opening hood on a 2001 xj with cable end popped off of latch inside hood

 

remove the headlight bezel, remove the head light, get a crows foot wrench and reach in there and undo the bolts for the hood latch mechanism. Open your hood, fix the cable, re-assemble. There's definitely a write up for this somewhere, I did this 2-3 times already on a couple of my previous XJ's

 

Try looking here https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f51/po...-cable-205001/