Warning: This article contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 4, “The Opportunity to Be Savage.”

The second season of Black Doves finally begins to explain the events that transformed Reed (Sarah Lancashire) into the ruthless woman we know, and the fourth episode may be the most interesting so far precisely because it temporarily moves away from the relentless pace of the conspiracy to examine the consequences of decisions made decades earlier. By revisiting an operation carried out in East Berlin in 1988, Joe Barton establishes a parallel between Reed and Helen (Keira Knightley), two women who built their professional identities on lies but discovered that it was impossible to play a part for so many years without developing genuine feelings.

The difference is that Reed seems to have learned to survive by eliminating any possibility of showing vulnerability, while Helen still insists on believing that she can preserve her family and continue working as a spy. Her boss’s past, however, suggests that this combination may be far more dangerous than she imagines.

The episode also revisits important moments in Sam’s (Ben Whishaw) life, particularly his time in Italy, where he found a sense of belonging that contrasts with the loneliness and violence of his professional existence. If the first half of the season focused on the murders and the discovery of Wildflower, we are now beginning to understand that the conspiracy originated in emotional relationships, personal ambitions, and a betrayal whose consequences never truly disappeared.

East Berlin, 1988: The True Story of Wildflower

The main flashback takes us to East Berlin in 1988, shortly before the fall of the Wall, when a young Elizabeth Reed is working undercover within Kestrel, a radical organization beginning to gain international influence. Her mission is to monitor the group’s activities and pass information to the Black Doves, but her assignment has already gone far beyond the boundaries of a conventional intelligence operation.

Reed lives with Franz Meyer, an important member of Kestrel, and the couple has a five-year-old daughter named Vita. Just as Helen would do decades later, she has built a family during a long-term undercover assignment, even though her relationship is based on a false identity and professional interests her partner knows nothing about.

The situation is even more complicated because Reed is having an affair with Peter Maddison, the man responsible for Black Doves operations in Berlin. She wants to leave the assignment and return to England with Peter and her daughter, but he has no interest in ending the operation, particularly when Kestrel begins developing a relationship with Alexi Chernov, a KGB officer willing to defect.

For Peter, allowing the organization to continue operating represents an opportunity to obtain increasingly valuable information. For Reed, it means indefinitely prolonging a life she no longer wishes to lead, divided between the man she lives with, their daughter, and the lover with whom she hopes to build a future.

The situation becomes unbearable when Franz reveals that he has obtained documents allowing him, Reed, and Vita to move to Amsterdam, where he intends to expand Kestrel’s activities. The proposal threatens Reed’s plans, as she realizes she may be forced to abandon Peter and continue performing an identity she can no longer tolerate.

Rather than confront the consequences of her choices directly, she decides to manipulate events to get what she wants.

The Lie That Triggered a Massacre

Reed invents a story that Kestrel is preparing a car-bomb attack, leading Peter and his Black Doves superiors to believe that the organization poses an immediate threat. The false intelligence prompts authorization for an operation to eliminate its members, demonstrating how a seemingly strategic lie can produce consequences that become impossible to control.

This is when we finally understand the significance of the expression Spitfire used before Sam killed her in the second episode. The agents had been given an opportunity to act with brutality, and they seized the chance to execute Kestrel members without any concern for trials or investigations.

The operation turns into a massacre, and Reed realizes too late that her attempt to escape a personal situation has endangered Franz and her own daughter. When he returns to their apartment, she reveals that she works for the Black Doves and attempts to persuade him to flee with Vita before the other agents arrive.

Franz has barely begun to comprehend the extent of her betrayal when Peter appears and slits his throat. The man Reed believed she loved has just murdered her daughter’s father, but the situation becomes even more desperate when Peter discovers that the information about the planned attack was fabricated.

Realizing that the entire operation was triggered by a lie motivated by Reed’s desire to be with him, Peter reacts violently and attempts to strangle her. Reed manages to reach a gun and shoots him, killing her lover.

Within minutes, she loses both men with whom she had built relationships, while the mission that was supposed to secure her freedom becomes a tragedy caused by her own decisions.

Reed also attempts to destroy recordings that could expose her responsibility for the events, and during the chaos, Vita disappears. When agents Zeus and Spitfire arrive to extract her, she claims that Peter, Franz, and the child are all dead.

The lie allows Reed to preserve her position within the Black Doves, but it also destroys any immediate possibility of searching for her daughter without compromising the official version of the operation.

Reed and Helen: Two Women Who Confused Their Missions with Their Identities

The Berlin storyline makes the relationship between Reed and Helen particularly interesting because it demonstrates that the two women faced remarkably similar situations at different moments in their lives.

Both were sent on long-term assignments, became emotionally involved with men who knew nothing about their true identities, and had children during relationships originally built on deception. The difference lies in how they reacted when their feelings began to interfere with their professional obligations.

