Black Doves season 1 recap: Everything you need to remember ahead of season 2
Keira Knightley is back having the time of her life in the spy thriller, but just what happened in season 1?
After a two year wait, Black Doves is finally back for season 2. Set against the backdrop of Christmas, season 1 introduced viewers to Keira Knightly, having the time of her life as Helen Webb, a professional spy masquerading as a picture-perfect wife and mother.
Married to high-ranking politician Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan), Helen has spent a decade using her marriage as a front to steal government secrets and hand them over to her employer - the shady spy ring known as the Black Doves.
When Helen’s secret lover, Jason Davies (Andrew Koji), is killed by a sniper, her carefully curated life falls apart and she dives into her own investigation into his death.
Against the orders of her handler, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), Helen enlists Sam Young (Ben Whishaw), a champagne swilling, lethal hitman and one of her oldest friends, to track down Jason's killers.
With chaos, vengeance, espionage, and huge revelations being uncovered along the path to the truth, let's look at exactly what happened during season 1.
Black doves season 1 recap
Black Doves opens with Christmas celebrations in full swing as news breaks that Chinese ambassador Jun Chen (Andy Cheung) has died.
Meanwhile, Helen's lover Jason Davies leaves a pub, clearly rattled, telling a woman on the phone called Maggie that he's being followed. Moments later, he's shot in the chest and dies instantly.
At a Christmas charity party, Helen is approached by the mysterious Reed and told about Jason's murder. They'd been having an affair for three months, and despite their time together being short, Helen is absolutely devastated by his death.
Reed warns Helen she could be the next target, but insists her family is safe. Despite being ordered to stay in her current position as fake doting wife and mother, Helen starts an investigation into Jason's death.
Reed calls in the currently exiled Sam to protect Helen, who defies orders to head off to take a look around Jason's apartment. She's nearly assassinated herself in the process, proving her life isn't safe.
Sam arrives just in time to save her, and Helen escapes with her life and a hard drive hidden in Jason's flat.
With the investigation into Jason's death underway, Helen realises she doesn't need to fee too much guilt over her affair with Jason, after discovering her husband Wallace is also having an affair with his assistant.
Sam works out it was Elmore Fitch (Paapa Essiedu) who shot Jason, and now the pair need to work out who hired him to carry out the hit. Elsewhere, the Chinese authorities are questioning the circumstances surrounding the ambassador's death, and his daughter, Kai-Ming Chen (Isabella Wei,) has gone missing.
After speaking to Maggie before he died, Jason had been trying to call someone else, and Helen and Sam find out it was actually Kai-Ming he'd been trying to speak to.
The pair head to confront Elmore at his apartment, and they narrowly escape with their lives once again, on finding it rigged with explosives when they get there.
When Helen finally gets the chance to confront him in person, Elmore admits to killing Jason, and is also connected to Kai-Ming Chen when he admits he's is looking for a video camera belonging to her.
Helen kills him, and joins the dots that Kai-Ming is the link connecting the recent murders. She believes police commissioner Stephen Yarrick (Sam Troughton) is involved in the deaths and Kai-Ming's disappearance.
Flashbacks reveal how Helen and Sam met during combat training, and show Sam being given an early assignment to kill four brothers, the Newman brothers, including Hector, who's still a child.
Sam killed the three older brothers, but couldn't bring himself to murder Hector (Luther Ford), who of course grew up to be a London crime boss and ruin Sam's life by hunting him and his boyfriend Michael (Omari Douglas) and forcing him into exile.
In exchange for Sam's safety, Helen had agreed to spy for the Black Doves and in the current timeline with Sam out of exile, Lenny (Kathryn Hunter) expects Sam to finish the job and take out Hector for good.
Meanwhile, Helen is still trying to hold her regular life together alongside her spy and investigative work, and is expected to attend an function with Wallace, who is meeting Chinese officials.
The officials reveal they have footage of a man named Cole Atwood (Finn Bennett) leaving Kai-Ming's apartment before she disappeared. A CIA agent and Kai-Ming's boyfriend, Cole had been returned to the American embassy and not seen since.
