Skip to playerSkip to main content
Complete story recap and breakdown for Black Doves.

#BlackDoves #FullRecap #Season1 Hey fellas, here is my full recap breakdown of Black Doves Season 1 that will prepare you for the next season, that is the second season of the show that is coming out this week. Hope you'll enjoy this recap and share it with your friends.

Category

📺
TV
Transcript
00:00Black Doves begins with a man who realizes he's being followed, and before he's killed,
00:04he leaves a voicemail telling a woman named Helen Webb how much he loves her.
00:08By the end of Season 1, I'd say that message is one of the few completely honest things anyone in
00:14this show says.
00:15So, before Season 2 arrives, let me walk you through what Season 1 explained and what it left open,
00:20with my own theories and full spoilers ahead.
00:23That man is Jason Davies, a civil servant at the Justice Department,
00:27and a few nights before Christmas, he calls Maggie and Phillip,
00:30and before long, all three are dead, with Jason shot by a sniper.
00:34Helen loved him too, but she's married to the Defense Secretary, Wallace Webb,
00:38and they have twins, and the affair is only the smaller of her secrets.
00:42She used to be a spy for a private outfit called the Black Doves, which trades in secrets,
00:47and when her old handler Reed finds out about her link to Jason,
00:50Helen lies and says he was just a lover who had no idea she was a spy.
00:54In reality, she'd admitted to him that her name and identity were fake,
00:58so she goes back to the work, partly to find out why he was killed,
01:01and partly to keep that lie from coming out.
01:04Reed also brings a man named Sam Young back from Rome,
01:07to find out whether Helen is being targeted too.
01:09Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador, Chen, has died in what's officially an overdose,
01:14his daughter, Kai Ming, has gone missing,
01:16and the government is rattled by tension with China.
01:18To understand Helen, go back to 2014, when Daisy Bradshaw, home after 10 years in Europe,
01:24interviews for a translator job at a company called Western Montgomery.
01:28She's asked why she kept her stepsister a secret,
01:30and how she came to vanish from the country,
01:32right when that stepsister was arrested for murdering her own father,
01:35because her interviewer works for the Black Doves, and already knows a lot about her.
01:40Reed becomes her handler, Daisy becomes Helen,
01:42and her first assignment is to steal government secrets from a young political candidate called
01:46Wallace Webb.
01:47Calling herself Helen Dawson, she ends up in a hotel room with him,
01:51and at around 3 in the morning, she copies files from his laptop,
01:54and hands the flash drive to Sam, waiting outside in his car.
01:57The job is done, and she only goes back to that room because she left behind her mother's lighter,
02:02which seems to be the one thing she has left of her mother.
02:05When she walks back in, something real starts between them,
02:08and she never goes back to being Daisy.
02:10She marries Wallace, and steps back from the Black Doves once the twins are born,
02:14so her entire marriage exists because she went back for a lighter.
02:18Sam's backstory is bleaker.
02:19He grew up in a trailer with a cold, unpredictable father who killed for a living,
02:23then followed him into the work, solving problems for Reed,
02:26and taking contracts from a woman called Lenny Lines.
02:29His very first victim was his own father, after rivals put a hit on the man.
02:33Sam lives by a code, though.
02:35He only kills criminals, and every time he's about to pull the trigger,
02:38he asks himself whether it'll make the world a better place.
02:41That code cost him his life in London,
02:43because when he was sent to kill the four Newman brothers, a violent drug gang,
02:47he spared the youngest, Hector, who was just a boy,
02:50and told Lenny the job was done.
02:52Soon enough, Hector's gang came after him,
02:54and shot up the flat of his boyfriend Michael,
02:56the man he'd been planning a life with,
02:57who knew nothing about what Sam really did.
03:00Sam called Helen to get Michael out,
03:02and fled the country for seven years,
03:03and he's only back now to keep Helen safe.
03:09Now I want to get to the mystery everyone is chasing.
03:12The Chinese suspect foul play right away,
03:15claiming the CIA had their ambassador killed,
03:18and the British helped cover it up,
03:20and use that to push for military supply contracts
03:22that would give China a political stronghold over Britain.
03:25Once Kai Ming's boyfriend Cole Atwood turns out to be CIA,
03:29they decide he must be the killer.
03:30The truth is much smaller and messier.
03:33Kai Ming's heroin was coming from Trent Clark,
03:36who was secretly in love with her
03:37and supplying it to get close to her.
03:39And he's the son and heir of Alex Clark,
03:41who runs the London end of an international crime network
03:44called The Clarks.
03:45When Chen came to London to see his daughter
03:47and found Trent at her flat,
03:49he accused him of selling her heroin
03:51and told him to stay away.
03:52The argument got heated.
03:54Trent lost control and shoved him,
03:56and Chen hit his head on a table and died on the spot.