Helen continues insisting that she loves Wallace and their children, even while maintaining clandestine activities that place her family at risk. Reed, on the other hand, attempted to resolve her conflict by eliminating the circumstances preventing her from beginning another life, ultimately destroying precisely what she intended to preserve.

It is difficult not to recognize a tragic dimension in this repetition. Reed sees in Helen problems she has already experienced, yet seems incapable of offering honest advice, perhaps because doing so would require acknowledging her own mistakes. Instead of protecting her agent from making similar choices, she continues exploiting her ability to lie and her willingness to place her personal life second.

The episode also changes our perception of Reed as a woman who never allows emotions to interfere with her decisions. Her present-day coldness now seems less like a natural personality trait than a survival mechanism developed after a devastating experience.

That does not mean her actions can be justified by her suffering, but it helps explain why she considers emotional attachments so dangerous.

Sam’s Past in Italy and the Possibility of a Different Life

The episode also returns to a period before the first season, when Sam sought refuge in a small Italian town after the events that nearly led to Michael’s death.

Sam had carried out an assignment there, murdering a priest named Aldo, and eventually returned to the very community where the man had lived. His presence takes on an almost penitential quality, particularly when he develops a friendship with Matteo, the owner of a bar who knew the priest intimately and had shared an emotional connection with him.

Matteo offers Sam a sense of welcome he cannot find in London. Gradually, the assassin begins helping at the establishment, participating in the town’s daily routine, and experiencing a kind of companionship that does not depend on threats, contracts, or false identities.

Their connection develops through small, ordinary gestures, and perhaps that is precisely what makes it so moving. Sam does not need to save anyone, eliminate an enemy, or demonstrate any extraordinary ability to be accepted. For the first time, there seems to be the possibility of a life in which his presence alone is enough.

Yet he carries the guilt of Aldo’s murder and knows that Matteo is unaware of the true nature of his connection to the man he lost. His decision to remain in the town can be interpreted both as an attempt at reparation and as a form of self-punishment, because Sam finds comfort among the very people he has harmed.

There is something particularly melancholic about this journey. Unlike Reed, who attempts to erase every trace of her decisions, Sam seems incapable of abandoning the emotional consequences of his actions.

He may kill with astonishing efficiency, but he cannot simply forget the people who have died by his hand.

Reed Finds Sam and Asks Him to Kill Franz

The peaceful Italian interlude ends when Reed arrives looking for Sam, demonstrating once again that the Black Doves can locate their agents even when they believe they have found a way to disappear.

She reveals that Franz survived the 1988 attack and was located decades later in Rome, where he was apparently living a quiet life. For Reed, the discovery represents an immediate threat because he knows her true identity and could expose the lie that triggered the Kestrel massacre.

Reed wants Sam to find Franz and eliminate him, permanently closing a chapter of the past she believed had been buried.

Sam agrees to investigate the man’s whereabouts and discovers that he has left Italy and returned to England, settling at a property in Dorset. However, after locating his new address, Sam decides that he does not want to complete the assignment.

His refusal is significant because it reveals a change in his relationship with his profession. He remains capable of killing, but he is beginning to question why he should do it and, more importantly, who actually benefits from the murders he commits.

Reed shows little interest in the agent’s feelings or in what life in Italy has come to mean to him. Her concern remains focused on eliminating Franz, and when Sam refuses, she decides to turn to someone else.

That person is Helen.

Helen, Wallace, and the Murder That Changed Everything

The narrative returns to another moment in the past, when Helen and Wallace are spending a few days in Dorset with their children, who are still babies. Wallace is serving as Secretary of State for Defence, and the family seems to be trying to find some balance between political responsibilities and the everyday difficulties of raising two young children.

Helen is exhausted, dealing with the demands of motherhood and the need to share responsibilities with a husband whose career requires increasingly intense dedication. It is a particularly revealing period for the character because it demonstrates that her life as a wife and mother has genuine difficulties, independently of her clandestine activities.

Their nanny, Marie, accompanies the family, and her presence reinforces how the Webb household was already organized around a support system that would allow Helen to continue working for the Black Doves.

During the trip, Reed contacts Helen and informs her that she needs her to eliminate a man staying at a nearby property. Helen initially resists because killing people is not part of her usual duties, but her boss insists that the assignment is necessary.

Reed has already hidden a gun in the house, demonstrating that she prepared the operation before even consulting Helen. The ease with which she arranges everything reinforces the manipulative nature of her relationship with her agents, who frequently discover that they have become involved in situations over which they never had any real power of choice.

Helen eventually agrees and goes to the property where Franz is living.

Franz’s Murder and the Final Revelation

When Helen finds Franz, she discovers an aging, seriously ill man who is suffering from cancer and seems to understand that his past has finally caught up with him.

