’s phone, which is now in the possession of Olivia and Faber. It’s just in the nick of time, too, since Faber knows Sam is being coerced but, like O’Farrel, can’t prove it, and Winter has insisted that unless he provides some evidence that confirms this, she won’t stand GSG9 down from storming the train at the next opportunity, with Sam as the principal target. Sure, Faber and Olivia have Sam’s laptop now, but even with access to it, there’s no real way to prove who sent him the information about JBB. The sender was hiding behind all kinds of dummies and encryption, showing off a degree of tradecraft that proves the perpetrator is on the inside, perhaps even military intelligence. Disappointingly, though perhaps understandably, Faber immediately begins to suspect a German instead of his subordinate.
It’s towards the end of Hijack Season 2, Episode 7, that things really start heating up. Thanks to the damage from the explosion, the train is losing power, which means the knackered rear carriages have to be decoupled. Doing this requires Otto, Sam, and Jess to all simultaneously push a button, a process made more difficult than necessary by Jess’s increasing reticence. Luckily, Sam still has some negotiation reserves to draw on, and he’s able to convince her, but by this point, the power has been cut by GSG9, and troops are approaching the locomotive.
Sam recognised that the decoupling was a good opportunity to shed himself of a good number of the passengers, mostly the younger ones and poor, dead Petra and her grieving husband, though notably all of the schoolkids get left behind with the group Sam keeps to ensure Lang still has the leverage he needs. While all this is going on, Olivia bursts into the control room with the message that Marsha left for Sam, which proves that he is being coerced by threats against her life. Winter isn’t necessarily inclined to agree, though, and GSG9 begin making their way through the carriages.
Jess takes her opportunity and essentially commits suicide by cop, holding up her radio as if it’s a detonator so they shoot her dead. Sam is much more reserved, though. He makes it clear he isn’t armed and radios Clara one last time, warning her that killing him will result in the deaths of the hostages. Since this backs up Olivia’s claims, the power comes back, Otto gets the train moving, and GSG9 are forced to back down once again.
Two things occur in a flurry of brief closing scenes. One of them is that Beck finally catches up to Marko, who’s on a plane to Warsaw. And the second is that Stuart returns to his cell in Belmarsh and is given his suspicious bar of soap by the guard on his payroll. Inside is a little phone. Has he been pulling the strings all along after all?
