Idris Elba returns as professional negotiator Sam Nelson in Hijack season 2, premiering Wednesday on Apple TV. After preventing Flight KA29 from crashing and guiding it to a safe landing in London, Sam once again finds himself in a hostage situation — this time in Berlin on a crowded subway train.
Speaking at a press conference, director Jim Field Smith said the shift from a plane to a train was his way of starting fresh without repeating what happened in the first season.
“We wanted to explore the character through an even more challenging lens,” Field Smith said. “So we immediately started thinking of what can we do to Sam, where can we put Sam that will push him even further.”
The new setting, he said, thrusts Sam into a “physical and moral maze underground” where he’s forced to “make pretty tough decisions at every turn.”
Elba said season 2 answers questions that lingered after the plane landed in season 1. “Who, why, what, when — and what happened to Sam after?” he said, adding those questions “became part of the development of what our character could possibly go through next.”
As for why Berlin was the chosen for season 2, Field Smith listed several reasons, including his deep affection for the city, its history of resilience and secrets, and the years he lived there. He also highlighted Germany’s approach to security, along with the abandoned and “ghost” subway stations in the city, which he said “opened up a whole world of possibility.”
Most importantly, Field Smith wanted Sam somewhere where he “could physically and emotionally get lost.”
“I wanted Sam to be out of his depth and to not speak the language, not have any friends around him, not be able to contact anyone,” he said. “Dramatically, it just puts him in a much more compromised position.”
Asked for Elba’s reason for the location choice, he joked, “The subway cars are yellow.”
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