Their conversation is particularly disturbing because there is no immediate threat that could justify his murder. Franz is unarmed and shows no intention of attacking Helen, and his death occurs primarily because Reed wants to prevent him from revealing events that could compromise her position within the organization.

The man understands that his former partner has located him and expresses surprise that she did not come personally. His reaction reveals that, despite the decades that have passed, there is still a history between them that has never been fully resolved.

Before dying, Franz asks Helen to pass a message to Reed: he has found Vita.

The revelation confirms that the girl survived the Berlin massacre and that Franz managed to discover her whereabouts, although the episode does not yet explain what happened to her during the years she remained missing.

Helen carries out the assignment and kills Franz, becoming responsible for a murder that not only compromises her relationship with the Black Doves but also establishes a direct connection between her own history and the present conspiracy.

When Reed learns that Vita is alive, her reaction demonstrates how deeply the news affects her. The woman accustomed to controlling virtually every situation discovers that the past she tried to erase still exists and that her daughter may know the truth about what happened in Berlin.

We also finally understand the origin of the recording Patrick has been using to blackmail Sam. The footage of Helen murdering an unarmed man does not represent an isolated incident in her professional life, but a clandestine operation arranged by Reed to conceal her own crimes.

Williams and Eleanor Finally Confront Their Feelings

While the flashbacks explain the origins of the conspiracy, the present-day narrative follows Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevy), who have accepted a contract to assassinate Laila (Ambika Mod), without fully realizing how the assignment could place them in conflict with Helen and Sam.

Williams accepted the offer while intoxicated and, when attempting to carry out the job, triggers a shootout that leaves the two assassins pinned down. Laila remains alive and returns fire, demonstrating that she will not be as easy a target as her pursuers imagined.

It is in this entirely inappropriate situation that Williams finally decides to talk about her feelings for Eleanor. After spending much of the season displaying jealousy over her partner’s relationships, she admits that she is probably in love with her, before acknowledging that she is almost certain of it.

The confession, made while the two women are desperately trying to escape gunfire, perfectly captures the combination of romance, violence, and absurd humor that defines Black Doves.

Williams eventually uses a smoke grenade to allow them to escape, postponing any definitive response from Eleanor. The two will still have to resolve both their feelings and the problem of having accepted a contract against someone connected to Helen’s operations.

With Sam about to approach them for help in rescuing Reed, the episode ends by preparing a confrontation in which old alliances may prove far less reliable than they once seemed.

The Past Never Disappears in Black Doves

The fourth episode is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that the conspiracy against the Black Doves did not necessarily originate in a political dispute or international interests, but in a personal decision made by an agent who believed she could manipulate events to achieve what she wanted.

Reed triggered an extermination operation because she wanted to escape a life that had stopped making sense, but ended up losing her lover, her partner, and her daughter. Her attempt to conceal what happened allowed her to build a powerful career within the organization, although the price was becoming someone incapable of acknowledging her own vulnerabilities.

The comparison with Helen is unavoidable. Both women confused their professional identities with their personal relationships and spent years sustaining stories that could never remain secret indefinitely. Reed seems to represent Helen’s darkest possible future if she continues believing that she can preserve her family while manipulating everyone around her.

Sam provides an important contrast because his relationship with the past is defined precisely by his inability to forget. While Reed arranges murders to eliminate people who could expose her mistakes, he seeks a kind of reparation among those who suffered the consequences of his actions, even though he cannot offer them the truth about his responsibility.

This difference helps explain why the friendship between Helen and Sam is so important, but also so problematic. He demonstrates an almost limitless willingness to protect her, while she frequently reproduces the same mechanisms of manipulation she learned from Reed.

There is also a moral question the episode makes impossible to ignore. The Black Doves present themselves as an organization interested exclusively in information, without ideological commitments, but their operations depend on people capable of lying, manipulating, and killing to preserve private interests. The freedom they offer their agents seems to exist only as long as their choices do not threaten the power structure.

The discovery that Vita survived and the confirmation that Franz was murdered by Helen demonstrate that Reed’s past is directly connected to the events now threatening to destroy the organization. At the same time, preparations for the rescue place Sam in an almost impossible position, because he has been ordered to eliminate the very woman his best friend intends to save.

The episode ends by making it clear that no one will resolve the conspiracy simply by eliminating those involved, because the violence Reed attempted to conceal for decades continues producing new victims.

Perhaps that is the great irony of Black Doves: its characters are extraordinarily efficient at erasing evidence, eliminating enemies, and inventing identities, yet demonstrate an almost complete inability to deal with the emotional consequences of their choices.

Reed has spent her life trying to make the past disappear, while Sam desperately searches for a way to live with what he has done. Helen, meanwhile, continues believing that she can escape both possibilities, without realizing that her boss’s story may be the clearest warning of the future awaiting her.