This article contains spoilers for season one

It’s not often a show gets renewed for a second season before the first has even aired on TV, but it makes complete sense for Netflix’s Black Doves. The series, which is still currently sitting in Netflix’s top five shows, has been hugely popular with audiences. For me, it’s a thriller that I watched all in one go as I couldn’t bear to leave it for another day. I simply had to know what happened to Helen and Sam. So, I was very glad to go into the series knowing that a second season was already confirmed.

But what can we expect from season two? Well, it was a pretty brutal and bloody finale. After making it her personal revenge mission to figure out who murdered her lover Jason (Andrew Koji), Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) uncovers the truth during a violent showdown with London crime boss Alex Clark (Tracey Ullman). It turns out that it was Alex’s son, Trent (Angus Cooper), who ordered the hit on Jason (as well as Maggie and Phillip), in an effort to cover up his tracks after accidentally killing Ambassador Chen during an argument.

In the end, however, it’s Sam (Ben Whishaw) who pulls the trigger, not Helen. Instead of leaving the assassin world behind him, Sam is pulled into its darkness even more – a move that will likely come with consequences from the surviving members of the Clark family.

Another unanswered question is the identity of Jason. In the final episode, Reed (Sarah Lancashire) gives Helen a hard drive with information about who Jason really was. But Helen doesn’t look at what’s on the hard drive and throws into the River Thames instead. Will we find out more about his identity in season two? Will his real motives come back to haunt Helen? Maybe.

The most pressing question is who was the mystery woman that was with Reed in her apartment on Christmas Day? After some digging (and rewinding of episodes), it seems that this mystery blonde woman is the Webbs’ nanny, Marie. It seems she is also a Black Dove working for Reed – and spying on Helen – and would explain why Reed knew so much about Helen’s affair with Jason. The second season may see more of Marie’s spy work…

The witty and unserious assassin duo, Williams and Eleanor, also got a happy ending of sorts in the season one Black Doves finale. They not only survive the bloody showdown with the Clarks, but they also walk away with a new friend: Ambassador Chen’s daughter Kai-Ming (Isabella Wei). An ending scene shows the trio spending the Christmas holidays together on Eleanor’s canal boat, drinking and having a great time. Will they form an assassin trio? Joe Barton, the Black Doves writer, would like to see that.

“You could definitely see them forming a little group,” he said to Netflix’s Tudum. “Kai-Ming would have to stop being a heroin addict party girl, probably. Maybe they could start their own little assassin agency working out of their canal boat. I’d like to see that.”

One thing we do know is that Helen is staying on as a Black Dove, especially as her husband, Wallace, is on track to become the next UK prime minister. As Wallace’s career grows that “increases the pressure and the danger on her as a spy. Just seeing the tension of that, seeing Sam back in London… I would like to see more Eleanor and Williams, Kai-Ming, all those people. I’d like to start to throw them up against one another again, and maybe make things more dangerous and challenging for them,” added Barton. And we’d like to see that in the next season too.

When can we expect Black Doves S2 to be released?

Late last year, Barton confirmed that he was currently writing season two and wouldn’t be sticking to the Christmas setting or release window for the second season, explaining that December 2025 wouldn’t give the show enough time to get a new story together but the following year is too long for viewers to wait.

“So I think inevitably it’s not going to be a Christmas show,” he explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “But it’ll be interesting to see them out of their winter coats.”

Image: Netflix