Hostage Ending Explained: Is Shagan Dead?

Netflix’s ‘Hostage’ is a political thriller that follows the story of a British Prime Minister who is on the verge of losing everything. Despite her winning the last election, she has slowly lost the confidence of her people and her party, and as she tries to fix things, a different, more urgent problem arises. Her husband, Alex, is abducted by a group of terrorists, who want Abigail to resign. Over the course of five episodes, the story goes through a series of twists and turns, with the Prime Minister discovering the real reason behind the abduction and how her next step will influence her political career. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Hostage Plot Synopsis

When Abigail Dalton was elected Prime Minister, she vowed to turn the focus towards the people. She slashed funding for several departments, most prominently the military, and shifted the focus towards the National Health Service (NHS). The problem that she now faces is that while the NHS has the staff it needs to operate well, it is running out of medicine, without which the whole system would fall apart. The most important thing on Abigail’s agenda now is to secure the supply of medicines, and for that, she needs to strike a deal with the French President Vivienne Toussaint. The problem is that Vivienne also has elections coming up, and she needs to show her people, who are far-right leaning, that she is capable of leadership. Her agenda is to solve the refugee crisis, so she wants Abigail to agree to take in the boats that come from the sea and to keep an eye on the situation.

French forces should be stationed on UK soil. The idea of foreign forces in her country is a preposterous idea, but before Abigail can try to find something else to negotiate with, she discovers that her husband, Alex, who works for Doctors Without Borders, and his team have been abducted on French soil. The captors demand Abigail’s resignation; otherwise, they will kill her husband and his team. Because Vivienne’s help is necessary in this situation, Abigail brings her in, but things become more complicated as the French President is also blackmailed into not helping Abigail. It turns out that she had an affair with her stepson, and if she helps Abigail, her secrets will be revealed to the French public, who will not vote her into office again. As the PM tries to bring her husband back home safely, she also has to figure out who is behind this scheme. At first, it seems that the perpetrators are politically motivated, but eventually, Abigail discovers that the target on her back is also due to personal reasons.

After an in-depth investigation, it is revealed that the whole plot against Abigail was concocted by General Livingston. He was not happy with her budget cuts, which, he believed, crippled their military and left them susceptible to foreign enemies. He wanted to push Abigail out of the office so that he could manipulate the next PM into reversing her orders. He almost succeeds, as the deteriorating situation caused by the riots that are instigated by Livingston’s people throws the country into chaos. This led Abigail’s cabinet to pass a no-confidence motion against her, and she was removed from the position of PM. Her successor declares a state of emergency, which gives the General unprecedented powers. However, when Abigail finds out about it, she exposes him, revealing that he planned to make things worse before turning the tide around to make it look like he had saved the day, and with that, he would get the PM to reinstate the funds.

Is John Shagan Dead? What Happens to Sylvie?

While Livingston is arrested, there is another villain who has his own agenda. This is Shagan. He is the one who orchestrated Alex’s abduction, created the riot-like situation, and even blew up the PM’s residence, which ended up killing Vivienne. The last part was not an order from Livingston. The thing is that while Livingston wanted Abigail out of the office, Shagan wanted her dead. Years ago, when she was a junior minister in the Foreign Office, she was put in the position where she had to decide between saving British lives and the lives of the locals who had helped British forces in Belize. She chose the former, which led the British forces to be immediately evacuated from Belize, with their local contacts left for dead. One of those locals was a woman whom Shagan, who was stationed in Belize, had fallen in love with.

The duo was engaged, and she was six months pregnant. Shagan would have brought her back home with him, but then the situation escalated, and he was forced to leave her becasue of Abigail’s order. Since then, he wanted revenge on her, which is why he joined Livingston’s plan to dethrone her. But while Livingston wanted her gone politically, Shagan wanted to kill her. While Abigail figures out Livingston’s role in the whole thing, she sends away her family, along with Matheo, to a secret location. Meanwhile, Shagan and his associate, Saskia, follow Abigail’s family, mistakenly believing that she would be with them. When they discover that Abigail is elsewhere, Shagan calls her to let her know that her family is in danger and she must come alone to face him. Abigail does as asked, but unbeknownst to Shagan, Matheo calls for help, which brings the police force to their door.

