The tension and intrigue continue to build around the unique U-Bahn hostage situation in AppleTV’s thriller series, Hijack, with the protagonist’s conscience finally having been cleared in the previous episode. Although it had once seemed like the heroic Sam Nelson had now suddenly taken a Berlin U-Bahn train hostage to get hold of the man responsible for the murder of his son, last week’s episode 3 confirmed that there was actually a second layer to the hijacking, as a set of villains were forcing Sam to conduct the horrible crime. Season 2 episode 4 presents a significant decision taken by the Berlin Police and also reveals the real killer of the only casualty so far, Freddie.
Spoiler Alert
How do the authorities react to Freddie’s death?
Hijack season 2 episode 3 had ended with the most devastating development for the German authorities, as the hijacked train had left behind the first dead body, that of a passenger named Freddie. The British intelligence officer, Peter Faber, had gone to the station in order to hold negotiations with the supposed hijacker, Sam Nelson, but had to return empty-handed, or worse, with the dead body of the first casualty in the hostage situation. Just like the bomb at Alexanderplatz, which was later found to have been just a smoke bomb used as a decoy, had scared the authorities terribly, the dead body of Freddie also terrorizes the Berlin Police, and their chief, Ada Winter, for she fears for the safety of the other passengers. While she might have questioned Sam’s claims otherwise, the dead body obviously leaves no room for any doubt.
Therefore, the authorities feel like the best way to approach the situation still would be to continue following Sam’s orders and try to fulfill his demands at the earliest. Ada’s deputy, Roland Murnau, warns her that handing over John Bailey-Brown to the hijacker might well be considered state-sanctioned murder, as Sam will surely kill the man once he gets his hands on him. But Ada feels that turning down the hijacker would cause even more chaos and bloodshed, and so she believes it would be best to at least start the process of getting Bailey-Brown to the train. Her plan is to tell Sam that arrangements are being made for him to get hold of his target so that she can buy more time to come up with different countermeasures.
Thus, Ada gets in touch with her team and orders for John Bailey-Brown to be picked up from the MI5 safehouse and be prepared to be handed over to Sam on the train. Before that, though, she needs to figure out a station on the U-Bahn network where the hand-off can be carried out, as the sensitive act needs to be executed at a space far from the prying eyes of the public and the media. Since the news of the bombing and the possible hijacking are already being covered by mainstream media, Ada does not want them to discover the fact that the authorities are simply handing over a man to the perpetrator, giving in to the demands of the hijacker. The manager at the railway control center, Edward Diehl, comes up with a solution to this problem, as he proposes that the handover be executed at an old station named Bergmanstrasse, which had been closed many years ago. Since the station had already been closed before electronic advancements were installed in the underground network, there are no security cameras at the place, and there’s definitely no chance of any passenger or employee being there.
Thus, Bergmanstrasse is decided as the spot where the authorities will hand over Bailey-Brown to Sam in the hopes that the protagonist will end the hijack situation and let the passengers safely leave the train. Sam is informed of the plan as well, while the convict is picked up from the MI5 safehouse by a team of Berlin Police, led by Deputy Chief Roland Murnau himself. Interestingly, Peter Faber makes one last-ditch attempt to stop this development and to take Bailey-Brown to his private plane before the German officials step in. He still makes it seem like the real perpetrators aboard the hijacked U-Bahn train specifically want the criminal only so that they can free him and lead him to safety, and so he wants to ensure that the man is extradited to England instead. But Murnau gets to the man first, and he is driven towards Bergmanstrasse.
Olivia Thatcher, the British embassy employee, informs Ada Winter how Sam Nelson had been in contact with her and had been so close to approaching the Bailey-Brown situation legally, questioning why he suddenly went rogue, but the police chief believes that he must have had a change of heart. As of now, it seems most likely that someone had gotten wind of Sam’s personal vendetta against Bailey-Brown and roped him into executing a hijacking for them so that they can help the convict escape while blaming the whole matter on the professional negotiator.