03:59Trent panicked and called his mother,
04:00Alex brought in Steve and Yerrick,
04:02and if you caught the initials SY in Jason's chat,
04:05that's him.
04:06Yerrick tampered with the crime scene
04:07to make it look like an overdose,
04:09then told the prime minister, Richard Eves,
04:11and both of them kept quiet
04:13to keep the Clarks out of the investigation.
04:15Kai Ming, meanwhile, was kidnapped by Hector Newman
04:17and eventually rescued by Helen and Sam.
04:20What turned a cover-up into a string of murders
04:22was a hidden camera.
04:23Maggie, an assistant at a jewelry store
04:25and part of Kai Ming's inner circle,
04:27had been secretly filming her
04:28for a gossip columnist named Phillip Bray.
04:31That got her noticed by MI5,
04:33who wanted eyes on the ambassador through his daughter
04:35and asked her to keep recording
04:36and give them a copy first,
04:38so her hidden camera was in that living room
04:40the night Chen died,
04:41recording everything Trent did.
04:43Once Phillip saw the footage,
04:45he demanded answers from Yerrick,
04:46and when he was ignored,
04:48he even went to Wallace.
04:49As soon as the Clarks knew the footage existed,
04:52they had Phillip followed,
04:53and that led them to Maggie and Jason.
04:55Jason had left Helen a hint
04:56about where the footage was,
04:58and she finds it at the jewelry store
04:59where Maggie worked,
05:00with both the Chinese
05:01and the British governments now after it.
05:04Alex claims she had no part in Jason's death,
05:06and that seems to be true
05:08because Trent hired the ex-military sniper
05:10Elmore Fitch himself.
05:12He knew Jason and Maggie were partners in some way.
05:14He didn't want loose ends,
05:15and he wanted to prove his worth to his mother.
05:18Trent had also seen Jason with Helen at a restaurant,
05:20which is why he sent the same sniper to Helen's house.
05:23So Jason died partly because a boy
05:25wanted to impress his mom,
05:27and the ambassador died
05:28because the same boy wanted to impress a girl,
05:30which to me makes Trent the saddest figure in this story.
05:34Which brings me back to Jason.
05:35Learning that he and Maggie were connected
05:37makes Helen wonder whether he had a secret life,
05:40and right at the end,
05:41Reed gets a background check done on him.
05:43It turns out Jason was MI5 as well,
05:45which is why Maggie went to him
05:47with what her camera caught,
05:48and he'd been planted in Helen's life
05:50to learn whether she was the mole
05:52leaking government secrets.
05:53Helen is left believing he faked his love
05:55just to do his job,
05:57until Reed tells her the rest.
05:58Jason reported to MI5
06:00that his investigation had found nothing,
06:02and that Helen Webb was not a spy,
06:04knowing exactly what she'd admitted to him.
06:06He lied to his own agency to protect her,
06:09and that proves the voicemail was the truth.
06:11They both wanted to start a life together
06:13somewhere far away,
06:14and they never got the chance.
06:16Jason was only one of the people sent to watch Helen.
06:18Danny, the new secretary in Wallace's office,
06:21works for Reed,
06:22and even Sam was told to investigate her.
06:24So while everyone hunted for Maggie's hidden camera,
06:27Helen was surrounded by people keeping tabs on her.
06:30Then Reed hands Helen a drive
06:31with whatever she could find on who Jason really was,
06:34and Helen throws it away without looking.
06:36Her spy career began with a flash drive in a hotel room,
06:39so refusing a drive full of answers is a big deal for her.
06:42This time, the secrets are his,
06:44and she'd rather remember him
06:45as the Jason she met in London and fell for,
06:48without ever learning who he was before that.
06:50To me, that's how she says goodbye.
06:56At the clerk's safe house,
06:57with Sam and his friends tied up,
06:59Helen points a gun at Trent,
07:01now that she knows he was behind Maggie's and Phillip's deaths,
07:04as well as Jason's,
07:05and she wants revenge.
07:07In the middle of that standoff,
07:09she tells Alex about her alcoholic, abusive stepfather,
07:12who took someone from her
07:13the same way Alex's son took Jason.
07:16And what she's really telling Alex
07:17is that she killed her stepfather.
07:20Helen and Bonnie Weir were stepsisters
07:22for three years as teenagers,
07:24and Bonnie was the one sentenced to life
07:26in Bronzefield Prison for that killing,
07:28while Helen spent 10 years out of the country.
07:31The someone he took from her
07:32was most likely her mother,
07:34which would mean Helen killed the man
07:36who killed her mother.
07:38Before Helen can pull the trigger,
07:39Sam steps in and pulls his own,
07:42killing Trent, Alex, and her bodyguard.
07:44The man who couldn't kill Hector
07:45because Hector was a kid,
07:47now kills someone as young as Trent
07:49without feeling guilty.
07:50And the way I see it, his code holds.
