I didn’t watch Hijack back in 2023, even though it had a ton of people talking about it each week. It was the most I’ve seen people talk about Idris Elba on a television show since 2004, when season three of The Wire was on, and he was still on that show. So I decided to dive in, finally, and watch season one and go right into season two. In Hijack, we have our guy Idris Elba playing a man named Sam Nelson, a very unlucky man who loves his ex-wife and ends up on an airplane that is hijacked by a group of mysterious and unassuming-looking people. Since this is a review of season two, let’s just go with the fact that Sam Nelson was successful at ending the hijacking of the plane and stopping the bad guys.
We start season two a few years after the events of season one, with Sam in such a darker place. We don’t know why, but he’s in Germany and in a train station trying to get on a train while his ex-wife, Marsha (Christine Adams), is out in a cabin in the woods of Scotland away from the world. What makes this season different is that, for some reason, Sam hijacks the train, and most of the season is learning the reason why and how he tries to make sure no one dies. So when I started the season, I was like, really, this is where we’re going. First, now we’re on a train? Oh, he’s the “hijacker” now ugh I guess. Yet through Elba’s performance, I was brought in. The early episodes of the season are slow; I did lose some attention to my phone at times, but by episode three, I was locked in.
Elba is still captivating as Sam Nelson, and you get interested in why he’s doing what he’s doing with a different type of mystery than last year. I do feel the train passengers aren’t as enjoyable as the plane passengers from the first season. I like that Christine Adams gets a lot more to do and a more parallel journey. While not much mystery, it does give you the vibes of the early days of the show 24, when Jack Bauer’s daughter has this wild adventure. The police procedural parts felt a bit aimless in how they connected to the main plot line, while seeing Max Beesley return as DI Daniel O’Farre is a welcome sight later in the season.
I think a standout in the second season is Clare-Hope Ashitey as Olivia Thatcher, a person who works at the British embassy in Berlin. Her character seems to be focused the most on figuring out why Sam is in his predicament, and Ashitey’s performance is very good. The character is very focused and proper while disarmingly nice in some scenes, with a calm niceness in her body language. She feels like the audience stands in character, as she wants to know why things are the way they are with Sam after the events of the first season. She’s paired mostly with Toby Jones, who plays British Intelligence officer Peter Faber. Jones gives a good performance, one I’d expect from him.
The season builds well into the later episodes of the season as each thread comes together, and it starts to reach its climax with a bunch of twists and turns that are fun. As I said earlier, it’s not as good as the first season because of its slow start, but it’s a very entertaining season once that momentum builds. With Hijack being like a brainy Die Hard, Idris Elba is still able to hold our attention as hero Sam Nelson, who has to outsmart everyone to figure out how to save as many people as possible while solving the mystery. This season will be a great watch in this cold and early part of 2026.
Rating: B
Level of Enthusiasm: 50%