How does Mei try to be of help?
Aboard the train, the passengers had learned that they were being held hostage at the end of the previous episode, and so Sam now steps out of the driver’s cabin to directly have a word with them. He tells the passengers that he has hijacked the train, which also has bombs fitted under one of the carriages, and orders them to not try anything unnecessarily stupid. Whoever had killed Freddie has seemingly disappeared for now, meaning that they want to remain hidden and make it all look like the doing of Sam alone. Hence, it is natural that both the authorities and the passengers believe him to be the sole hijacker. Sam forces everyone to throw their phones out of the train, and this is when his old contact, Mei Tan, with whom he had apparently worked on a business deal in the past, tries to make herself useful. Perhaps because of their past acquaintance and a sense of conviction in the man stemming from it, Mei refuses to believe that Sam had killed Freddie, and she tries to tell him the same by typing it on her phone. Despite the protagonist refusing to pay any heed to her words, Mei then continues to try and make herself useful to him for the rest of the episode.
The young woman is primarily convinced that someone else had killed Freddie, because she had seen a different man, the long-haired one we have been seeing for quite some time, returning from the direction of the driver’s cabin. With the ongoing hijacking, the passengers have all moved back a carriage, meaning that there is one entire empty carriage between them and the driver’s cabin. Just like Mei, we too had been shown that the man suspiciously slid into the empty compartment and then out of it when the power had momentarily gone out. Since he was the only one to have made it back into the passenger’s compartment from towards the driver’s cabin, Mei tries to tell Sam that she believes him to be innocent, essentially trying to help him out in the situation. But as he fears messing up the enforced operation, Sam simply avoids Mei, which makes her even more determined to investigate the matter by herself.
Mei first shares her theory with another passenger, a professional medic named Jess, who finds it to be too far-fetched, and states her belief about Sam being the only perpetrator. Soon after, an elderly woman warns Mei to be more careful, suggesting that her theory about the long-haired man being the perpetrator might not be completely true. Seemingly confused and somewhat irritated, she walks into the empty compartment by herself and is able to find some blood stains under a seat. She immediately tries to check on the matter and is able to pull out a small bag but is cornered by the long-haired man. By the time the whole matter becomes clear, it is evident that Mei (and we too) had been wrong, or had been misled, about the identity of the perpetrator. The man had simply been carrying stashes of multiple illegal drugs in his bag, and when he learned of the hijacking, he feared that the police might get on the train to investigate, and so he ended up hiding the bag under the seat. Like Mei, he too had cut his hand on the sharp grille under the seat, and this explains the blood stains. It was only for this reason that he had walked up to the empty compartment, meaning that he is not the murderer, after all.
Who had sent the man to Marsha’s cabin, and why?
In the previous episode, Marsha’s cabin in the woods, somewhere in rural Scotland, suddenly had an unwanted visitor, whom she had attacked bravely with a metal rod before she was ultimately taken down by him. In this episode, it is revealed that the visitor is a friendly man named Nick, who has been sent by her boyfriend, Daniel, the Metropolitan Police officer. After Marsha had called him to ask whether he had sent her the flowers, Daniel had suspected something was up, and so he had contacted an old friend in Scotland, Nick, requesting to check up on his girlfriend. Therefore, Nick now briefs Daniel about what had just happened, and the situation simmers down for some time. But things become intense once more very quickly when Daniel learns about Sam Nelson’s involvement in the train hijacking in Berlin.
Seemingly because he has enough conviction that Sam himself would never do such a horrible crime and that he is under pressure from some hardened criminals, Daniel figures out that Marsha would naturally be in danger, and so he asks Nick to drive her away from the spot. However, since Sam had already received a threatening photo of his wife at the cabin, and Nick is not the bad guy, there is definitely someone at the place working with the perpetrators. Ultimately, it is revealed that the apparently friendly neighbors who had been regularly running across Marsha are the real villains, as they kill Nick. Although Marsha has left the cabin by now, she is still in the woods, meaning that she is still very much in danger.
