The Tourist season 2 ending spoilers follow.
While a runaway hit in the UK, The Tourist has now found its audience in the US – thanks to its launch on Netflix.
"Netflix has quite a good history of reviving shows that didn't, for whatever reason, land in the States the first time around," Dornan told Decider during a recent interview.
"[The Tourist] was a big hit in the UK. It was the most-watched drama of 2022. It was strange to have such fanfare over there and then not have many people knowing about it in the States," he said.
With this in mind, there's likely a whole new audience of people wanting to analyse The Tourist season two's ending – which is handy, because we have the perfect explainer.
In the second season of The Tourist, the man formerly known as Elliot Stanley was revealed as Eugene Cassidy (Jamie Dornan). While many of the questions posed over the six-episode stretch were finally answered in the season finale, it did leave us with one or two lingering queries.
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The final episode finds Eugene under lock and key in the Garda station, having been arrested for murdering Donal (Diarmaid Murtagh). He's visited by Helen (Danielle Macdonald), who is struggling to wrap her head around the whole 'Eugene being up for murder' thing.
Despite his protestations of innocence, Helen realises she doesn't really know who he is, since he's definitely not Elliot Stanley. If this were an episode of Love Island, this is the point at which Iain Stirling's voiceover would bellow from on high: "And one couple has hit the rocks!"
Meanwhile, Frank (Francis Magee) is comforting Fergal (Mark McKenna) after the death of his father and talking him into seeking revenge on the McDonnell clan by killing his biological father, Eugene.
A couple of the mysteries finally tied up in the finale are the questions of who Elliot Stanley actually was and what was in that suitcase Niamh Cassidy buried in decades gone by.
Perhaps most surprising of all, we finally got a pay-off for Eugene's long-teased dancing skills with a really quite good ballet performance. Dornan has since joked in an interview with The Guardian that the bit has given him "proper PTSD", after he first read the Chekhov's gun reference in the script.
But before we get to those closing moments, let's unpack episode six of The Tourist's second series.
The Tourist season 2 ending explained
If you thought it might make sense for Helen to return to hospital to treat that wound after her quick spell in the prison visiting room, you would be mistaken. Instead, she has bounced back from the brink of apparent death to attempt the 20-hour-plus flight to Australia.
But at the airport, she runs into Ethan (Greg Larsen) and Detective Ruairi (Conor MacNeill), who have become best pals and are embarking on a getaway to Budapest. A buddy comedy spin-off down the line, perhaps? But park that for now because instead, the unlikely trio team up to hunt down answers about Eugene's past.
This takes them first to Elliot Stanley's widow and then to the cab service that ferried him and Niamh Cassidy (Olwen Fouéré) to dive down to that sunken wreck way back when. Among a mammoth stack of ring binder folders, they find the location of where exactly Niamh was dropped off.
Meanwhile, Eugene is making the most of being sprung from jail by spending quality time with his son Fergal, whom he agrees to help hide from his fearful grandfather.
After a car chase ensues – featuring winding roads, smashed fences and a lightly harmed cyclist troupe – the pair manage to clip off their seatbelts and escape pursuit from Frank's lackeys with little more than a chin scratch. Just before their car jettisons off a cliff, too.
Eugene and Fergal decide to walk across the rolling Irish fields to the Cassidy pub, where Niamh is displeased he has brought a McDonnell in. A search of his bag produces little more than "snacks and clothes and bollocks". (Those unpacking after a Christmas getaway might be able to relate.)
Meanwhile, Helen, Ruairi and Ethan are out on a jaunt. Helen has cracked the case that Niamh must have buried whatever she found below sea level. But Ruairi's had word there's a "potential all-out war situation" developing at Niamh's pub, so they're on a clock.
Helen sets about the nigh-impossible task of finding that buried suitcase. Between this and the instant gunshot wound recovery, she truly is capable of anything, because she does indeed come across a patch of freshly disturbed dirt on the Irish coast. And by flashlight nonetheless!
Back at the powder keg that is the Cassidy pub, Frank has pitched up with a homemade bomb in tow, threatening Niamh and her lot with mutually assured destruction. Niamh doesn't seem that bothered by that though – and, to Eugene's very understandable dismay, is prepared to go up in flames.
But Helen bursts in, just as they're about to start pulling triggers, proffering the contents of that suitcase: love letters from Frank's father to Niamh's mother. So, Niamh and Frank are half-siblings.
"We're not blood. We've spilt too much of each other's to be anywhere f**king near that," Niamh growls, trying to shoot Helen, then Eugene. She says she can't forget and storms out.
What was in Eugene's file?
While all might be lost for the Cassidy and McDonnell clans to patch things up, Helen and Eugene find a way to do so. As the season rolls to an end, we jump forward six months to see the lovebirds have moved to the Netherlands. Eugene must have outrun those murder charges, despite his prints apparently being all over the weapon.
Helen is now a private investigator and Eugene has a new sleek haircut – as well as a manila file he describes as the "life and times of Eugene Cassidy". He gives Helen the opportunity to read it, but when she says no, he leaps to toss it in the nearby Dutch oven, prompting a vague look of regret from Helen.
They then go to a concert hall and Helen cues up 'Swan Lake', telling a nonplussed Eugene to do "whatever comes naturally" – which is an epic ballet dance. Just as we start to wonder if that is really Jamie Dornan leaping across the stage or a body double artfully cloaked in shadow, we cut back to the burning file.
The papers start to curl into view, revealing an official document that states Eugene Cassidy is a special agent who was on "general assignment". Until it disintegrates in the flames.
So Eugene could have been an undercover agent when he left Ireland to go to Australia. This is all unknown to Eugene and Helen in their Netherlands idyll. So there's even more to unpack about Eugene/Elliot/The Man's murky identity – potential season three fodder, if we get one.
Will there be a Tourist season 3?
At present, there are still no confirmed plans for a third season, but there weren't any for season two either.
"No, we didn't plan it," creator Jack Williams said (via Radio Times). "Not in the sense that we said it wouldn't happen, but we always kind of want to tell the best stories and in season one we just thought, 'Let's leave nothing behind. Let's not try and leave it open ended deliberately'.
"But there were definitely times in watching the first season we did think, 'Well, you know, Jamie's character Elliot has a whole history behind him'. We knew we weren't going to find out all of it, so we knew there was going to be a little gap somewhere that we could explore."
Dornan himself has provided fans with a more promising update, recently telling Entertainment Weekly that there have been "conversations" about another chapter in Elliot's story.
The actor did, however, add that he is "very busy, I think, for the next couple of years".
But if a third season were to happen, Dornan thinks it would likely be set in Amsterdam.
"There's probably a world where it happens in Holland in some capacity, if they were to do more, which wouldn't be a bad thing," he said. "I like the Dutch, they're an interesting bunch, and always really fun, and it's a beautiful place. But who knows!"
The Tourist is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and continues on BBC One.
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
