'Hijack' Adds Toby Jones to Cast for Season 2
Toby Jones in "The Long Shadow"
(Photo: Sundance Now)
Fans of Luther may be sweating the return of the brown jacket and red tie, but over on Apple TV+, Idris Elba is already back in action as filming gets underway for the second season of Hijack. Plot details for the second season are being kept tightly under wraps, which has left viewers wondering if Elba's character Sam will find himself on board another hijacked plane (something that feels a little bit of a stretch) or if he might this time wind up on a train or a bus, both of which would be a very different feel.
However, the cast has been revealed with a significant addition of Toby Jones, who is just coming off his role on PBS/ITV's Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Though in that series, Jones played an everyman leading the charge to take down a government punishing its citizens to cover up its own incompetence, Jones has played many a high-profile villain, from Marvel to Doctor Who. Season 1 did not have a major actor as an adversary, just several small-time characters who cycled through to keep viewers on their toes about who the real bad guy was.
Speculation is currently that Jones will be the new season's villain, which would also give Season 2 a very different flavor, making it more of a cat-and-mouse game. Notably, he is the only other Brit listed in the new casting line-up, marking this as definitely an international incident for the second season. Other actors revealed include German actors Lisa Vicari (Dark) and Christiane Paul (FBI: International).
An inevitable outgrowth of the binge-streaming model, Hijack returns the thriller genre to the short-lived "real-time" storytelling that was popularized by 24 in the early 2000s, where someone realized that the TV season, which at the time was standardized at 24 episodes, was the same as hours in a day so that one could (if one were insane) make a season of one-hour drama TV that technically took place over a single day.
Of course, that was not really "real-time," as it precluded anyone taking a nap, eating, drinking, or any other necessary bodily functions. However, as TV seasons are far shorter now, and (on some streaming services) release all episodes at once, doing "real-time" is far more reasonable, as Hijack Season 1 proved. Apple TV+ does not release all episodes at once; despite technically being one of the newest upstarts in the production studio world, most of its executives were culled from HBO's golden years, and fully believe in the old model.
However, with seven episodes, Season 1's airplane hijacking fit the proper flight time from Dubai to London, and the plot (despite some of the more over-the-top twists and turns) never dragged or felt like it was padding the story to fit the space allotted. It, therefore, was not that big of a surprise that Apple TV+ decided to give the series a second season once it had come up with a story worthy of doing one.
Hijack Season 2 is filming now and is expected to be released in 2025. Season 1 is streaming on Apple TV+.