At the same time, Abigail’s daughter Sylvie escapes with a gun and tries to find her parents. By now, Shagan has realised that he cannot get away with killing Abigail and her family. As the police force closes in, he incites Sylvie to shoot him. Abigail and Alex try to stop their daughter, but then Shagan tells the young girl that he was the one who had her grandfather killed, and that angers Sylvie to the point that she shoots Shagan right in the chest. At the same time, cops enter the room. They put Sylive in handcuffs and try to save Shagan. However, his situation is too far gone. He never intended to be arrested, but by having Sylvie kill him, he inflicted further damage on Abigail. Now, he has turned her daughter into a killer. Of course, this was an extenuating situation, which means that Sylvie’s shooting of Shagan will be seen as an act of self-defense, and the young woman will be free to go, though she will have to deal with the psychological trauma of it all.

Does Abigail Resign? Why does Abigail Call for a General Election?

Before General Livingston and John Shagan arrived to stir trouble for Abigail, she had already been struggling to keep her political boat afloat. A major cause of unrest among her people was the fact that they believed she had changed since she came to power. They didn’t think that she was fulfilling the promises she made to them and that her priorities had since changed, leading them to lose faith in her. With the crisis that emerges with the abduction of her husband, Abigail tries her best to do right by her country. She refuses to give in to the demand of the villains and makes it clear that she will not be forced to resign and abandon her country at a critical point. Eventually, her own cabinet expresses the lack of faith in her, and she is ousted from office due to a no-confidence motion. Later, when Livingston is arrested for his conspiracy, Abigail is reinstated as the PM.

Three months later, Abigail is still the PM, and it seems that things have calmed down considerably. Her family is safe, but she knows that the same cannot be said about the country, which is still reeling from the turmoil created by Livingston and his goons. In the end, we see her preparing for an address, where she quotes President Toussaint’s words about how she wasn’t the person that her people voted for and that she wants to right by them and tell them the truth. Abigail wants the same thing. She knows that she has failed her people in a number of ways, and the lack of confidence doesn’t bode well for anyone. She wants the people to trust her to do the right thing, and if they trust someone else, then that person should have the job. The only way to know this is to conduct general elections, which means that the Parliament will be dissolved, and the decision is in the hands of the public now.

Does this mean that Abigail is giving up? Is she resigning from her position as the PM? On the contrary. The one thing that she has learned from this experience is to be more honest with the people, be it her family members, her staff, her cabinet, or the country. While she is back in the seat as the leader of the country, she knows that the whole ordeal has shaken the entire nation, and she wishes to start on a cleaner slate. She wants to win their trust back and wishes to do right by them. This is why she calls for a general election, so that if she is elected again, it will reinstate everyone’s faith in her. But if she is not, then it’s something she will have to take with a pinch of salt, but it would still be better than losing her seat to a coup.

What Happens to Saskia? Why Doesn’t She Kill Matheo?

While General Livingston and John Shagan had their own reasons to attack Abigail, they couldn’t execute their plans by themselves. They needed help, so they reached out to disgruntled people like Saskia to help them with it. Saskia was a soldier whose unit was disbanded after Abigail cut their funding, which made her resentful towards the PM. She was sent undercover to get close to Matheo and find incriminating evidence against Vivienne Toussaint. She succeeded in it, but at the same time, she also saw Matheo as a good person and felt bad for betraying him. She also didn’t believe that she’d have to kill her own countrymen and her friends for the cause. The more she was asked to kill people, the more she started to question whether she was on the right path.

In the end, Shagan takes her along to target Abigail’s family and kill her. At their hideout, she finds Matheo and Sylvie and keeps an eye on them while Shagan finds Alex. Unbeknownst to her, Matheo places an emergency call, which alerts the cops, bringing them to the house. Distracted by the call, Saskia is attacked by Matheo while Abigail runs away. Saskia could easily kill her former lover, but despite everything, she has a soft spot for him. She wants him to fight back, leading her training and survival instinct to kick in so that she can kill him, too. But he doesn’t fight back because he loved her too, at least before he found out about her being one of the terrorists.

Their feelings lead both of them to soften towards each other. So, Saskia doesn’t kill Matheo, and when the cops arrive, Matheo lets her escape without alerting anyone about her. This shows that Saskia has come to her senses, and she will most likely go underground for a while, never to attach herself to terrorist outfits again. Still, she is a wanted person because of her association with Shagan, which means that she will have to leave behind her old life and start somewhere fresh, where she can live free while evading the law.

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