Black Doves Recap Season 2 Episode 3 ‘P is for Poison’
I needed to remind myself that way back when, Helen gave up her one chance to get out of the Black Doves life whilst her children were still in her belly to help Sam and the love of his life, Michael. I needed that reminder, because this episode was a showcase of what made Helen a scarily good spy, including her utter lack of conscience. Sam obviously looked upset when he told her he killed the concierge at his hotel to keep her secret, and Helen was like, so what. So what if an innocent was caught in the line of fire? So what if there was excess blood spilled in the service of Helen’s high flying life? Helen did apologise when she finally noticed the depth of Sam’s feelings for Jerry, and the cost he bore for her sake. But she was full steam ahead with her plans, and when she later declared she would fight and asked for Sam’s help, he, as he always did, said yes.
Helen began her fight back by reaching out to an old enemy — Dani. It was Dani I saw in one of the cubicles at the secret Black Doves facility. From almost getting tapped as Helen’s replacement in Wallace’s life, Dani was now so thoroughly demoted in the spy world as a pencil pusher. Helen left Downing Street in the middle of the night (observed by her children’s nanny) and broke into Dani’s house. They had what passed for a civilised conversation when Dani came home from the gym — threats of violence, Dani needling Helen about how Wallace told her she was hands off with the children — before Helen told Dani her only way back into the field was with her help.
What Helen wanted from Dani was to go into the Black Doves archives and access their Wildflower reports. Dani threatened Helen with exposure to the press before she agreed to put on the spy contact lens (so Helen could see what she saw) and walk into the building. She continued to push Helen’s buttons whilst inside, asking if Wallace forgave her for her affair. Helen honestly told her no, she simply convinced Wallace that Dani was lied. When Dani asked Helen how she slept, Helen said she didn’t, a fact that was already established in the season two opener. Helen slept fine for over a decade until Wallace began pulling away from her as he started to doubt her. Helen’s sleep problems were not about her lies, they were more about the consequences of her lies. She was feeling the pressure because she could feel the veil of love from Wallace that has protected her all this time slip away. As Reed once told her, if she were no longer useful as the wife of a high ranking politician, spy and handler would both be dead.
Dani found the Wildflower file box but it was empty. Before she could leave, Conteh arrived, alerted by her presence when she got an archive pass. Conteh wanted any insights about Reed, given that she at one point had been Dani’s handler. Thinking quickly, Helen told Dani via the earpiece to tell Conteh about the lock box under a bench that Reed used as a dead drop, near Battersea Park.
Helen first tried to call Sam, who was busy with Eleanor and did not pick up. Williams was upset about Eleanor and hung up on Helen. There was only Laila, who grudgingly agreed to Helen’s plan. Conteh would for certain send someone he trusted to check out Reed’s dead drop. Helen told Laila to pick up whoever it was and make them tell her where Reed was.
Laila successfully captured Conteh’s man and kept him tied to a chair in her flat, subjecting him to intense sensory overload to prepare him for questioning. When Sam finally got back to Helen, she told him to meet her at Laila’s place.
Helen got there first, and in her stress she told Laila honestly that the text she received was from her marriage counsellor. Laila jumped on that, wondering what there was to talk about in marriage counselling when Helen was in a marriage of convenience. Helen said it started that way then blurted out that she loved Wallace. Laila cooly told her that was highly inconvenient and pointed out that Wallace was a Tory. Hahahahaha. Please stick around Laila, I am genuinely enjoying you.
Let’s pause here for a bit. Did Helen love Wallace already at the same time that she was also falling in love with Jason? Did she only realise that she was already in love with him when he started pulling away? Did she tell him one more time that she loved him in an effort to save their marriage (and her life) and realised that she meant it? Even back in the first season, when Helen’s actions were driven by her desire for vengeance over the murder of her lover Jason, the marriage between Wallace and Helen, shrouded in secrecy and betrayal, was more interesting to me, and I am glad the show is exploring it more this season. That said, it was hard to draw conclusions about Helen’s feelings in this episode, despite her outright saying she loved Wallace, because this was an episode where her cold, cold spy skills were on display. ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love’?
Sam arrived and told Helen what happened, that he tracked down Patrick and that he was working for a group named Kestrel. He showed her the video that Patrick used to control Sam and told her the punishment Patrick pushed upon him, the death of Jerry. Sam wanted Helen to accept that Reed was not coming back, and that it was time to get out. Helen tabled that discussion because she needed to get to the Chancellor Club for dinner with Wallace, and Alexi and Katia Chernov.
Sam was a triggerman, like his father before him. He has been struggling since he returned to London to help Helen, however, and Jerry’s death by his own hands pushed him deeper into drink and drugs and desolation. Seeing the now empty hotel desk pushed him to Lenny’s house, the crime boss who had a hand in creating him by making his first kill the assassination of his own father. Inside Lenny’s cluttered spare room, Sam laid on the bed and muttered the triggerman’s mantra again. ‘I am the setting sun. I am the coming night. I am the last word in your story.’
