‘Hijack’ Boss Explains [Spoiler’s] Death as Sam’s Motivation

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Hijack Season 2 Episode 3, “Baggage.”]

What could motivate Sam Nelson (Idris Elba), who stopped a hijacking in the first season of this Apple TV thriller, to be the one holding hostages on an underground train in Berlin? The Wednesday, January 28, episode of Hijack reveals just that.

As is revealed, Sam and Marsha’s (Christine Adams) son, Kai (Jude Cudjoe), was killed in a car accident exactly one year ago. He believes that John Bailey-Brown (Ian Burfield), whom he wants, killed him. As creator Jim Field Smith tells TV Insider, there needed to be something that would explain Sam’s behavior and this was one of the few things that could have been the reason.

“I think for us to justify Sam making the choices that he makes in this season, there’s only really a couple of things dramatically that you can do that justify that. And as a father myself, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your children, and if those children are under threat, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do. And the idea of Sam as vengeful father is incredibly powerful, and this is a guy that’s had so much taken away from him,” Smith says. “He’s really almost in a nihilistic state of mind where he’s being selfless. He’s like, ‘I don’t care about myself. I just want answers and I want, to a certain extent, revenge.'”

But there’s more going on than meets the eye. As Sam explains to two people on the train, he’s doing this because the same people who killed his son are now threatening to kill Marsha. Smith explains, “As we discover, he is being preyed upon for that reason because he’s vulnerable and he’s being exploited because of his vulnerability. It’s a question of, can Sam turn that around and can Sam actually turn these people against themselves and still win out and also get the answers that he’s looking for? ‘Why has this happened to me?'”

Chief Ada Winter (Christiane Paul), the head of the Federal Police in Berlin, is the one in command on the other side of this hijack. She does get the rundown on Sam, including about Kai, and realizes that he didn’t kill a hostage he claimed to have. At this point, Winter does know that Sam isn’t what he’s portraying himself to be, says Paul.

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“She’s a very experienced police officer and I think she realized very quickly that he is not a bad person at all. What I’ve learned from the police guys I talked to in my preparation is if you’re taking hostages, then you’re really, really desperate. That’s the last thing you want to do,” Paul tells TV Insider. “So I think she knows immediately that there’s something in the situation that she doesn’t see the full picture of. And what she gets, I think, just only from the voice of Sam is that he is not the bad guy everybody thinks he is. So I think she believes him in some way, otherwise she has to protect her people. So this is not an easy situation for her. She tries to talk him down, to negotiate with him.”

Meanwhile, Marsha’s dealing with her grief on the anniversary of her son’s death alone — in the beginning, until she realizes that other people are there, and they may not have the best intentions — in a cabin in the woods, and her entire storyline is serving as a “counterpoint” to her ex-husband’s, Smith details.

“Obviously Marsha and Sam are very deeply connected. They share a son, obviously, and that is a source of a huge amount of grief for them in the show, and they’re both being exploited because of that grief as we discover. In terms of her world, I wanted to put her in a really earthy sort of oxygenated space because Sam is trapped in this labyrinth underground and he’s having to deal with a very grimy, dirty, mechanical world, and he’s in a city that he doesn’t know and he doesn’t speak the language, et cetera,” Smith says.

“I wanted Marsha to be essentially ostensibly, completely free. She’s out in the middle of nowhere. She’s in this beautiful epic landscape up in Scotland, and she’s looking for her own version of answers in the same way that Sam is,” he continues. “She’s trying to get peace, and hell comes to visit her. Sam is stuck in hell, but in Marsha’s world, hell comes to her.”

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Smith also wanted to change up the story for Marsha from Season 1, when she was just reacting to what was happening. “It was really interesting to me for Christine to have some real action and some real drama to play,” he shares. “I didn’t want her to be a damsel in distress. I wanted her to be this incredibly capable and independent person who, when she realizes what danger she’s in, I wanted to say, ‘No. No, I’ve had enough and you can’t come here and do this to me and I’m going to fight back.’ We really loved playing out this psychological drama with her in Scotland, with the people that come to visit her and how she handles them. There’s this own micro thriller that takes place in her world, which we really enjoyed. And like I said, having that kind of green oxygenated environment to play against the gray, snowy, mechanical environment of Berlin, just for me to have that in the palette was a really useful counterpoint.”

What did you think of the reveal about Sam and Marsha’s son? What do you think of the season so far? Let us know in the comments section below.

Hijack, Wednesdays, Apple TV