Matthew Towers // Netflix For all the international stakes of the Black Doves season 2 finale, the tensest moments really came down to family. Can any spy and/or assassin have a family, found or otherwise? Won’t they all have to kill or be killed in the end? Here’s where Helen (Kiera Knightley), Sam (Ben Whishaw), and Reed (Sarah Lancashire) stand at the end of Black Doves season 2.
This season, while Helen starts to wonder that she’s been sidelined as a “spy wife” and abandoned by Reed, Sam has been given a peculiar kill list by an organization called Kestrel. He has to check it off in order to avoid jail time, or worse, but the names all seem to be connected to the Black Doves of old. This leads Sam and Helen to learn more about Reed, their employer. Then, we learn in final episode that the last person on Sam’s list is Reed herself.
The finale drags out the penultimate episode’s cliffhanger at the beginning of the finale. As it turns out, even though Reed was the fourth and final person on Sam’s list, he did not kill her. He turned her in to Patrick (Sam Riley) alive. That was enough to satisfy his contract, pay his debt, keep him out of jail, and destroy the evidence that Patrick has against Helen. Allegedly, that is! I don’t trust him...
Sam then attends the funeral of Jerry (Samuel Barnett), the concierge he was sleeping with and had to murder because of this mess. There is truly no rest for the wicked.
The rival bird-themed agency that Patrick works for easily recruits the rogue Black Dove. She’s anxious to cause chaos again after getting sidelined to a desk gig.
Oh right... there is a political storyline on this show. It’s easy to forget that when most of the action revolves around spies and assassins who don’t necessarily color inside partisan lines. Ultimately, Helen’s husband’s summit didn’t even happen. Kestrel agents attacked the summit in order to kidnap the US Defense envoy Cecille (Neve Campbell), get Helen in a car alone with Wallace, and orchestrate a confrontation between Reed and Katia Chernov at the Black Doves headquarters.
Big twist alert! We learn in the finale that the Alexi Chernov’s wife is Reed’s long lost daughter “Vita” who she abandoned in the Soviet Union. She’s been secretly plotting this for a long time and aims to get back on her mother and expose the Black Doves. Unfortunately, she neither gets her revenge nor lives to try again. The trio of female assassins–Laila, Williams, and Eleanor–arrive to rescue Reed to get her out.
Katia gives Helen an ultimatum: kill the Prime Minister or their children’s nanny Marie, a Black Dove turncoat, will kill them. (We knew that Marie was associated with Reed at the end of season 1... but both I and Wikipedia thought she was her daughter. Egg on our face, eh?) That’s the only way, Katia says, to put an end to all of this. Seems unfair to Wallace, who as far as we know has done nothing wrong, but whatever. Jerry was also an innocent victim this season.
But Helen does not shoot her husband. Instead, she leaves him in a car park and drives away with Sam to rescue their twins while the other assassins are saving Reed. She does so with a decent amount of ease. Helen shoots Marie point-blank in the head, but then takes her children to safety.
The final episode certainly has its casualties. Katia kills Cecille, sure. I’ve already mentioned that Marie dies, and Katia as well. Dani also dies by grenade in an elevator. But more main characters survived than you may have expected.
At the end of the episode, Patrick stages a meet-cute with Helen and slips her his business card. It’s absolutely a threat. But Reed and Helen are reunited. She also sits down with Wallace and prepares to tell him some version of the truth.
How will he take it? Will Helen and Reed manage to use their skills for good? And will Sam manage to stay in Italy for good this time? Just about all of his friends have contracts to kill him... but what if they just ignore them for a while? Will Eleanor and Williams stay together? We’re going to need Black Doves season 3 to find out.
Meet the ‘North of North’ S2 Cast & Characters
‘Black Doves’ S2 Cast & Characters, Explained
‘Nobody Wants This’ Season 4 Is Official!
‘Taken’: Where Is Joran van der Sloot Now?
‘Love Is Blind’ Season 11 Spoilers Are Here
Wilnie and Wilson Drop a Major ‘LIB’ Hint
Everything Rob and Michaella Said Post-‘LIB’
Meet the Unseen ‘Love Is Blind’ Season 11 Couples
‘Nobody Wants This’ S3 Has a Joanne Problem
Source: Entertainment
