The Tourist season 2 review: Jamie Dornan's thriller returns with a bang
The Tourist makes its way to Netflix with a ridiculously entertaining batch of new episodes
It’s easy to assume the Jamie Dornan-led British drama The Tourist, which debuted in January 2022, was a one-and-only season affair. Its tale of an amnesiac Irishman who finds himself hunted by a litany of strangers in the Australian outback had reached a pretty conclusive ending: Dornan’s Elliot was, much to the dismay of lover Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), an unapologetically shades-of-grey character. Dark grey, even. Charcoal, basically. The would-be hero was being hunted for stealing from a gangster for whom he commanded a drug trafficking ring that saw him slice and dice up human mules to stuff bags of heroin inside them. Great guy, that Elliot. A real prince.
Here’s the thing, though: His story isn’t over, nor is his relationship with Helen (who, bless her, can look past the aforementioned issues about the chronically forgetful man she fell for). Indeed, The Tourist returns on February 29, moving from Max to Netflix for season two. It begins with the couple on a train to Cambodia some 14 months later, and they’re still in the lovey-dovey stage of their romance. Go figure.
They’re in for a wild caper across Southeast Asia because it’s not long before they decide it’s time to find out more about Elliot’s incredibly twisted past. Where better to do that than the Emerald Isle? Cue epic drone shots of the Irish countryside, as Elliot and Helen gamely set out in search of answers until our unlucky lead is abducted, hurled into the back of a van, and forced to listen to The Pretenders on full volume. Thank goodness his capable lady love is on the case—when she can get her toxic ex off the phone, that is.
On paper, The Tourist season two sounds like it just doesn’t work. Yet somehow, it does. It’s a bit like one of those Magic Eye pictures; you have to actively ignore the finer details (the murderous divers, the ballet moves, that basement scene) to make it all make sense. Just as you have to pretend that there aren’t more plot twists than, y’know, plot. Still, the implausibility is a huge part of The Tourist’s charm. It helps raise the stakes to dizzyingly high levels, soften the sharp edges of the violence, and breathes bucketloads of dark humor into the story.