The train hijack is the main event on Apple TV‘s Hijack Season 2, but there’s one relatively off-hand moment that was the real jaw-dropper in this week’s third episode, titled “Baggage.” Spoilers past this point, but did Hijack really kill Kai (Jude Cudjoe)? And not only kill Sam Nelson’s (Idris Elba) son, but also kill him off-screen, between seasons?
Not to waste too much time here, but the answer is: yes, Kai is dead on Hijack. And while we won’t mention any future spoilers, here’s sort of an anti-spoiler… There’s no last-second twist reveal, Kai is not in hiding, nobody is lying about him being dead, and Jude Cudjoe does not appear in Season 2 of Hijack. I only mention because after this reveal in this week’s episode, I spent the rest of the season (all episodes were provided for review by critics) going, “yeah, but not really, right?”
No, really. Despite being one of the main characters in Season 1, Kai is dead, and Cudjoe is not in the season. Huh!
To take a big step back, versus Season 1 where Sam was stuck in the middle of a plane hijack, the twist in Season 2 is that Sam is the hijacker. He’s taken control of a German U-Bahn train, and Episode 1 seemed to imply he was hot on the tail of John Bailey-Brown (Ian Burfield), one of the two men who was behind Season 1’s hijacking. Episode 2 doubled down on this as Sam’s motivation for the hijack seems to be forcing the German government to give him Bailey-Brown’s location… Which is a little confusing because while he hijacked the train, he was supposed to be having a meeting to present evidence to the German government that he had found the on-the-lamb hijacker.
Episode 3? Meaning this week’s episode? Sam continues to demand the government give him confirmation of Bailey-Brown’s location, with a deadline of 30 minutes. So what’s going on here? Is Sam just pissed off about everything he had to go through on Kingdom Airlines flight KA29? Nope. This time, it’s personal.
Olivia Thatcher (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the British Embassy employee who had helped set up the meeting with Sam, and is now hanging in the U-Bahn control room, lays it out pretty simply within the first 10 minutes of the episode. “That’s today,” Thatcher says, looking through some documents. When asked to clarify, she explains, “Nelson’s son, Kai, was killed in a car accident a year ago today. He believes Kai was murdered by John Bailey-Brown.”
“And now he wants what?” asks Chief Ada Winter (Christine Paul), the head of the Berlin Federal Police. “Justice?”
“Or… Revenge,” answers Thatcher.
Just in case Kai’s shocking death wasn’t driven home, we then get a scene of Marsha Smith-Nelson (Christine Adams), who is hiding in a cabin in the woods, sadly looking at Kai’s baby footprint and the little medical band that was on him when he was a baby in the hospital.
Back at the control room, Thatcher lays it all out, and it seems like we’ve got the full picture: Sam hijacked the train to get the Germans to give up Bailey-Brown, and Marsha is in hiding for her safety/dealing with sadness until Sam works this all out.
So is that what’s really happening? Is that our plot for the rest of the season? Sam gets Bailey-Brown from MI5 to get his revenge for the death of Kai?
…You’ve watched Hijack before, right? Midway through the episode, Sam reveals that they’re going to kill Marsha if he doesn’t do what “they” say, with a mysterious man seemingly threatening Marsha in the woods. And by episode’s end we find out Bailey-Brown is actually in the custody of MI5 being held at a safe-house in Germany, surrounded by agents, and seems completely unaware of what’s going on.
So yeah, there are more twists and turns to come. But unfortunately, Kai — and actor Jade Cudjoe — won’t be there to see them.
Hijack Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Hijack technically premiere Wednesdays on Apple TV, though given time zones in the United States new episodes will hit the service at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Tuesdays. We’ve listed the Wednesday dates below, just for posterity.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Hijack Season 2 with premiere dates.
- Wednesday, January 14, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 1
- Wednesday, January 21, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 2
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 3
- Wednesday, February 4, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 4
- Wednesday, February 11, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 5
- Wednesday, February 18, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 6
- Wednesday, February 25, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 7
- Wednesday, March 4, 2026: Hijack, Season 2, Episode 8 *Season Finale*
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