29 Burning Questions Following the ‘Hijack’ Season Finale

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Idris Elba may be done portraying Sam Nelson for Apple TV+ (for now?), but that doesn’t mean all of our questions about his series have been answered

In “Brace Brace Brace,” Wednesday’s season finale of Hijack, Idris Elba’s ultra-persuasive Sam Nelson unsurprisingly saves the day. Thanks to some snake charming by the cool, calm, and collected protagonist, Kingdom Airlines Flight KA29 touches down safely, if far from smoothly, in London after a fraught trip from Dubai. The Apple TV+ series sticks the landing, too, albeit with some seat-belt-sign-worthy bumps in believability. The seven-part depiction of a seven-hour journey, drip-fed one episode per week following the two-part premiere, hit the summer sweet spot as a star-fronted thriller that was equal parts exciting and silly. It also left a lot of loose ends, unexplored backstories, and perplexing plot twists to explain. So while we wait for news about a possible second season—and in honor of the fateful flight’s number—here are 29 questions about Hijack that have hijacked my mind.

1. Did everyone on the plane forget about the first officer? Did Hijack’s creators hope we would too? Anna Kovacs appears early in the finale, holding a big bag of phones and still sporting the bruises and blood from being bashed in the head with a thermos by her philandering captain. But she’s conspicuously absent from the climax, when her skills are sorely needed to land the plane. Granted, Amanda doesn’t want to let anyone except Sam into the cockpit, lest the other passengers punish her for taking control, but surely Sam could use his Jedi mind tricks to talk her and the mob into a détente to trade an “aviation consultant” who used to be in the Navy for someone who’s certified to fly an airliner. I would’ve wanted Kovacs at the controls, and after the way Captain Allen did her dirty, it would’ve been nice for the first officer to have her hero moment.

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2. Speaking of Amanda: Why did she shoot the pilot? I’m not crying for Captain Allen, whose infidelity and selfishness helped put the plane in its predicament, but what purpose did killing him on final approach serve, for either Amanda or the supposed criminal masterminds holding her family hostage?

3. Does anyone work for the Cheapside Firm for a reason other than “If I don’t do this, they’ll kill my family”? Someone must do it for the pay and benefits, or the flexible hours, or because they believe in the firm’s mission, right? Or does the entire near-omniscient operation depend on threatening employees on pain of death? Are the fake-cleaner killers showing up at people’s houses because fake-cleaner killers are at their houses, holding their families hostage?

4. How will John Bailey-Brown—the surviving Cheapside Firm fugitive—get out of the country? Or does he think he can safely lie low in the area because Detective Daniel is one of the only police officers in England? (Or law enforcement officials, period. Remember, the hijackers were identified only because Zahra broke protocol to ask her ex for his input.) Is John so confident because he and Edgar easily evaded pursuit by switching to a car conveniently (and presciently!) left in a spot that they drove to only after running into a roadblock?

5. Speaking of which, when Detective Daniel is worried that Sam’s son is in danger, he drives all the way to Sam’s flat from a place that looks like this:

Was there no one already in the city he could have called? Even when Sam’s son confirms that he’s being held hostage, Detective Daniel doesn’t contact a colleague to help. Instead, he’s like, “Now I’m switching on my siren.”

6. Then again, I can see why he’d have an “If you want a job done right, do it yourself” attitude, what with the conduct of the cop who answers Kai’s distress call. “Someone called for help from this apartment, and the guy who answered the door—who isn’t the owner—is acting suspicious, holding his hand behind his back, and wearing a Dexter Morgan–style slaughtering outfit … but he says the call didn’t come from here, so I guess I’ll go check the other apartments.” Is that proper policing procedure?

7. Oh, and while that cop wasn’t coming to Kai’s rescue, why did Kai wander out of his hiding spot and into the room where the other assassin was standing? Keep hiding! Call for help! Talk the cleaners out of killing you, like your dad would do!

8. Come to think of it, did the villains really have to send assassins to menace Sam’s family? Couldn’t they have just, I don’t know, shot him or tied him up or something? Less elaborate, and a lot less entertaining on TV, but maybe more effective.

9. While we’re (sort of) on the subject of Detective Daniel’s driving, why did he drive right behind John and Edgar after they were released from prison, even though (a) they warned him not to tail them, (b) they were about to be under drone surveillance, and (c) their vehicle had a GPS tracker? (Also: Did it even make sense for the cops to try to recapture the ringleaders while the hijackers were still in charge of the plane?)

