“Nothing is ever as it seems on The Tourist,” Jamie Dornan tells Tudum. 

The thriller series stars the Heart of Stone actor Jamie Dornan as Elliot, a man who wakes up one day with no memories and must put together the pieces of his history. While Season 1 follows Elliot as he tries to recover his identity after an accident in the desolate Australian outback, Season 2 takes him to his birthplace in the lush Irish seaside. 

“We couldn’t have gotten more contrasting-looking places,” Dornan says of the two seaons, now available on Netflix US. “There’s an element of risk in that, because that dusty, red desert feel of the first season is such a big part of it. Then suddenly going to the totally other end of the spectrum — it all made sense, but very different vibes.”

Elliot thought he discovered who he was at the end of Season 1, but it turns out that was only part of the story. In Season 2, he goes back to his Irish hometown to learn the truth about himself and his family. 

Finished Season 2 and want to know more about that ending? You can click the link below to read about it. Otherwise, keep reading to find out about the cast, plot, and additional details of The Tourist’s adventure.

What’s Season 1 of The Tourist about? 

After a terrifying car chase through the Australian outback, Elliot wakes up in the hospital with no memory of who he is or what he, an Irish man, is doing in Australia. With assistance from local cop Helen (Dumplin’s Danielle Macdonald), Elliot is forced to use all the clues at his disposal to uncover his identity before his past catches up with him. 

Who’s in The Tourist Season 1 cast? 

• Dornan stars as Elliot, who doesn’t even remember his own name, let alone why someone would want him dead.
• Macdonald plays Probationary Constable Helen Chambers, an ambitious cop in training who’s engaged but doesn’t seem ready to settle down into small-town life.
• Shalom Brune-Franklin plays Luci Miller, a local waitress who may have a deeper connection to Elliot than he (or anyone else) realizes.
• Greg Larsen plays Helen’s mild-mannered fiancé, Ethan Krum.
• Damon Herriman plays experienced Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers, who pursues Elliot’s case single-mindedly.
• Kamil Ellis is young Sergeant Rodney Lammon, who’s working with Rogers on his case.
• Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is the menacing Billy Nixon, an American living Down Under with a special interest in Elliot’s case.
• Alex Dimitriades plays terrifying Greek gangster Kosta Panigiris.
• Alex Andreas is Kosta’s brother, Dimitri Panigiris.

What happens in Season 1 of The Tourist? 

After being forced off the road and left for dead, Irish tourist Elliot wakes up in a rural Australian hospital with amnesia. Local cop-in-training Helen takes a special interest in his case, and the two team up to learn more about his identity. A major clue comes in the form of Luci, who turns out to be his ex. They met while on vacation in Bali, and now they’re both caught up in a scheme involving the gangster Kosta, who’s not only dangerous and unstable but regularly takes LSD and confers with a hallucination of his long-dead older brother, Dimitri.

Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers also takes an interest in Elliot’s case, but it turns out that his involvement is more nefarious than helpful because Kosta’s men are holding his wife hostage.

How does Season 1 of The Tourist end?

In the final episode, Luci manages to get a hold of Dimitri, who faked his own death because he wanted to leave the life of crime he and Kosta were leading. But even Dimitri can’t talk Kosta out of seeking revenge for the money Elliot and Luci stole from him.

A shoot-out in the outback leaves Kosta dead and Luci shot, and Luci dies while Elliot speeds to the nearest hospital. He calls Helen to come pick him up, but in the meantime Rogers pins Kosta’s death on Elliot and Helen. The duo are surrounded by cops but Helen has an idea that could get them out of trouble, so they pretend to rob a restaurant to buy them a little more time for Helen’s plan to fall into place. It turns out speed cameras captured Rogers driving with Elliot and completely disprove his accusation, leaving Helen and Elliot to walk free.

However, Elliot is visited by a mysterious woman named Lena (Victoria Haralabidou) who shows him a nasty scar on her stomach and tells him that it’s from the time he convinced her to smuggle heroin alongside two other women, but the baggies burst inside of their stomachs and they both died. She’s left with this nasty scar where a man cut into her to get the drugs out. But when Elliot, who still doesn’t remember who he is, tries to confess to the crime, Lena says she doesn’t know him and he goes free.

Helen, meanwhile, finds out about Lena and tells Elliot she’ll never forgive him for doing something so disgusting. Later, she changes her mind and reaches out — just as he swallows down a handful of pills with some liquor.

What’s Season 2 of The Tourist about? 

In Season 2, Elliot and his now-girlfriend Helen travel to Ireland in search of answers about Elliot’s identity, but instead, they’re forced to face the dangerous consequences of his past actions.

Who’s in The Tourist Season 2 cast? 