The Chinese believe the Americans are involved in killing the Chinese ambassador and in Kai-Ming's disappearance, and tensions are on the rise. Helen later finds out that Stephen Yarrick has been tortured and murdered and this gives her something else to get to the bottom of.
Sam also has multiple jobs to attend to and is off with Williams (Ella Lily Hyland), and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy) to storm Hector's hideout after Lenny reveals that's where Kai-Ming can be found.
She is indeed there, and Helen meets with Sam to question her once she's found. Kai-Ming says she and Cole discovered her father's body inside her apartment and fled, before she captured and held captive by Hector's men.
Interestingly, she also says Jason was Maggie's partner, leaving Helen with questions about how well she knew her boyfriend, and concerned that she'd shared her true identity as a Black Dove with him.
Having to deal with that another time, Helen is tasked with approaching Cole Atwood to convince him to betray the Americans in exchange for money, and heads to the American Embassy to track him down.
Finding him, relaying the offer of money and then helping him escape, Cole tells Helen a new crime family called the Clarks have taken over London's criminal underworld and are responsible for everything going on.
The Clarks are connected to Kai-Ming through their son, Trent, (Angus Cooper). Trent was infatuated with Kai-Ming and trying to impress her by procuring drugs for her. Cole tells Helen the Clarks know what happened to the Chinese ambassador.
Elsewhere, there's a big shock in store when it comes to light that Wallace and his assistant Dani (Agnes O'Casey) were never having an affair after all. Dani is actually another spy sent by Reed to seduce Wallace and take over Helen's place as his wife, after she felt Helen made herself untrustworthy by falling for Jason.
But Wallace had rejected her advances, and Dani had staged what appeared to be an affair to the outside world, in a bid to complete her mission.
Wallace is too busy for an affair, meeting with Chinese and American officials after the US embassy attack and Cole's escape caused by Helen, and with tensions rising between the different nations.
With her husband busy, things start falling apart for Helen. She knows Wallace is starting to have questions about her, she finds out Reed has actually been working with the Chinese, and she wants to take out the Clarks after working out they could be behind Jason's death.
Amid the fragile international relations, secrets are spilling out everywhere. We find out that it was actually Trent who'd killed the Chinese ambassador, after he'd attempted to frighten him away from Kai-Ming.
Trent orchestrated the killings of Jason and Maggie because they had obtained secret footage of him accidentally killing the Chinese ambassador, and he was desperately trying to clean up his own mess to prove himself to his mother.
Stephen Yarrick had then covered up the murder by making it look like a drug overdose. Even the prime minister had been involved, and what began as Jason's murder uncovered a massive government conspiracy.
Towards the end of the season, Kai-Ming is once again captured, this time by the Clarks. Helen manages to track down Trent Clark, threatening him to secure a meeting with Alex. During their meeting, Alex confirms Trent was behind Jason's murder.
Outside the meeting place, American and Chinese agents gather and in the a tense standoff, Sam grabs kills Alex's bodyguard before shooting Alex and Trent.
Eventually the American and Chinese agents are killed, with Cole being the sole survivor. Helen is angry she didn't get to kill Trent herself, but Sam is just glad its all over.
Helen is then mysteriously warned that she's being watched, and will be held responsible for what happened to the Chinese ambassador. But she gives Cole a recording of what really happened, to prove her innocence and reduce diplomatic tension.
The blame is then pinned on Stephen Yarrick, and with the footage also implicating the prime minister, it looks like Wallace is poised to replace him.
During a meeting with Reed, Helen finally finds out the truth about Jason. Maggie had been selling stories about Kai-Ming to the press before being recruited by MI5 to spy on the ambassador's family.
She planted a camera inside Kai-Ming's apartment, which kickstarted the chain of events leading to Jason's death. Jason was also an MI5 operative, but despite finding out the truth about Helen, had kept her secret.
Reed hands her a USB drive with more information about Jason, but Helen doesn't want to look at it and discards it.
In an unexpected move, Hector offers Sam a job, ending his exile and making them allies instead of enemies, united in continuing to fight the Clarks. He also makes further unexpected peace with Lenny.
The season ends with Helen returning home to Wallace and her children, and everyone celebrating Christmas.
Black Doves season 2 airs on Netflix from November 5.