10. I get why John ordered the death of Edgar, who got a little too into his side gig as a day trader. (From the sound of it, offing Edgar was always part of the plan; there’s no honor among thieves.) But after John’s long-haired henchman executes Edgar, why doesn’t John send Amanda a text to tell her she can land? One minute he’s urging Edgar, “She needs an answer,” and the next, he’s driving off without giving her one. Why was it so urgent to kill Edgar if John was content to let the plane crash too? “As soon as we’re over London, it’s meant to be finished,” Amanda says. “That’s what I don’t understand.” Me neither!

11. Notwithstanding the extenuating circumstances, Amanda would probably be in a bit of hot water, no? Sure, the home secretary gave her a verbal pardon, and she did save everyone with a valiant landing, but she also endangered everyone by hijacking the plane in the first place. Amanda also murdered a dude! I’m not saying she’d face prosecution—she could probably win with a “duress” defense—but I’m not sure she could just walk off the plane, sail straight through baggage claim, and head home to Elodie (who’s lucky to be alive).

12. Why was anyone walking off the plane, for that matter? I’ve watched enough pre-flight safety videos to know how many ways one can exit an aircraft in an emergency. You’re telling me the only way to get out of this smoking plane is to descend the same stairway that the special ops people are trying to climb?

I’m having a hard time believing that a plane full of stressed-out, peckish passengers would proceed in such an orderly fashion toward a single exit. Wasn’t this the perfect time to deploy those fun escape slides?

13. I know there wasn’t much warning about where the plane would land, but didn’t the spec ops people at least look at headshots of the hijackers before they showed up on the scene? They couldn’t tell the difference between two bearded men in their mid-40s?

14. When Sam is about to deplane, he runs into a random flight attendant who, to the best of my knowledge, we haven’t seen for the whole flight:

Evidently, an Airbus A330-300 typically carries six to eight flight attendants, so there might have been more than we met in flight, but if so, where the hell was he hiding?

15. For the post-landing, one-on-one showdown between Sam and lead hijacker Stuart to even take place, the latter has to be free to move about the cabin. But how can he escape his restraints? Here’s how: Those aging lads who had been so gung ho about attacking the hijackers decide to untie him so he can join the effort to kick down the cockpit door. Guys, there are hundreds of people on this plane! Couldn’t you go ask one of the non-hijackers to help?

(Sidenote: The FAA recently required all U.S. commercial aircraft to install a secondary cockpit door so that hijackers can’t break into the cockpit when a pilot steps out to pee. Unfortunately, this doesn’t solve the problem of a pilot who lets the hijackers in because he’s having an affair with a flight attendant, a plot device Hijack shares with 2019’s 7500.)

16. Did you know that the hoodie Stuart wears the whole flight can, as of this writing, be bought for $29.99 on eBay? According to Uniqlo, it’s “surprisingly stretchy and wicks away sweat easily,” which makes it “great for sports or casual outings.” Or hijackings. (If Terry’s Hawaiian shirt is your favorite fit from the hijacking crew, it can be yours for $5 less.)

17. I know a ton of effort went into building a plane-sized set, but realistic as it looked, one thing seemed un-flight-like. Did anyone use the bathroom on this seven-hour journey, aside from as a place to stash dead bodies, whip out concealed weapons, and leave blanks lying around for some reason?

18. Remember when the captain takes forever to find the Wi-Fi on/off switch in the first episode, excusing himself by saying that he usually flies the A330-200, not the A330-300? And then, later on, we get a glimpse of the controls, and there’s a clearly labeled “WIFI” toggle right above his head?

Maybe he was stalling on purpose—giving Sam just enough time to send an unnecessarily vague text about an “incident”—but on Hijack, it’s sometimes tough to distinguish between bravery and incompetence. After all, he could’ve used the squawk code for a hijacking before opening the door.

19. Another cockpit question: Why did the hijackers let the first officer keep talking to Budapest air traffic control in Hungarian, a language none of the hijackers understood, even though the air traffic controllers also spoke English?

20. Did KA29 really deviate far enough from its flight plan during that Budapest detour for the engines to flame out before the plane reached the runway in London? I’m no aviation expert, but large airliners carry quite a bit of fuel in reserve. I’ve been in some pretty interminable holding patterns, and we didn’t have to glide to the ground. (To be fair, that has happened.)

