The Tourist spoilers follow.
While promoting season two of The Tourist, Jamie Dornan was quick to note that during filming for the first season of the memory-loss thriller Down Under, showrunners Jack and Harry Williams assured him there would not be a second instalment.
But when you rake in 11.4 million viewers and become the UK's most-watched drama of 2022, things change. And given that the second season again leaves us on a major cliffhanger, we could yet see more of Eugene (Dornan) and Helen (Danielle Macdonald).
It's best to manage our expectations at this stage, given that we've had no official word yet from the BBC on whether The Tourist will indeed be back for a third helping of violent, slapstick chaos.
However, Dornan certainly doesn't seem against it, even if he is conscious that it's best the show doesn't go on for too long. During a conversation with Digital Spy, he joked: "If we're sitting here 10 years and we're talking about season eight, then just kill me. But I don't think we will be."
So where could The Tourist be set by a season eight? Laughing, Dornan said: "We're open to fan suggestions, asking where do you want to see Elliot next? He's in a wheelchair now he's so old."
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He added: "A lot of people liked the first one, a lot of people watched it. That's the only reason we're making a second series, is it felt like there was a desire for it. You're not wanting to flog a dead horse and I don't think a season two is too much of a stretch."
So that's not a flat-out no to doing more, as long as it makes sense in the storytelling. It seems that the location could be the key, as the move to Ireland in season two was a big part in getting Dornan on board for more, as he was reluctant to uproot his family to move to Oz as he did for the first season.
We ended the second season in the Netherlands, with the tease that there is still more to Eugene Cassidy we don't know after it was revealed he was a special agent for the police. So the story could pick up in that Scandi setting.
Another possibility is Canada, which is where the Williams brothers had first written the scripts for the second season to be set. During a Q&A ahead of the show's launch in December, Dornan even joked about season three: "It will be set in Canada, the scripts are already written."
Jack added: "We didn't go to Ireland straight away, we wrote a whole draft set in Canada, similar elements. It was very similar. Detective Ruairi Slater [played by Conor MacNeill] would have still been in it as a Mountie, which would have been great. The same story, but with a Mountie."
For now we may have to watch this space (ooh, could they go into space? No, stop it), as the BBC will likely wait to see how the second season goes down to gauge whether there is sufficient appetite for a third. But it certainly doesn't seem to be off the table, even if a season eight might be.
The Tourist season 2 is available to stream in iPlayer and continues on BBC One.
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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.