Patrick was the uninvited guest in Lenny’s kitchen the next morning, with the latest target for Sam. Lenny offered to find triggermen better than Sam, she said for a small commission, but it looked like it was more because she could see that Sam was in a truly bad place. Patrick framed Sam’s pain – having to kill Jerry to protect Helen – as just another instance of the Black Doves deriving their strength from other people’s weakness. Patrick declared that the whole corrupt organisation of the Black Doves needed to be destroyed.
The next target was Cowboy, Alexi Chernov. Cecile Mason had been bugging Wallace against allowing Chernov to attend the summit. Helen happened upon them arguing, and she mentioned that she had a lovely meeting with Mrs. Chernov in Paris. She offered to get her secretary to arrange a secret meeting at the Chancellor Club. Wallace agreed.
With Williams emotional over the failure of her attempt to tell Eleanor how she felt, Sam could only get Eleanor to help him with killing Chernov. He was heavily guarded, so Helen letting slip where they were going to have dinner provided an opportunity. Dressed as a waitress and a chef, Eleanor and Sam penetrated the Chancellor Club. Eleanor as the waitress told Sam the chef what Alexi’s order was, and Sam poisoned the soup. At the last minute, however, Wallace changed his order to the same soup, and so Eleanor had to create a diversion so she could switch the soups and avoid poisoning Wallace. Helen immediately recognised her.
Helen and Katia had the real meeting inside the ladies’ room. Helen called out how the Chernovs covered up the assault on their penthouse. She also showed her photos of their murdered housekeeper Ida. Katia insisted Ida’s death was not Alexi’s doing. What Helen wanted from Katia was information about Alexi’s KGB past in Berlin, and Wildflower.
The dinner was a success diplomatically, and Wallace looked genuinely grateful for Helen’s help. Unknown to Wallace, Alexi felt the effects of the poison on the car ride with Katia. Back at home, Helen received word from Laila that she had managed to extract Reed’s location. Helen’s next call was Sam.
Helen accused Sam of using her meeting with Alexi to get to him, which Sam absolutely did. Helen told Sam about her meeting with an MI-5 officer (we will discuss this in Strays) and how someone sent him the name of her stepsister, a name no one was supposed to have. Combined with the video Sam showed her, Helen was convinced someone was trying to bring her down and Sam was (unwittingly) helping. As much as I want to cheer Helen on for standing ten toes down in defending her life, my thoughts remained with Sam, who so recently cut short the life of an innocent he envisioned some happiness with to save Helen, and who now had to deal with Helen’s cold resolve. As he always did, Sam agreed to help her. Helen told him she knew where Reed was, and tomorrow, they would break her out.
Just after he agreed to rescue her from her captors, Sam received his next target, code named Wildflower, Reed herself. Meanwhile Conteh took out a contract to kill Laila and Sam. A shot rang through outside Laila's flat. Wait, no! A fade to black means hope, right? We don't actually know if Laila has been shot? Right? Right?
Rating: B+
Strays
🏠Wallace was snappy upon waking up to his alarm clock because the night before, Helen was out late again. Helen even offered her ‘friend’ Jackie Morris’s number if Wallace wanted to confirm her story. I wonder if Helen had a prepped ‘friend’ to give her an alibi.
🏠Sam told Eleanor how he tried to get out of the triggerman’s life once but it did not end well. He ended up going to Italy for a while.
🏠Sam, upon meeting Laila. ‘Oh good. Another addition to the psychotic girl gang.’ Sam, be nice to Laila. She rags on Helen, but if we’re being honest, Helen deserves that.
🏠In another call back to the first season, Sam told Helen, about Jerry, that they got close. Helen’s response was ‘Well that was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’ Back in Black Doves’s very first episode, Sam told Helen that he was told she fell in love. When Helen confirmed this, Sam’s response was ‘That was silly.’
🏠We first met Jim Perryman of MI-5 in the fourth episode of the first season, during a meeting at No. 10 with Wallace. By episode 5, he was in the Webb home questioning Helen about her visit to the US Embassy at the same time that a security breach happened. Now he was back, and his questioning of Helen was hostile from the start. He asked her about her parents, Mary and Graham Dawson, who supposedly died in 2004 in Kenya when Helen was 14, but there was no record of their burial. He asked about Bonnie Weir; Helen denied knowing that name. Apparently, Bonnie had been a model prisoner until she was diagnosed with cancer. She then suddenly kept trying to make contact with the government, claiming she was Helen’s step sister. Bonnie died in prison last year. As she did when Wallace questioned her about having an affair, Helen responded with carefully calculated anger. She may have bought herself a little time by ending the interrogation, but Agent Perryman looked very much like he did not believe Helen at all.
🏠In the second episode of the first season, it was revealed that Bonnie indeed was Helen’s step sister, back when she was still named Daisy and that she was in prison for murdering her (Bonnie’s) biological father.
🏠As a compromise, Katia suggested allowing Alexi to speak at the opening of Wallace’s summit, but not participate in the summit itself.
Episode Title: P is for Poison
Episode Writers: Emer Kenny and Joe Barton
Episode Director: Julian Farino
Release Date: November 5, 2026