21. I know Lewis is supposed to be a sweetheart, especially by hijacker standards, but isn’t it a little unusual that the wallpaper on a grown man’s phone is a photo of his mom?

Not his whole family, mind you—just his mom. Of course, she is willing to walk into traffic to protect her family, so I suppose having her on his home screen is the least Lewis can do. Poor Lewis; if only there had been a medical kit on board. Wait, planes are equipped with medical kits? Oh.

22. In the universe of this series, how many morning-show interviews, memoirs, documentaries, true-crime podcasts, and dramatized movies will be made about Flight KA29? And how will Sam be perceived when the other passengers start TikToking about how he handed a hijacker’s gun back to him and, at one point, was sitting in the cockpit with the first officer but opted not to close and lock the door?

23. I’ve mostly spared the U.K. government from scrutiny here because, hey, the home and foreign secretaries have a tough call to make. The prime minister is AFK, the home secretary isn’t the first government official to free prisoners in response to hijackers’ demands, and no plan survives contact with the enemy. Still, the powers that be seem a smidge unprepared for this situation. Why not consult with some hijacking experts? Hell, the Romanians were itching to shoot down the plane before it even started descending toward Bucharest, but the Brits were willing to let it plow into downtown London.

Granted, the Romanians didn’t have the same skin in the game, but former real-life U.K. prime minister Tony Blair once “came quite close” to ordering a passenger plane shot down just because it wasn’t responding to ATC. In KA29’s case, the aircraft was confirmed to be under a hijacker’s control. If we’re judging the process, not the results, are we sure they shouldn’t have shot it down? You can’t count on Sam Nelson to thwart every disaster. Or can you? (I smell a franchise.)

24. How does the ordeal that the passengers and crew of KA29 endured compare to your worst air-travel experience? On the one hand, the Wi-Fi wasn’t working, there was no in-flight meal, and three people perished en route. On the plus side, there were no crying babies and no lines for the bathroom, and the flight arrived roughly on time. It could’ve been way worse.

25. Why is Sam so good at everything? (Because he’s a fictional character played by Idris Elba, I know—but I’m asking for an in-universe explanation.) Not just speaking, observing, and dealing with pressure, skills that are ostensibly crucial to his very vaguely described job. (Let’s pretend that explains how he insinuates himself into every conversation and scene, even though he’s supposed to stay in his seat and stop talking.) Why is he such a skilled fighter? Why is he better at performing a thoracostomy than an actual doctor? How did he acquire this very particular set of skills, and is his all-around prowess wasted in the corporate world?

26. Speaking of Sam’s very vaguely described job: In the first episode, Detective Daniel asks Kai, “What exactly does your dad do for a living?” (“It’s difficult to explain,” Kai responds.) Detective Daniel has been dating Marsha for months, at minimum. He hasn’t asked what her ex and child’s father does?

27. The tragedy of Sam Nelson: The man can talk criminals into letting him help with a hijacking, but he can’t talk Marsha into taking him back. Any successful romantic relationship requires negotiation, at which Sam is the master. So what did he do to drive her away? How and when did the mesmerizing power of his steely gaze wear off? How could anyone resist someone with the confidence to travel between Dubai and his bachelor pad without luggage and leave valuable jewelry in the overhead compartment?

28. Why is the one American character on the plane the only person so unpleasant that she has no one to call when she’s about to die? I feel attacked. Is Hijack trying to tell me that if you devote yourself to your career, you’ll die alone, but if you commit yourself to your family, you’ll hog all the overhead storage and learn nothing from the fact that a woman you were rude to died trying to find your daughter?

29. “This hijack is over!” Sam shouts in the opening minutes of Hijack’s season finale. “It’s over!” It wasn’t over yet, though: One hijack had ended, but another had just begun. Hijack (the series) is seemingly over too, but the show was successful enough that Elba is open to returning, with the caveat that he wouldn’t want the premise to be another hijack. That could pose a problem, given the name of the show. For me, the hijack component seems nonnegotiable—if there is such a thing where Sam Nelson is concerned—but I’d be willing to let Sam be the bad guy this time, or to find himself on some other mode of transportation. I need to know more about this man of mystery. Which is why, after all these nitpicks, I’ll close with my most pressing question: When does Season 2 start?

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