Will Zoran Beck’s investigation help solve the mystery?
The Berlin Police detective, Zoran Beck, continues his investigation after having found out about the bomb on the train in the previous episode. He now goes through the security camera footage at Berlin station in search of further clues, while the railway police employee, Leon, continues to pester him by talking about his extreme interest in becoming a detective. Eventually, Zoran stumbles upon the strange minor detail that had looked suspicious in the very first episode of this season. Having walked into the Berlin U-5 station, and before following the orders of the criminals and getting on the train, Sam Nelson had bought a can of soda from the vending machine, only to toss it into a bin, without even opening the can. To make the matter even more suspicious, Sam had chosen that particular vending machine because it was close to a security camera. Zoran watches the footage and immediately heads to the machine to further investigate, with Leon tagging along. The detective believes that Sam might have done something, possibly left some clues, on the can of soda, and so he fishes it out of the trash bin, but it is Leon who luckily makes the breakthrough. Sam had actually hidden an important message inside the dispensing tray, which he could access for a few seconds when he bought the soda. Then, he had thrown the unopened can into the bin to draw the attention of the authorities, basically to indirectly tell them to search the area. Inside the dispensing tray is a coaster from a bar in Berlin, called The Foxhole, where Sam had possibly been forced into working for the real perpetrators. This means that Detective Zoran Beck will head to the Foxhole bar in the next episode, and he will most likely be the first to figure out that Sam is being forced to carry out the hijacking.
Why does Sam let the baby off the train?
While walking through the passenger compartments, throwing everyone’s phones out of the train, Sam comes across a young man, Timo, and his infant son, Benji, who are in duress because of the hijacking situation. Benji is asthmatic, and he has been crying incessantly for a long time now, indicating that the baby is falling sick. Timo, unfortunately, is not carrying his son’s medication, as they were supposed to travel in the U-Bahn for only 20 minutes, meaning that it is crucial for Benji to be given his medication soon, or the baby might be in significant danger. Soon, Sam decides to let the baby off the train and informs Clara Berger of the situation, asking her to make necessary arrangements for the handover of the baby.
Although the act might make him look sensitive and kind, both of which might hamper his hijacking, Sam does not care about how he will be perceived, at least in this context, and chooses to help the baby. After all, the primary reason for him being mixed up in all this is that he had lost his son a year back, and so he perhaps sympathizes with Timo as well, understanding how helpless a father feels when their child is in danger. Ultimately, the baby’s mother is brought to a service stop in the underground rail network, where the handover of the baby is completed safely. Sam lets little Benji leave, but holds Timo back in order to keep the authorities under pressure until his demands are fulfilled.
Who had actually killed Freddie?
Especially in Hijack season 2 episode 4, the passenger who also happens to be a professional medic, Jess, becomes almost like a representative of all the passengers in the train, as the hijacker, Sam Nelson, also trusts her enough to be part of certain important situations. Sam also remains concerned about finding exactly who had murdered Freddie in the driver’s cabin when he and Otto had stepped out. Although the cabin has a security camera, its footage can be accessed only on specific machines that can decrypt the data. Therefore, for now, Sam has to rely on his hunch, and after the interactions with Mei, he realizes that whoever had murdered Freddie must have climbed off the train from the driver’s cabin and then must have gotten back on from the last compartment. He is sure of this, because Mei had seen only the long-haired man walk back from towards the driver’s cabin, and he had obviously gone to hide his stash of drugs in the empty compartment. Therefore, Sam is on the lookout for the perpetrator when he notices two crucial details, the first being a sharp piece of metal jutting out from the body of the train near the gate on the driver’s cabin. The second is a torn patch on Jess’ jacket shoulder, which was seemingly not there before. This almost confirms that it was Jess who must have murdered Freddie, climbed off the train, and then gotten back on from the back to avoid any suspicion. This not only puts Sam in danger but also, more importantly, Mei in a fix, as she had mistakenly chosen to trust Jess, the real perpetrator.
