REVIEW: ‘Black Doves Season 2’ Struggles Before Sticking The Landing

It’s been four years since the first season of Black Doves was released. Created by Joe Barton, the Netflix Original Series follows Helen (Keira Knightley), a spy working for the titular organization. At the end of the last season, everything had mostly settled down, and happiness felt like it was on the way. That is, until it becomes clear that the cracks espionage caused haven’t been sealed over. Now, in Black Doves Season 2, everything gets worse. 

The crux of Black Doves Season 1 centered on Helen, her love, and her choices. Her lover was gunned down because he accidentally fell into a conspiracy, and she got to the bottom of it, with the help of her best friend Sam (Ben Whishaw), who is also a hitman working with the organization.

Her grief drove her decisions, but by the end of the season, Helen has to choose family as her husband, Wallace (Andrew Buchan), grows suspicious. But that suspicion doesn’t change much, except it lands the couple in couples therapy. Now, in Black Doves Season 2, we step back into their lives, and the chaos grows as a new clandestine organization begins to put its finger on the scale. 

Black Doves Season 2 is all about the mess left after Season 1.

In Black Doves Season 2, Helen is still betraying her nation’s secrets as a Black Dove, and if anything, she’s even more involved. An uptick in jobs also means that, with the misadventures of last Christmas and her husband Wallace preparing to become Prime Minister, Helen is walking a more treacherous line than ever while her husband questions her love for him and whether or not he knows who she really is.

But Helen’s heart isn’t the primary focus this season; it serves more as a backdrop for maintaining connections within an organization like the Black Doves. Instead of Helen landing at the center of the conspiracy this time, her handler, Mrs Reed (Sarah Lancashire), finds herself there. 

Mrs. Reed has been one of the series’ best characters, and in Black Doves Season 2, she gets even more development. While she emerged as a seeming enemy last season, Black Doves Season 2 focuses more on her maternal qualities, driving Helen and Sam to try to protect her, even when they know she is Machiavellian at heart. 

Now, Mrs. Reed is ensnared in a ruthless plot to undermine her position in the Black Doves. There is a new organization on the field, and the Black Doves are about to be wiped out if they had it their way. But saving Mrs. Reed isn’t something that our protagonist can do alone. 

Thankfully, Helen reunites with her best friend, Sam, to get to the bottom of it all. But the once high-end triggerman is now reduced to lonely drinks in Soho bars and low-rate hits, having left his ex-boyfriend Michael and given up hope for companionship and any sense of a “normal” life.

As they search for answers, loyalties are weaponized, trust is shattered, and the fight to protect the people they love could cost everything. Relationships, more than action, define Black Doves Season 1, grounding its story in real emotion and heart. In Black Doves Season 2, we still see relationships and trust carrying the series, while it still delivers more action than last season and even larger action set pieces too. 

Sam and Helen’s friendship is still central, but it’s strained.

Helen and Sam’s mission leads them back to old friends—yes, the “murder lesbians”(Ella Lily Hyland and Gabrielle Creevy) are back—and new enemies, while both of them grapple with their hope for feeling “normal” and loved being crushed with every wide choice that they’re forced to make. With both characters choosing what they believe will help the other (without ever asking), miscommunication drives much of the interpersonal conflict in Black Doves Season 2. 

For Helen, she is holding onto the frayed thread of her marraige and her family. Wallace is sure that she cheated on him, and she won’t tell him that one truth. As they edge toward divorce, her identity as a mother and wife is in danger. But more importantly, with her husband having just become Prime Minister of the UK, his security detail can’t help asking more and more questions as her past keeps raising red flags. 

Sam, on the other hand, has thrown away all of his connections. He’s a hired killer now, and there is no real connection to anything in his life to define him differently. As he starts a tryst with his hotel concierge, the happiness wanes when it’s taken from him yet again. Helen is trying to hold onto the life that constitutes her family, built around a target she constantly betrays. But Sam? Sam has had everything taken from him. His love, his independence, and his choices. 

With both Sam and Helen refusing to unsettle the other with their truths, the two assassins dance around the truth for the first half of the season. Driven by the need to protect each other, this builds frustration in the audience. Whether it’s omission, miscommunication, or outright lies, the duo keep talking past each other. They’re caught up in their own trauma to the point that they almost begin to forsake one another. 

This is when Black Doves Season 2 is at its weakest. Slow-moving in the first half of the season, the stupidity on display by the extremely intelligent but emotionally fragile characters is almost too high a hurdle to clear. Fortunately, once Black Doves Season 2 brings in its other characters, primarily the other assassins Williams (Hyland), Eleanor (Creevy), and new character Laila (Ambika Mod), the series rights its trajectory. 

That said, many of the issues at the season’s midpoint feel like they come from the need to catch up the audience.  Or, maybe a more generous interpretation is that my frustration came from how short the episode order is in Black Doves Season 2, which compounds some of last season’s misses.

Black Doves Season 2 struggles in the first half but goes all gas, no breaks to end it. 

With an episode that easily feels like filler at the season’s midpoint, revealing the past feels less genuine than if it had been naturally worked into the series’ narrative at relevant moments as we got to know the characters. This is particularly true for Mrs. Reed and Sam.

As the storylines get muddied and bad choices start to mount, it’s hard to still not love the characters. A testament to the actors bringing them to life, the performances go all in, no matter what. And that translates from high drama to their more physical moments. 

Still, as the conspiracy at the center of Black Doves Season 2 is revealed and the character exposition about their pasts is pushed to the side, the series finds its footing. That footing is steeped in bloody action as the group of assassins moves through an epic palace at the season’s turning point, saving Mrs. Reed but exposing the hard truths of their profession.

 With Williams and Eleanor getting a larger role, they don’t overwhelm. Some points in Black Doves Season 2 feel scattered, deprioritizing one central narrative in favor of multiple larger story arcs. Because of that, parts of the season feel tedious, which is amplified as bad decisions start to mount. 

Ultimately, though, where Black Doves Season 2 finds itself is with expanded and stellar action, dark but effortless humor, and two best friends that you can’t help but continuously root for, independent of each other, but more specifically when they’re on the same side. And ultimately, how Black Doves Season 2 comes to a close makes it well worth slogging through those first couple of episodes. 

The aggression and embrace of large action sequences, from what I can tell is a larger budget, keep Black Doves Season 2 in line with the excitement that made us fall in love with the first season. Still, Black Doves Season 2 is at its best when it moves quickly, breaks bones, and goes all in on spycraft and the clandestine organization behind it all. 

Black Doves Season 2 may take time to get going, but by Episode 5, it is all gas, no brakes. While this delivers some of the best action and espionage storytelling on Netflix, it also delivers some of the best character work. While it may not have the consistent pacing, the way that Black Doves Season 2 brings everything home makes me excited for more in the future, without leaving me unsatisfied with the story we’ve gotten so far. 

Black Doves Season 2 is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix. 

Season 1 Review |