* The Tourist season 2 episode 1 recap contains spoilers *
With an intoxicating mix of action, suspense and offbeat black comedy, The Tourist was one of BBC One's biggest hits of 2022 and the Williams brothers may well have repeated the trick with this much-anticipated follow-up.
After losing his memory and being chased across the Outback last time out, Elliot Stanley has returned to Ireland in a bid to find out more about his past, yet soon finds himself caught up in another rollercoaster of violence and vengeance.
Here are the 7 burning questions we have after the first episode of the second series...
What did Elliot do to the O'Donnells?
We pick the story up 14 months after the events of the first series with Elliot and Helen travelling in Asia, when she tells him his old pal "Tommy" has written asking him to return home to Ireland. “Maybe it’s time you find out who you really are..” she says.
However when they get back to Ireland, Elliot is immediately abducted by the O'Donnells, but not before a child initiates a strange stare-off with Helen. Is this an important plot detail or just some random kid? We don’t get a good look at his mum, but she looks like a blonde lady. Never mind…
Meanwhile Elliot Stanley is trapped in the back of a van while his captors — one of whom we can only assume is "Tommy" — wig out to The Pretenders. He manages to escape and flee, but after an exhausting and expletive-laden chase he’s finally recaptured.
He has inadvertently left a ‘Kilgal’ whisky bottle in the road, which will serve as a crucial clue for Helen and others later in the episode, however his captors refuse to say why they’ve kidnapped him and what he’s done to infuriate them.
Who was Elliot's father?
Later on we find Detective Ruari Slater crying his eyes out in the bathroom of the local police station. He tears his wedding ring off and throws it in a horrid toilet, before going back to retrieve it.
After drying his eyes, Slater eventually arrives at the scene of Elliot’s kidnapping to meet Helen and is very disappointed to find she has a boyfriend. Nevertheless, the pair soon set off following the tyre tracks the van left, although for reasons best known to themselves they decide to set out on foot rather than in Slater’s car. Very odd.
When she arrives back at the station after her mammoth hike, Helen receives a call from her old boyfriend Ethan back in Australia, who wants to speak to her as a part of group therapy. He’s calling to apologise for his toxic masculinity and gaslighting, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to hear it and who can blame her.
That rejection doesn’t seem to have landed with a deluded Ethan, who seems to believe she’s encouraging him to travel to Ireland to make amends. He has learned nothing it seems.
Meanwhile, Elliot’s mother Niamh Cassidy arrives at the police station after receiving an image of her son in captivity. Later on Helen takes her for a coffee and it’s soon clear Elliot has been gone for many years “while his daddy was in hospital”. But who was his father and what happened to him?
Niamh is shocked to learn that Elliot has no memory of his past life, yet does reveal he had a surprising love of ballet when he was a boy. However when Helen shows her a picture of the whisky bottle she found in the road, it clearly rings a bell. Helen decides to follow her home, before changing her mind and returning to her hotel.
Later on she follows Niamh to a housing estate, where she demands information about her son from a cousin of the O’Donnells named Rian. He refuses, so she stabs him in the eye. It’s safe to say Rian’s not going to be in The Tourist season 3.
Does Detective Slater know Elliot?
In the midst of all this fun, we follow Detective Slater home, where he lives with his mother who clearly has a debilitating medical condition. He then takes us downstairs to a secret basement apartment, where we eventually discover he’s been looking after a porcelain doll.
It’s clear he’s suffering from some mental issues, but where do they stem from and are they connected to Elliot’s past? Slater didn’t recognise Elliot's name — or didn't tell anyone who recognised his name — but maybe they have some sort of past?
Who's Frank and what is 'Tama'?
Elliot comes round and finds himself locked in a dark room with a dead pig that has the words ‘Open Me’ carved on it. Inside he finds the key to his prison cell, but why have his captors gone to such elaborate lengths? Does the pig symbolise something from Elliot’s past?
“Are you having fun yet?” his captors ask over a baby monitor before warning “I’m the last voice you’ll ever hear”. Sinister. However things go from sinister to ridiculous when they order him to cut off both his legs if he wants to be let out. No chance.
It turns out his captors are the O’Donnells — Donal, Orla and Fergal — with the former clearly very furious about some past crime Elliot has committed. It’s clear Elliot has absolutely no memory of the O’Donnells, but we’re desperate to know what he did to them.
“So you don’t remember Tama?” says Donal. But what is Tama? Or Tayma or Taymar or however you spell it.. “You get to relive the pain!” says Donal, who still won’t reveal what he’s talking about. It’s clear he wants to kill Elliot, but his sister persuades him not to “That wasn’t the deal … do you care about Frank at least” she says. But who’s Frank?
Who's the mysterious diver?
After burning half of Donal’s face off, Elliot escapes, but is shocked to find he’s on an island and there’s nowhere for him to go. Orla confirms that in a phone call to someone, could this be Frank?
No it’s not Frank — it’s Lena Pascal from the first series. We find this out because she’s on a plane from Australia to Ireland, where she has the bad luck to be sat next to Ethan.
In the past, Elliot coerced Lena into smuggling heroin in her stomach, with one of his colleagues cutting it out of her, leaving her terribly traumatised. From the her phone conversation it's clear she's teamed up with the O'Donnells and is presumably determined to get her revenge on Elliot.
Meanwhile, two divers head down to the wreckage of a plane to retrieve some cases, yet one kills the other before returning to the surface. Who is this mysterious diver and what’s in the case? Cash? Drugs? “Elliot Stanley is dead” she tells someone from a phone box later on. But who is she talking to?
