WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for Black Doves season 1.
Keira Knightley’s Helen Webb takes on various personas and aliases in Netflix’s espionage seriesBlack Doves. Created by Joe Barton (The Lazarus Project,Giri/Haji),Black Doveshas opened to outstanding reviews, earning aperfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic scoreupon itsDecember 5, 2024 release date. Knightley (Atonement,Pirates of the Caribbean) leadsthe cast ofBlack Dovesalong with Ben Whishaw, who is best known for playing Q in Daniel Craig’s final three James Bond movies.Black Dovesalso features a stellar supporting cast, including Sarah Lancashire’s Reed, Kathryn Hunter’s Lenny, Ella Lily Hyland’s Williams, and Omari Douglas’s Michael.
Black Dovesfollows Knightley’s Helen Webb, the loving and supportive wife of Andrew Buchan’s Wallace Webb, a prominent British politician.Webb is also a secret agent working for the mysterious covert spy organization known as the Black Doves, which Mrs. Reed is the head of. Reed confronts Helen over an affair she was having with a civil servant named Jason (Andrew Koji), who was shockingly shot and killed in a park from long range. Suspecting that Helen could be in hot water with a powerful criminal conspiracy, Reed enlists a trusted triggerman named Sam Young (Whishaw) to help Helen avert threats to her life and family.
All 6 episodes ofBlack Dovesseason 1 are now streaming on Netflix.
Helen’s Previous Name Was Daisy Bradshaw (But Black Doves Hints That’s Not Her Real Name)
Helen goes by Daisy Bradshaw before becoming Black Dove agent Helen Webb
Black Dovesepisode 2 “A Little Black Dove” opens with a flashback scene from 2014 of Knightley’s protagonist interviewing for a translator job at a prestigious corporate firm.Helen Webb identifies herself under a different name, Daisy Bradshaw, but her interviewer knows more about Helen/Daisy than she had anticipated, including her personal family information. The interviewer reveals that Helen’s mother had died and that Helen has a stepsister who is serving a life sentence in prison. The interviewer dives deeper into Helen’s background and suspicious family dynamics after pointing out that she rejected an acceptance offer to Cambridge University and left the country for ten years.
After returning to London, Helen appears to have taken on a new identity as Daisy Bradshaw to distance herself from her complicated family background. It’s clear that Helen/Daisy wishes to maintain a proper image and is completely thrown off when the interviewer brings up her family background, which could have spelled trouble for her. Helen/Daisy is stunned to discover thatthe interviewer knew about her acceptance and scholarship offer from Cambridge, potentially because she had applied under a different (her actual) name. Helen seems to realize at that moment that the interviewer might know too much about her shady past.
What Happened To Helen’s Parents & Stepsister In Black Doves
Helen’s mother died and her stepfather was murdered by her stepsister Bonnie
Helen is confronted by the interviewer about a woman named Bonnie Weir, who turns out to be her stepsister. Bonnie has been in prison since 2004 for killing her biological father – the same man who is implied to have killed Helen’s mother. Although it isn’t determined how Helen’s mom died, the series suggests that Bonnie’s dad killed her. Without overtly saying it, the interviewer implies that Helen may have also had something to do with the death of Bonnie’s dad in response to her mother’s death. Bonnie went to jail after Helen’s stepfather, her father, was killed, whileHelen left the country for ten years after his death.
These mysterious circumstances raise the suspicions of the interviewer. A plausible series of events was that Helen’s stepfather killed her mother andHelen could have teamed up with Bonnie to avenge her mother’s death by killing Bonnie’s dad. Alternatively, Bonnie could have not been in on her father’s murder and instead was framed by Helen, who likely killed him herself and fled. Because there’s such limited information about Helen’s family inBlack Doves, it’s unclear exactly what went down between her and Bonnie other than the fact that Bonnie is in prison for life while Helen lives a posh double life as a secret agent and politician’s wife.
What Happened To Helen After Her Stepfather’s Death
Helen fled the country after denying Cambridge’s acceptance and scholarship offer following the death of her stepfather. She would go on to spend the next 10 years working in bars around the world to get by and apparently to keep a low profile. Fortunately for her, nobody seemed to raise suspicions about Helen’s mysterious disappearance from the United Kingdom after the death of her stepfather. AlthoughBonnie is mentioned briefly in the series, she does not become a major character in season 1nor is it revealed whether she believes she was guilty or alone in murdering her dad.
The majority of Helen’s life between 2004 and 2014 remains shrouded in mystery. Her main objective was to travel the world and seemingly bury her dysfunctional family deep in the past. After a decade on the run, Helen/Daisy likely concluded that the smoke had cleared enough for her to return to London, which is where she calls home. She had planned to get a job as a translator based on the various languages she had picked up while “on the run” in her twenties and probably expected to live a relatively low-key lifestyle. That is, until the interviewer introduced her to the covert world of the Black Doves.
How Helen Originally Joined The Black Doves & Why She Was Recruited
The interviewer referred Daisy/Helen to Mrs. Reed because she was a highly intelligent risktaker
The interviewer seemed to suspect that Helen was involved in her stepfather’s murder and saw a natural talent in Daisy/Helen to become a Black Dove. He was the first person to discover and introduce her to Mrs. Reed, the leader of the Black Doves. The interviewer found Daisy/Helen to behighly intelligent, convincingly manipulative, alluring, crafty, and a lone-wolf survivalist type. He believed these characteristics would make for an excellent Black Dove, which turns out to be spot on.
When Daisy/Helen meets Mrs. Reed for the first time, Reed is taken with her ferocity and calculated mind. She can tell that Daisy/Helen has already scouted an exit plan and has all of her bases covered, which is a natural-born skill of a Black Dove agent.Reed also appreciates that Daisy/Helen knows how to cover her tracksbased on the situation with her stepfather and can tell that she also has an appetite for danger and risk-taking. She also deduces that Daisy is not her real name. Reed sees Daisy/Helen as a “coiled spring” while others simply see her as a beautiful woman, which makes her an invaluable weapon to theBlack Doves.
Black Doves
Cast
Black Doves is a suspenseful thriller released in December 2024. It follows a spy masquerading as a politician’s wife who, after discovering her lover’s murder, joins forces with an old assassin associate to uncover the truth and seek revenge.
