Apple TV+ ‘Hijack’ Season 2 Episode 5 Review - A Personal Take on a Tightening Spiral

I came into “Outage” with the confidence of someone who’s watched four episodes of this season’s slow-burning, character-heavy thriller and yet still found myself surprised by just how tangible the pressure feels in this installment. Right from the start, the episode doesn’t waste time reminding us that we’re deep in a high-stakes situation: the Berlin train hijack that defines Season 2 has worn away at everyone’s nerves, and with a critical systems failure and an outage cutting off key communications both inside and outside the train the tension is carved a little deeper into every face on screen.

What I appreciate most about “Outage” is its confidence in its own pacing, even as pressure mounts. The way it allows moments of silence, gagged by the blackout’s creeping fear, to hang before cutting to something more urgent demonstrates real craft. Cinematography and direction here are subtle, but effective: shadows in the subway’s cavernous tunnels feel oppressive without being showy, and moments of close-contact panic among the passengers are framed in a way that keeps them affecting rather than distracting. Idris Elba’s Sam Nelson carries those moments with a steady, measured performance that anchors the episode tonally, even on its most harrowing beats.

There’s a lot to like about how this episode expands on what the season has already seeded. Before the outage, we’ve gotten bits and pieces suggesting that the hijacking isn’t a random act of terror but something more orchestrated, tied to a broader, dangerous network that has leverage over the people on board. In “Outage,” that context finally collides with immediate survival realities. Seeing passenger frustration leak out into open conflict humanizes them; these aren’t just extras passing through a set, they’re people we’ve glimpsed and started to understand over the weeks. Writing them as individuals who snap at one another and lash out at authority in the dark was a smart choice, and it pays off in a scene where a group’s shared fear flares into outright confrontation.

That said, while I enjoy the episode’s focus on character tension and layered plotting, there are moments where the narrative feels like it’s straining a bit to maintain mystery. The choice to drop the communications tools that help the audience orient themselves — phones, radios, tracking feeds — works well to heighten anxiety within the story, but it also leaves the viewer untethered in a way that borders on confusion. There were times when I found myself needing to double-take to remember who had which piece of information, who was separated from whom, and how certain developments tied back to the larger conspiracy the season has been hinting at. This kind of storytelling reward — forcing the audience to piece things together — is absolutely a valid approach, but in “Outage” it occasionally tips from clever into self-indulgent.

Performances across the supporting cast continue to be strong. In particular, the way minor characters react to the outage — some with quiet desperation, others with brittle denial — adds texture to what could otherwise be a thinly sketched ensemble. There’s a scene late in the episode where the lights flicker back on briefly, and the collective sigh that fills the car feels real in a way that few shows achieve without prompting. It’s a small moment, but it underscored for me how invested I am in these people and not just the incident that has befallen them.

The writing team deserves credit for balancing the personal and the procedural. Sam’s arc in “Outage” juxtaposes his internal reckoning — with his own motivations for being involved in this crisis and the ghosts of what happened in Season 1 — against the very real need to make quick, consequential decisions in the absence of reliable data. It’s in these sequences that the episode feels closest to its best: every word Sam chooses feels weighted, every strategy he proposes feels plausible yet perilous.

But again, there’s a case to be made that the episode tries a little too hard in places to maintain narrative opacity. Some of the conspiratorial hints meant to deepen the mystery about who’s behind the hijacking and why come off as vague rather than intriguingly ambiguous. For a show that’s otherwise very good at giving the audience just enough to chew on, this was a rare moment where I wanted a touch more clarity or a clearer signpost toward what’s coming.

Visually and tonally, “Outage” stands out as one of the more distinctive episodes of the season so far. The lighting design — stark, low-key, punctuated by flickers of operational systems — mirrors the characters’ emotional states. And yet this strength also highlights a structural weakness: showrunner decisions about how much to reveal, when to cut scenes, and how much to rely on silence as a storytelling device sometimes feel like they’re pulling against the current rather than with it. When it works, it creates a rarefied sense of dread; when it doesn’t, it drifts into obfuscation.

Ultimately, what keeps me watching — and what makes me optimistic about the second half of the season — is the way “Outage” forces the characters, and by extension the viewer, to confront a shifting landscape where control is an illusion and every choice has tangible consequences. There are times when the episode’s commitment to mood over momentum may test patience, but the seasoned performances, sharp writing in quieter moments, and a willingness to explore the psychological impact of crisis make it compelling. For all its minor frustrations, this installment reminded me why I care about these characters and why I’m eager to see how their story resolves once the lights, both literal and figurative, come fully back on.

Final Score- [7/10]