Fans of The Tourist will be so happy to see Jamie Dornan back on screens as Elliot Stanley/Cassidy, as he returns to his homeland of Ireland to try and figure out a bit more about his background. As well as introducing us to a whole host of new characters, there are also some familiar faces back for season two - but who actually is Lena again?
In case you need a recap, season two of The Tourist sees Elliot and girlfriend Helen (played by Danielle Macdonald) leave Australia and their travels behind in search of Ireland, where he hopes to reconcile more of his memory lost.
Quickly, their trip turns to chaos when he's kidnapped by the McDonnalls, and a longstanding feud between families is reignited. All the while, Helen's ex-boyfriend Ethan Krum (played by Greg Larsen) is on a flight over to the UK to try and salvage their relationship, and ends up sat next to Lena Pascal (played by Victoria Haralabidou) - the woman that Elliot had been having flashbacks to in season one.
But who actually is Lena?
In The Tourist season one finale, Lena arrives at Burnt Ridge and starts to share information about Elliot's past, telling him he had used a group of women - her included - for heroin trafficking. "You remember nothing?" she asks him, before she starts speaking to him in Russian. She then lifts up her shirt to show a huge scar across her stomach. "Still it burns. The man you paid to cut into me, I don't think he knew his job."
She explains how Elliot had forced her to swallow 65 plastic bags of drugs to smuggle them, before waving her and two other women onto a plane. When one of the other women died "within three minutes", Elliot tasked someone to cut Lena open to retrieve the drugs.
After this happens, Elliot confesses his crimes to the Australian police, but Lena denies any truth to it, insisting he's got the wrong person. He's then let free.
What does Lena do in The Tourist season 2?
In episode one, we see Lena get onto a plane, and tell Orla McDonnell (who had kidnapped and then lost Elliott) over the phone, "You have to find him."
In episode two, Ethan is talking to Lena on the plane, and asks her what she's doing on her way to Ireland. She reveals she sent a message many months ago, that had only been answered for the first time recently. "There’s a man in Ireland and I’m going to surprise him.." she says. "By making him pay for everything he’s done."
Eek.
The Tourist is available in full on BBC iPlayer
Dusty Baxter-Wright is an award-winning journalist and the Entertainment and Lifestyle Director at Cosmopolitan, having previously worked at Sugarscape. She was named one of PPA’s 30 Under 30 for her work covering pop culture, careers, interiors and travel, and oversees the site’s Entertainment and Lifestyle strategy across print, digital and video. As a journalist for the best part of a decade, she has interviewed everyone from Louis Theroux and Channing Tatum to Margot Robbie and Ncuti Gatwa, while she has also spoken on Times Radio and BBC Radio. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram here.
