The Hijacking of Flight 601 – Episode 4 Recap & Review

The Wretched of the Earth 

Episode 4 of the Hijacking of Flight 601 starts at an orphanage that doubles as a football training camp. The administrator’s voice is heard calling out for the people to hit the showers in the morning while Borja’s (Ulises) voice narrates their predicament at the camp.

After showering and having a meal, El Toro and Borja are seen in the field getting ready for practice, and we see that El Toro is a highly talented footballer. After practice, the administrator calls El Toro into his office, saying that some scouts from a team known as La Gloriosa want him to try out, but he will not let him go unless he pays his debts. The administrator gives him three days to get the money he owes him together or forget to try out.

El Toro shares the administrator’s condition with Borja, who is back in their dorm room, and he offers to help. During the showers, Borja talks to Mosca and agrees to accompany him to some place Mosca had told him about, and later that night, they arrive at a nightclub. Mosca introduces Borja to someone he calls Professor, and after a night of partying and getting drunk, Borja wakes up in bed with Professor. He takes the 100-dollar bill the Professor has put on the bedside table and prepares to leave.

However, Borja sees some materials about hunger and poverty on the Professor’s work desk and starts to read. Suddenly, the Professor shows up with a gun trailed at Borja, threatening to kill him for snooping around his house, and he thinks Borja is a cop. Borja explains that he is an orphan who grew up at the orphanage and knows how to read because they are forced to memorise bible verses.

The Professor believes him after he quotes a bible verse about hunger and says that the materials on the table caught his attention because they are talking about the same. The Professor believes him and lets him go, allowing him to take some materials to read and advising him that if he needs to make a change, he will not get what he wants from reading a few bible verses. 

The material that Professor gives Borja to read is a “Manifesto of the Hunger of the New Man” by Ulises Lima. It talks about Latin America being united not by land but by a long line of hungry families that are inherited from the parents and passed down to the children’s children. Furthermore, there is chatter here about the subjugation of the enslaved people by the masters and that the only way for the enslaved people to take control of their lives is through a radical act of resistance.

Therefore, Borja starts to defy the orphanage instructor, and he gets punished for it, and he reads about President Pastrana being accused of fraud. The manifesto says that the only way for the slaves to escape the oppression of their masters is to satiate their hunger by any means necessary.

Meanwhile, El Toro’s ankle injury worsens, but he does not share it with anyone. He continues pushing himself during practice at the orphanage and personal training, which worsens it. During the next game, he twists his ankle badly, and Borja mentions that the incident might end his career. He carries El Toro off the field to the doctor’s office and confirms their fear. Later that night, the administrator storms into their room, furious that El Toro was hurt and has not informed anyone. Since he can no longer make money playing football, he throws him out and says that he will keep their passports until they pay him back his money. 

Borja takes El Toro to the Professor’s house, and he asks for food. While having their meal, the Professor instigates them to take action when Borja asks him for a gun to take back what is theirs from the administrator, Pacho. He agrees to give Borja a gun and accompanies them back to the orphanage. Borja and El Tor sneak into their rooms to pack up their belongings. They intend to sneak into Pacho’s room to get their passports, but the Professor has a different plan.

Suddenly, he storms into the orphanage and holds Pacho at gunpoint, forcing him to open his office. Borja takes the money and their passports, but before leaving, Professor decides to scare Pacho some more and insures El Toro to shoot him for the oppression, humiliation, and hunger he endured under his manipulation.

El Toro shoots, but the gun is empty, so Professor orders Pacho to close down the camp that oppresses the poor under the guise of giving them opportunities to play as footballers. If he fails to do so, the Professor says that the People Revolutionary Front will come back and take care of him. 

Borja and El Toro get an adrenaline rush from the incident as they scream and shout back to the Professor’s house. They think it is all over, and they can return to their homes in Paraguay, but the Professor wants to take the revolution a bit higher. He acts out what we have been seeing Borja do in the plane, talking about a curtain separating the rich and the poor and demanding a payment of 200,000 and the release of the 30 students arrested by President Pastrana, or they kill hostages. The Professor convinces Borja and El Toro to join his hijacking plan, and as he dances around in ecstasy, he accidentally shoots himself in the head.

El Toro starts to panic, but Borja convinces him that the Professor’s plan can still work. With nothing left to lose, Borja and El Toro clean up, take the guns and the grenade, and head out, determined to seek their own revolution or die trying. 

The Episode Review

The episode provides extensive background to our hijackers, Borja and El Toro. We realise that Borja calls himself Ulises in memory of the Professor who shot himself in a freak accident. It also shows that the two are not revolutionists seeking to liberate the country but just ordinary people tired of the chain of hunger and oppression passed down from generation to generation.

However, it makes them more dangerous since they have nothing to lose. With few passengers remaining on board the plane, will they find ways to make more money, or will their next goal be to get off the plane alive?