the tourist 2010 ending explained

The Tourist Season 2 Ending, Explained

• Elliot's journey to Ireland uncovers dark family secrets, leading to dangerous repercussions for him and Helen.
• Lena's vengeful actions bring violence and betrayal, testing the bond between Elliot and Helen.
• The revelation of Elliot's true identity as a secret agent sets the stage for a potential Season 3 on Netflix.

The Tourist finally dropped on Netflix at the end of February, and it was just as entertaining and comedic as the first. After taking an extended holiday and traversing across a myriad of countries, Elliot ( played by Jamie Dornan ) and Helen (Danielle Macdonald) decide to travel to Ireland to learn more about Elliot’s past. While recovering in the hospital after downing a handful of pills with a bottle of vodka at the end of Season 1, Elliot receives a letter from an old friend he can’t remember. However, the letter turns out to be a ruse to lure Elliott home and make him atone for the wrongs of his past. As soon as the pair arrive in Ireland, Elliot is kidnapped.

He inevitably escapes his kidnappers and subsequently discovers his name is really Eugene Cassidy. He then meets his mother, Niamh (Olwen Fouéré), and discovers he’s part of a long-running family feud between the Cassidy clan he belongs to and the McDonnells, who kidnapped him. He also meets his illegitimate son, Fergal (Mark McKenna), who has grown up as a McDonnell, and discovers the brother he can’t remember was murdered after being mistaken for Elliot. As such, the more he learns about his past, the more he dislikes the person he was. Furthermore, Helen struggles with his previous actions as well, especially when his past catches up with them in a dangerous way.

Elliot’s Past Catches Up With Him

The tourist.

Release Date March 3, 2022

Creator Harry Williams, Jack Williams

Cast Conor MacNeill, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Danielle Macdonald, Olwen Four, Jamie Dornan

Rating TV-MA

Genres Drama, Mystery, Action

While the McDonnells have their own reasons for hating Elliot, Lena Pascal (Victoria Haralabidou), the Russian woman from Season 1, is the person responsible for his return to Ireland. Because she knew where he was, she sent him the letter in Australia and enlisted the McDonnells to help her enact her revenge. After Donal (Diarmaid Murtagh) and his men find Elliot and Helen, thanks to Fergal, he takes them out into the woods where they come face to face with Lena. Rather than report him to the police for the drug trafficking that led to her friend’s death, Lena seeks to harm Elliot in the same way she hurt him. Therefore, she shoots Helen in the stomach.

Thankfully, Helen survives after Elliot manages to fend off their attackers and get her to a hospital straight away. Unfortunately, the seeds of doubt between Helen and Elliot grow deeper when he leaves her bedside for the first time in a week to attempt to end the family feud once and for all. After multiple attempts on his life, Elliot realizes Donal won’t ever stop until he’s dead. As such, he makes a move to kill Donal but finds he can’t pull the trigger because he’s no longer the killer he once was. However, Niamh takes it upon herself to finish the job for Elliot without telling him and kills Donal. Unfortunately, all the evidence points to Elliot, and Helen isn’t sure what to believe.

The Tourist Cast and Character Guide

The real elliot stanley and a family secret.

The real Elliot Stanley was a diver hired by Frank McDonnell (Francis Magee) to retrieve a package his father left for him after his death. The package was on its way from Boston via plane when it went down in the water off the coast of Ireland. Niamh had become friendly with the real Elliot and accompanied him on the dive. However, she killed him under the water, intercepted Frank’s package, and buried it in the dirt. Prior to their dive, it’s suggested Niamh had a romantic relationship with the real Elliot, who is more than likely Elliot/Eugene’s father, which would explain why the two of them look so similar.

As Helen prepares to leave Ireland without Elliot, she realizes she can’t let it lie and has to find out what Frank’s father left for him all those years ago. After tracking down the cab company that picked up Niamh after her dive, Helena locates what Niamh kept hidden for over 40 years. It turns out Niamh and Frank are actually half-siblings as indicated by the love letters between his father and her mother. After so many years of bad blood, the Cassidy and McDonnell clans are actually related , which ultimately ends the long-standing war between them. In the nick of time, Helen arrives at the standoff between the clans and reunites with Elliot after revealing the love letters and the truth to everyone.

