Blogsia

What Eugene doesn’t know at the end of season two is that the real Elliot Stanley – a local scuba diver who’d disappeared in 1981 after Eugene’s mother killed him – is likely his biological father. He and Helen also don’t know, after they decided not to read the file on Eugene’s pre-amnesia life, that he’s a deep cover secret agent, which explains his driving/fighting and speaking-Russian abilities. Additionally, he’s a trained ballet dancer, but let’s not focus on that just now.

If any of The Tourist’s second season left you scratching your long and healthy beard in confusion, we break it all down here.

The Real Elliot Stanley, the Sunk Plane, and the Stolen Love Letters

In the 1950s, Niamh Cassidy’s mother and Frank McDonnell’s father were in love but couldn’t be together because of the longstanding feud between their families. They secretly had a baby together – Niamh – who was raised to be a McDonnell-hating Cassidy, despite being a biological McDonnell herself. In 1981, Frank’s father was on his deathbed in Boston, US, and decided to lay bare his secret perhaps in an attempt to finally stop the bloody feud between the two families. He sent a bundle of love letters Niamh’s mother had written him, to his son Frank.

The plane containing the letters went into the sea. Awaiting an important parcel from his father, Frank hired scuba diver Elliot Stanley to search the wreckage. Stanley, whose widow hinted had been having multiple affairs including with Niamh and possibly resulting in Eugene’s birth, found the submerged plane with Niamh but she cut his oxygen tube and stole the parcel. When she read the letters and realised she was a McDonnell, she buried them and the feud continued for over 40 years.

Eugene and Claire’s Affair, Fergal, Donal and Joe

History repeated itself to some extent with Eugene and Claire’s story, but instead of a love affair between a Cassidy and a McDonnell, theirs was between a Cassidy and the wife of a McDonnell. Eugene and Claire had an affair that resulted in the birth of Fergal, who was raised as the son of Donal McDonnell. Donal was a violent man who physically abused his wife, and he was eventually shot dead by Niamh Cassidy – who turned out to be his biological aunt. That made Eugene and Donal first cousins, meaning that young Fergal is indeed a blood relative of Donal and Frank McDonnell, just a first cousin once removed/great nephew instead of a son/grandson.

When Donal discovered that Fergal was biologically Eugene Cassidy’s son, he planned to kill Eugene but mistook Eugene’s older brother Joe for him and killed Joe instead.

Danofgeek

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