07:53By his own rule,
07:54this kill makes the world a better place,
07:56because it stops Helen from adding a revenge killing
07:59to everything she already carries.
08:01The moment Alex and Trent are dead,
08:03Helen and Sam get a call,
08:05warning them they'll face the consequences.
08:07So I'd expect the rest of the Clarks
08:09to come after them.
08:10And the show never explained
08:11what the Clarks have on Yarek and the Prime Minister,
08:14which I'm guessing season two finally answers.
08:17Helen gives Maggie's camera to Cole Atwood
08:19to take to the CIA station chief,
08:21Mitch Porter,
08:22so the Americans can use it
08:23to de-escalate things with China.
08:25Mitch goes further,
08:26most likely on his president's orders,
08:28and gives the footage to the press,
08:30which exposes the whole cover-up,
08:32so Richard Eaves resigns to avoid a scandal.
08:35He also works out that Wallace was clean,
08:37and encourages him to run for the job.
08:40Reed confirms it to Helen,
08:41and in about six months,
08:42Wallace is likely to be Prime Minister.
08:45So the woman first sent to steal from Wallace
08:47could soon be the Prime Minister's wife,
08:49while still working for Reed.
08:51And hiding what she is gets much harder,
08:53with tough choices ahead.
08:55Helen promises she won't go rogue,
08:57as long as Reed keeps her and her family safe.
08:59And with Wallace heading for the top,
09:02Reed needs her more than ever.
09:04The closing montage also reveals
09:06the Webb's nanny is another of Reed's plants,
09:08so Reed has Wallace covered from all sides,
09:11and I think he'll matter a lot more in season two.
09:14I also suspect someone sits above Reed,
09:16because she seems like a handler to me,
09:18and the show hasn't revealed
09:19where the Black Doves came from,
09:21or who really runs them.
09:23Reed keeps saying they sell secrets
09:24to the highest bidder,
09:26yet they were strangely keen on easing the tension
09:28between China and America,
09:29which is an odd priority for people in it for the money.
09:33Doves are a symbol of peace,
09:34so maybe the name is more of a clue than it looks,
09:37and somebody above Reed has an agenda
09:39that goes beyond profit.
09:41Sam apologizes to Michael
09:42and clears the air between them,
09:44but they don't get back together,
09:45because Sam doesn't want to put Michael
09:47or Michael's daughter in danger anymore.
09:50While he's at Michael's house,
09:51Hector Newman, whom Sam has now spared twice,
09:54comes to offer him a job.
09:56Hector knows Sam has gone to war with the Clarks
09:58and can't take them on alone,
10:00and he has his own score to settle,
10:02because the Clarks raided his safe house
10:04to get to Kai Ming.
10:05Sam seems to take the offer,
10:07which distances him from Reed and Lenny Lines,
10:09and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn on him,
10:12with a war between Hector and the Clarks coming.
10:15Helen goes home after nearly walking out
10:17of Wallace's life for the second time,
10:19because he still loves her after learning about the affair
10:21and is ready to fight for her.
10:23I'm not sure she loves him the same way,
10:25but she stays for the kids,
10:27and maybe she'll give the marriage another chance.
10:29On Christmas Eve,
10:31she invites her one real friend, Sam, over,
10:33so he won't be alone for the holidays,
10:35and I love that she's asking a hitman round
10:37to the defense secretary's house for Christmas.
10:43So where does season two go from here?
10:45The ambassador's case is closed,
10:47so I expect a new mystery.
10:49But Helen's past is wide open,
10:51and I can see Bonnie coming back in one of two ways.
10:55Either she gets out and comes after the stepsister
10:57who let her take the fall,
10:58or Reed uses her connections to get Bonnie released
11:01and turns her into a weapon against Helen.
11:04And I'd bet Reed knows everything.
11:07Think back to that interview in 2014.
11:09I think the woman asking the questions
11:11was impressed by what Helen had pulled off,
11:13which is probably why she recommended her to Reed.
11:16So Reed has most likely known all along
11:19who really killed that stepfather.
11:21And if her little black dove ever refuses an order,
11:24that's the card she can play.
11:26And is Daisy Bradshaw even her real name?
11:28She's already gone from Daisy
11:30to Helen Dawson to Helen Webb.
11:32And apart from a Cambridge scholarship
11:34and studies she never got to finish,
11:36the show has revealed almost nothing
11:38about her life before the black doves.
11:40And then there's that lighter.
11:42The closing shot is Helen using her mother's lighter,
11:44the one she went back to that hotel room for,
11:47to set the Christmas pudding alight.
11:49And to me, that says she's still holding onto her past,
11:52especially her mother's death.
11:54I think season two's main conflict
11:56will have something to do with that past.
11:58Though I might be reaching.
12:00So tell me how you read that shot in the comments.
12:03And if Bonnie Weir does walk out of prison in season two,
12:06how do you think Helen protects the family she just chose
12:09without her own secret coming out?

Recommended