REVIEW: ‘Hijack’ Episode 3 — “Draw A Blank”

Now in the third hour of their seven-hour hijacked flight, KA29’s restlessness is growing. As a passenger comes up with the assumption that the guns are loaded with blanks thanks to his military training, Sam (Idris Elba) and Robin’s (Ben Miles) chat through the plane’s intranet game is discovered, and British counter-terrorism is finally taking the threat seriously. Schrödinger’s cat is the central element of Hijack Episode 3, “Draw a Blank.”

Accented by Sam’s ex-wife giving a lecture about this element of quantum mechanics, the passengers of KA29 have a dilemma. They’re petty sure that there are only blanks in the guns, but they won’t know until it’s pushed to the point where they have to find out. While Sam has created a report with the hijackers, that’s gone now, as he takes the chance to launch a counterattack. But the climactic moments of Hijack Episode 3 are spread out far enough that their impact is felt. A masterclass in building up tension and executing it, Hijack is proving to be a series that excels in pacing, thanks to its unique in-real-time format.

Every moment is important to the narrative, and once you realize that you can’t stop picking apart each exchange between passengers, each reference to a theme that may or may not matter, and you watch each face of every character as the camera pans across them. This is a series about how small decisions and little details build up over time. How each choice impacts the next, and how the passengers each grow increasingly desperate. That desperation is growing, stirring in them and making them a king of anxiety that turns to action.

It’s hard to talk about the details of the series without giving away large swaths of the plot. A tightly-wound story benefits from watching it and letting it unfold and that makes the review process challenging. What I can say is that the ground’s detective work, while good, doesn’t carry as much impact as the drama in the air does. The plane is a powder keg in more ways than one, and the uncertainty around the hijacker’s plan or reasoning makes the situation all the more dynamic. The blindspots in the narrative are crafted to ensure that the audience feels the pressure of the unknown in the same way that the passengers, the ground, and even the hijackers do. As the three intersect, the chaos heightens, and the stakes rise again like in the last episode.

With a tight script, the acting Hijack has to take place in little moments, in silence, and often alone. The series’ ability to offer the audience large-scale impact in one contained space is what makes it a fantastic watch. That said, as the story on KA29 gets more intense, it makes the story on the ground wane in impact, something I hope changes as we reach the series’ midpoint.

A monumental episode; everything changes in the last sequence and it’s clear that nothing on the plane will be the same. Hijack Episode 3 leaves the audience with an ending they won’t know until they see it, no one is shot, or someone is shot, and you’ll have to open the box next week to figure it out. This is edge-of-your-seat television.

Hijack Episode 3 is streaming now, exclusively on AppleTV+, with new episodes every Wednesday through August 2, 2023.