Best Jamie Dornan Performances, Ranked

Is elliot a secret agent.

Six months after their misadventures in Ireland , Elliot and Helen are happily living in Amsterdam, where Helen is working as a private investigator. While there, someone unknown to either of them sends them a file on Eugene Cassidy, Elliot’s real identity. Rather than take a peek inside, they decide to burn it and leave the past behind. Elliot makes it clear he doesn’t care who he was, only who he is now, and Helen proclaims she doesn’t need a file to tell her who he is. However, as much as Helen meant what she said, it’s clear she would have liked to know what was in the file as soon as Elliot put it in the flames.

Afterward, Helen takes Elliot to a theater where she plays “Swan Lake” in the hopes that his hidden talent will emerge. Thanks to his mother, the pair discover Elliot can dance ballet, and he shows off his skills rather quickly without even thinking. While he dances, viewers see a glimpse of what was in the file as it begins to burn away. As seen on the first page of the paperwork, Eugene Cassidy is some sort of special agent under deep cover. The file with all the answers is then consumed by the flames and audiences are offered no further explanation. While there has been no word on whether there will be a Season 3, the show’s recent finale clearly set the stage for one to emerge sometime in the near future.

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Tourist are currently streaming on Netflix.

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The tourist ending explained by jamie dornan.

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Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Tourist .

Jamie Dornan opens up about the shocking ending of The Tourist . Created by Harry and Jack Williams, The Tourist centers on The Man (played by Dornan) who wakes up in a hospital with zero memory of who he is and how he got there. Spending the first of six episodes in a state of utter uncertainty, Dornan’s protagonist is helped along by Helen Chamber (Danielle Macdonald) , and the traffic cop helps The Man uncover the details behind the horrific car crash that led to his amnesia.

By the finale of the Australian-set series, it’s revealed that The Man is a drug smuggler named Elliot. Confronted by Lena Pascal (Victoria Haralabidou), a woman Elliot consistently has visions of, it becomes clear that Elliot’s actions in smuggling heroin inside people’s bodies led to the painful death of two women. It also led to Lena’s disfigurement, all of which she details in a searing monologue that makes plain how awful Elliot was before the crash and why someone would want him dead. This leads Elliot to the same conclusion, too, as he attempts to take his own life.

Related: HBO Max: Every Movie & TV Show Coming In March 2022

Speaking with EW to promote The Tourist , which is currently streaming on HBO Max , Dornan opened up about how difficult it was to film that reveal. The actor admits that it broke him, detailing how uncomfortable and uneasy it made him feel. Dornan’s quote is included below.

“It was crazy, that. So much of this character and this performance for me is, like any performance, you’re trying to stay present, but never more so than when everything is information that you’ve never heard before, particularly if it’s awful information, like that scene. I felt very raw in that moment, I felt very exposed, and vulnerable and kind of awful and terrible about myself. She was doing such beautiful work in front of me and it was having the impact that I felt that it should have. Sometimes you get yourself in a place where you feel so broken that you can’t actually stop crying. [Laughs] I felt a bit like that that day in a good way, I guess. I felt very exposed, very vulnerable. You know, it’s hard stuff to hear, the hardest stuff to hear, so a lot of that luckily was on the page for me in terms of the writing. But, yeah, not an easy day, that.”

Dornan, who goes on to mention that there have been conversations about a possible second season, previously spoke about how The Tourist was his most difficult role because he didn’t know anything about The Man. To go from there, only to learn of the banal evil of this protagonist had to have been as much a punch in the gut for Dornan as it was for the audience. For most of the HBO Max drama, Elliot is positioned as a good guy. Gruff, sure, and certainly flawed, but ultimately the hero of the story alongside Helen. It’s a difficult last-minute switch that Dornan sells perfectly.

Still, even though the reveal leads the audience down a dark path, it ends with hope. It’s heavily implied that Elliot survives his suicide attempt and begins a relationship with Helen. Perhaps, it suggests, in the long-run, that the memory loss provides Elliot with a chance to be a new person. It also opens the door for The Tourist season 2. And maybe, given that many viewers and critics enjoyed the lighter and more experimental aspects of the series, a second outing won’t have quite as bleak a twist.

More: Jamie Dornan Interview: The Tourist

• The Tourist (2024)