The first two episodes of Hijack see four people hijacking a plane while a passenger, Sam, tries to win their trust as well as alert the authorities. The episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+.
Episode 1 recap: Final Call
The episode starts with passengers boarding a Kingdom Airlines flight from Dubai to London. A man named Sam is one of the passengers. He gets off on the wrong foot with Hugo, the passenger sitting next to him.
Once the flight takes off, a young girl, Naomi, goes to the washroom and finds a bullet there. She shows it to her friends and also to another passenger who has been kind to her. This man takes the bullet and goes to show it to the cabin crew.
It turns out that he is one of the people who plan to hijack the plane. His name is Terry, and instead of informing the cabin crew, he informs his companion about it. They are forced to change their plan and hijack the plane right away, not three hours later.
Sam observes Terry talking to his companion. He gets suspicious and leaves his seat to find out what is going on. Naomi’s friend also does not believe Terry’s lies and decides to talk to the cabin crew herself.
This is when four hijackers take control of the plane and collect everyone’s phones to prevent them from alerting the authorities. A cabin crew member alerts the first officer, and the captain contacts Dubai ATC about the incident.
The hijackers know that another cabin crew member, Colette, has been having an affair with the captain, and they use her to convince the captain to open the cockpit door. The first officer tries to stop him, but the captain injures her and succeeds in opening the door, giving the hijackers access to the cockpit.
The hijackers then force the captain to assure Dubai ATC that it was a false alarm and that everything is alright. They also get the captain to switch off the wifi.
However, just before the captain does that, Sam, who was able to hide his phone from the hijackers because he was not in his allocated seat, sends a message to his wife and informs her about the incident.
Sam’s wife, Marsha, does not wish to be with him any longer. She is dating Daniel, a detective, and this bothers her son, Kai. When Marsha gets the message, she talks to Kai as well as Daniel, who asks Marsha for the flight details.
She also tells Daniel that Sam handles negotiations for big companies, as he is the best at handling negotiations. On the flight, Sam willingly gives his phone to the hijackers and offers to side with them.
Episode 2 recap: 3 Degrees
Sam tells the hijackers that he will help them if anything goes wrong because he wants to get back to his family safely. Stuart, the hijacker in charge, takes a photo of Sam’s passport and asks him to go back to his seat.
Daniel contacts his ex-girlfriend, Zahra, who works in counterterrorism, and asks her to find out if there has been an incident on Sam’s flight. At the same time, the operator at Dubai ATC, Abdullah, still feels uneasy despite the captain’s assurance that there is no security incident.
Two men on the plane decide to take the hijackers down. They manage to snatch the gun from one of the hijackers, and Sam gets this gun, but instead of helping his co-passengers, he hands it over to the hijackers. The two men are then tied up by the hijackers.
When Dubai ATC gets a call from London regarding the incident on the flight, as they cannot contact the flight themselves because the flight is not in their air space yet and the wifi has been switched off, Abdullah decides to investigate on his own.
Sam convinces the hijackers that they need to remove the captain from the cockpit because he does not need to be there and that he can create problems. The captain is brought to the first class and made to sit in the seat close to Sam’s.
Zahra calls Daniel to tell him what she has heard, and Daniel tells Marsha that it was a false alarm and that Sam is fine. Meanwhile, Sam invites the captain to play a game that allows people to chat with their opponents.
Abdullah goes to check the security footage and sees that the security personnel on duty was Neela, a woman who is very good at her job. Neela earlier got a call from her frantic husband and instantly went home.
Abdullah sees Neela leaving in a hurry and is later told that she left because she was sick, which makes Abdullah even more suspicious. He knows Neela, so he decides to visit her house.
The pilot tells Sam that soon the plane will enter Iraq’s airspace, and the ATC will contact the plane. If they do not receive a reply, they will contact Iraq’s military.
When Baghdad ATC contacts the plane, Sam tells the hijackers that the captain needs to speak to the ATC because if they do not get a response, the Iraqi military will shoot the plane down.
The hijackers make the first officer speak to Baghdad ATC, but they get suspicious and ask to speak to the captain. Sam makes a show of forcing the captain to talk to the ATC and tell them that nothing is amiss.
A woman named Alice, who works at London ATC, comes to work late. When she is told about Kingdom Airlines’ false alarm and the fact that they also got a call from counterterrorism, she thinks that something is wrong and convinces her coworkers as well.
As the plane’s wifi is off, London ATC contacts Baghdad ATC and asks them to share the flight’s path with them. Alice immediately notices that there is a deviation and asks another coworker about it.
Her coworker tells her that before 9/11, planes often veered off course, but that is monitored tightly now. Veering off course is considered a signal to inform people on the ground that something has happened to the plane. The plane has been shifted three degrees off its course, which means that someone is calling for help.
It turns out this was planned by Sam. He sent the captain to the cockpit to speak to Baghdad ATC, not to help the hijackers but to give the captain a chance to change the course.
At the same time, Abdullah reaches Neela’s house and sees cleaners there. They tell him that Neela is upstairs, where Abdullah finds the bodies of Neela and her husband. The men posing as cleaners then kill Abdullah as well.
Review
- It takes Hijack not more than one episode to get the audience invested. The show begins on the right note, and so far, it seems like it is going to be a great thriller.
- Sam’s character is quite intriguing. It is not hard to guess which side he is on, but he still keeps the audience guessing what his next move is going to be.
- In the first two episodes, only a few characters are introduced properly. It was a good decision, as it not only prevents the first episodes from being stuffed with too many names and characters but also makes the audience curious about a lot of them.
- Unlike many other thrillers that try to end their episodes with something interesting, Hijack actually succeeds in doing that. If the endings of all its episodes continue to be this interesting, the audience might not want to stop watching it.
Hijack season 1 episodes 1 & 2
Director:
Jim Field Smith
Date Created:
2023-06-30 14:05
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