• Dornan returns as Elliot, who still doesn’t remember his past but is living in the present and traveling through Southeast Asia with his girlfriend, Helen.
• Macdonald returns as Helen Chambers, who’s broken her engagement and traveling the world with Elliot, until they decide to head to Ireland to learn more about his past.
• Larsen returns as Helen’s now-ex, Ethan.
• Haralabidou is back as Lena.
• Conor MacNeill plays Detective Ruairi Slater, a quiet local cop with more of an edge than first appears.
• Olwen Fouéré plays Niamh Cassidy, a tough Irish woman with a major connection to Elliot.
• Francis Magee plays Frank McDonnell, the patriarch of a powerful family.
• Diarmaid Murtagh is Donal McDonnell, Nessa Matthews is Orla McDonnell, and Mark McKenna is Fergal McDonnell, a trio of locals who take a special interest in Elliot.

What happens in Season 2 of The Tourist? 

Elliot and Helen have left Australia behind and are trekking through Southeast Asia when they decide to follow a lead who promises information about Elliot’s past. When they land in Ireland, he is kidnapped and they realize the clue was actually a trap.

The McDonnells have kidnapped Elliot, who is actually Eugene Cassidy, a member of the rival Cassidy family. His mother, Niamh, is the their intimidating leader, and there’s a longtime feud with the McDonnells, led by patriarch Frank.

Since this is The Tourist, there’s naturally many more complications to the story: Helen is temporarily held hostage by the cop Ruairi (long story short, she escapes and it’s ultimately unrelated to the Cassidy-McDonnell conflict); Fergal McDonnell’s biological father is Elliot (rather than Donal); and the person who lured Elliot back to Ireland was actually Lena, who wants revenge on Elliot for the death of her friends. 

Lena shoots Helen to make Elliot feel the pain she’s felt, and Helen winds up hospitalized in a medically induced coma. Meanwhile, Donal’s wife, Claire (Siobhán O’Kelly), asks Elliot to kill Donal after years of physical and emotional abuse.

How does Season 2 of The Tourist end?

Elliot tells Helen that he didn’t kill Donal, but he’s arrested for it anyway — and she realizes she can’t trust him anymore, regardless of whether he did it or not. She breaks up with him, but before heading back Down Under, she realizes there’s one detail of the case that she can’t shake. Who was the real Elliot Stanley?

Thanks to Helen’s dogged detective work, she learns that the real Elliot Stanley was a man Frank McDonnell hired to investigate the wreckage of the plane crash that killed his father — and Niamh killed him to hide what Frank and Elliot discovered: love letters between their parents.

As Dornan notes, there’s now proof that Niamh and Frank are siblings. “That has complicated things massively, and muddied the water in a huge way. Elliot’s come in and just been thrown into the middle of all this with zero understanding of why it’s like this, and how he’s so caught up in it.” Oh, and it turns out that Niamh killed Donal, too. 

Helen realizes that her Elliot is the good man she thought he was, and they get back together as she helps him embrace new things he’s learned about his past — like the fact that Eugene Cassidy is supposed to be a fantastic dancer. Elliot tries his hand at ballet, and it transpires he really has a gift.

Dornan, however, does not. “I’m not a dancer naturally, I would say. I did have to do a fair amount of training,” he confesses. “Obviously there’s many moments where that’s not me. I wish I could move like that.”

A dance sequence at the end of a murder/kidnapping/organized crime mystery? “There’s very few shows that could get away with an ending like that, but I think they’re allowed [it] because of the unhinged, off-kilterness of the whole entire arc of the show — you grant them that strangeness of that dance at the end,” Dornan says.

Where could The Tourist go next?

That dance doesn’t actually cap the season — the final scene  reveals a dossier on Eugene that points to his true true identity: He’s a secret agent. What does that mean for the show’s future?

“I think it’s purposely open-ended,” Dornan says. “I think this time they are leaving that to all kinds of factors –– of if and when and how that would happen to do more –– and to see if people want more. But that’s also a timing thing. Everyone’s busy! I’m busy, Danielle’s busy. So we will see, but they’ve definitely left the option open, I think.”

When does Season 2 of The Tourist premiere? 

Both seasons of The Tourist are now streaming on Netflix US.

Who made The Tourist? 

In Season 1, Harry and Jack Williams and Christopher Aird are executive producers for Two Brothers Pictures (an All3Media company). Tommy Bulfin executive produces for BBC, and Chris Sweeney is also an EP. 

In Season 2, the Williams brothers also executive produce, alongside Dornan. Sarah Hammond and Daniel Walker executive produce for Two Brothers, and Nawfal Faizullah is an EP for the BBC.