* The Tourist season 2 episode 5 recap contains spoilers *
Helen barely escapes with her life after being shot in the stomach and while lying in a coma, is haunted by the case and the ghosts of her past in some vivid dreams. Meanwhile, Elliot and Claire hatch a plot to get rid of Donal, who spills some interesting secrets about the day Elliot's brother died...
Elliot cradles Helen in his arms as a vengeful Lena watches on, but as Donal comes to finish his old rival, he snatches a knife from Helen's boot and uses it to make a daring escape.
Luckily Elliot gets Helen to the hospital in time and after she plays a cracking amnesia-based prank on him, he suggests that maybe it’s time to leave Ireland before one of them is killed. “You’re my family now” he tells her.
They arrive back in Australia, but it’s clear something isn’t quite right. Helen is still haunted by memories of what happened in Ireland and becomes obsessed with the disappearance of Elliot Stanley and that plane crash. But how are those two cases connected?
What does Helen's dream mean?
She calls Marlowe from Emerald Investigators - who looks remarkably like Dr Watkins btw - and he shares a document he found on Frank McDonnell’s hard drive, labelled ‘Elliot Stanley’, which is all written in code. However while he continues his investigation, it seems Elliot’s mother, Niamh Cassidy, is also looking into him.
The mystery surrounding the case is rapidly consuming Helen, who hasn’t left the apartment in weeks, yet when Elliot finally learns the truth and calls Marlowe there’s no answer, because his mother has murdered her!
Why is Niamh Cassidy so keen to stop Helen finding out the truth? Like us Helen is desperate to know what was on the plane and why her boyfriend called himself Elliot Stanley? Was Elliot’s mother behind it all?
But Helen’s incessant quest to uncover the truth is too much for Elliot, who says that she’s looking for proof that her boyfriend isn’t a monster, rather than the truth. He walks out of the door and as she falls on the floor in an effort to stop him, Billy Dixon from season one walks in brandishing a gun. WTF!
We soon realise the whole weird chapter was a dream and Helen is still in intensive care and hasn’t woken up since the operation that saved her life. We can only presume the whole thing was a figment of Helen's imagination, but could there be answers lurking in Helen's subconscious?
Can Elliot really trust Claire?
As Elliot snaps back to reality he finds Claire McDonnell waiting for him downstairs, in a disguise that makes her look like "Audrey f*****g Hepburn" according to one of Donal's boys. She’s keen to talk about their son Fergal, who is now under pressure from her husband Donal and father-in-law Frank, to “prove himself” as a McDonnell.
Claire also confesses that before Elliot left for Australia, she was deeply in love with him and was sure he felt the same way. She says he left because he thought it was the best way of keeping her and Fergal safe, but that she needs his help again. Apparently, Donal hits her and seeing as he’s trying to kill Elliot, maybe Elliot could kill him and do them both a favour? However, despite her sensational disguise, she's seen leaving the hospital by one of the McDonnell clan.
Back in the hospital, Elliot’s mother comes to visit him and suggests he can’t trust Claire to put her husband on a plate for him, but he doesn't see what choice he has.
As his mother predicted, Claire’s message lures him into a trap, although whether she was in on the deception remains unclear. Luckily one of the Cassidy henchmen turns up to save him “It’s a good job your mother knows you so well,” says Thomas.
Thomas then fills Elliot and us in on a few more details on his brother’s death. It seems that after that traumatic event, Elliot resolved to change his name and leave the country.
Which side will Fergal choose?
At the hospital, Ethan arrives to visit Helen and bumps into Ruari Slater. It seems poor Helen now has a collection of weird waifs and strays following her about! When the hospital receptionist tells them Helen is not receiving visitors, they decide to head off for another Guinness. This pair of clowns clearly still have a part to play in this story.
Later on Elliot talks to Claire, who says she was forced into luring him to that hotel room. She has the bruises to back up her story, but is she telling the truth? When Fergal walks in she immediately hangs up the phone, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out who she was talking to...
Faced with an opportunity to 'prove himself' as a McDonnell - as Donal and Frank like to put it - will he choose his family or his birth father? It's going to be a tough call for Fergal.
Why was Elliot's brother at Lough Tamar?
The action soon switches back to Helen’s dream, where Billy Nixon bursts into her flat, telling her he’s “exactly where he needs to be”. He tells Helen she brought him here and that he’s her “big bad wolf”. However, when he departs, Helen finally wakes up from her coma.
Niamh is Helen’s first visitor and she fills her son’s girlfriend in on what she missed over the last week or so, including Elliot’s plan to kill Donal. It's not welcome news for Helen, who points out that if Niamh had returned what she took from Frank then Fergal would be free and Elliot would be safe. Niamh doesn't deny that, but it's clear she's in no mood to return anything to her bitter rival.
Meanwhile, Elliot takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Donal before whisking him off to the hotel by Lough Tamar. Donal then reveals it is the very place where he killed Elliot’s brother, before confessing that it should have been Elliot - rather than his sibling - who met his maker that day.
Donal tells Elliot that after he killed his brother, he looked out of the window and “could have sworn I saw your face”. So why was Elliot’s brother there that day instead of him? And was Elliot at Lough Tamar the night his brother died?
Who killed Donal McDonnell?
After that bombshell, Elliot kills Donal - who, let’s face it, no one will miss that much - and heads back to hospital to find Helen has finally woken up. She explains that Niamh told her he’d been to visit Fergal’s mother and when news of his death comes over the news she assumes he did it and asks how she can ever trust him again. He swears to her he didn’t do it, but is he telling the truth - and if he is, who killed Donal?
All episodes of The Tourist season 1 and 2 are available on BBC iPlayer now.
