Black Doves – Episode 6 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

In The Bleak Midwinter

Episode 6 of Black Doves begins with Sam waking up after being knocked out. He looks up to find Eleanor and Kai-ming both tied to chairs. As for Helen, she rings Reed and brings up how Dani is dead and that Sam has walked right into a trap for giving him the Clarks’ address.

Helen has nowhere else to turn, so she grabs Williams and together, the pair head off to see Trent. They show him the surveillance footage and threaten him. He eventually gets them a meet with Alex.

Who’s in collusion with the Clarks?

With the meet going down, Reed plays puppet-master and lets Mr Reid know about the transfer about to go down. As for Cole, he returns to the Embassy in enough time to head out the door for the meet. Now, Helen stashes her gun inside Trent’s inside jacket pocket, before they arrive right at the spot where the others are being held hostage in the middle of London.

As they look set to leave, Alex Clark shows up at the door. Now, at this point Helen brandishes the recorder from her pocket, and hands it over. Alex checks over the footage for herself, and sees it’s legit, and unfortunately Kai-ming also sees her dad being killed by Trent too.

While this is going on, Wallace receives word of the tape and brings this news to the PM. He seems suspiciously distracted and messages his contact, telling them the Americans are on the way. His contact? None other than the Clarks.

How does the drama with the Clark family end?

Helen grabs the gun from Trent’s pocket and Alex warns not to pull the trigger. If she does, it’ll cause a catastrophic chain of events that will crumble everything around them. However, it soon becomes clear that it wasn’t Alex who killed Jason. It was Trent. He wanted to try and fix what he’d done with the Ambassador and he worked against his family’s interests.

While the US and the Chinese are outside at loggerheads with one another, there’s a tense stand-off inside. Eventually, all-out chaos ensues. Sam grabs the gun, kills Alex’s bodyguard, then Alex, and finally Trent, while outside all the agents for both the Chinese and the US are killed, save for Cole.

Back inside, Helen is angry and believes Trent was her kill, but Sam hugs her and tells her it’s over. Well… it’s not. They receive a call saying they’re being watched and they will be held responsible.

Cole survives the bloodbath outside, just in time for Helen to hand over the recording. This helps the Chinese back down, while all the drama is pinned on Stephen Yarrick. He also implicated some people on the tape, including the PM himself. This also means that Wallace is in place to be the next Prime Minister, much sooner than expected.

Was Jason actually a spy?

That night, Helen meets Reed at the local church. She brings up the news about Alex Clark and feeds back what really happened. Turns out there’s someone who was watching the ambassador’s family this whole time. This was Maggie. She’d been selling stories about Kai-ming to the press for extra cash when MI5 tapped her up.

She was the one who planted the camera in Kai-ming’s flat, and when she checked the footage, she also told Phillip, which in turn basically led to a chain of events that left a big trail, with Jason, Yarrick and subsequently Helen all thrown into the mix and needing to be killed to keep all of this quiet.

Jason, as it turns out, was an agent working for MI5. However, he lied for Helen and never revealed anything about her being a Dove. Within his report, he simply called her a “loyal citizen and wife”. Jason saved her at great risk to himself, which seems to confirm that he really did have feelings for her.

Reed hands over a USB drive which holds Jason’s real self – a Christmas present of sorts to her black dove – before leaving. Helen is going to be inside Downing Street before long and she needs to get to work. Helen decides not to go digging into Jason’s past, and drops the drive into the water.

What happens with Hector?

As for Sam, he returns to Michael and seems content that everything is over. However, it’s obviously not because we still have 20 minutes left of the episode. Yep, we’ve got one more loose end to tie up. Hector. He happens to be inside Michael’s apartment and he brings up his past. He hated his brothers but obviously they were also blood too so he’s at a bit of a conundrum

Hector had been conflicted for a long time, unsure whether Sam was his guardian angel or his worst enemy. Well, he’s come to a decisions and subsequently offers him a job. With the Clarks taking a big hit, Sam could come and work for him and they can try to fight off what’s coming. And there is undoubtedly a lot of heat coming their way now!

When he leaves, Michael sees the final part of this meeting and confronts Sam. The pair have a final goodbye kiss and part ways, with Sam realizing he’s never going to get his happily ever after. Sam shows up to see Lenny and points a gun at her, deciding they should just let bygones be bygones. Sam eventually doesn’t kill Lenny, but it’s unclear whether he trusts that she’ll leave him alone or not. We’ll have to wait and see!

How does Black Doves end?

As for Helen, she heads home and Wallace holds her hand as they watch the kids open presents om Christmas morning. Helen decides Sam should come join them. Sam is sticking around in London for a while and he clarifies that he would do this every time to protect her.

As the episode closes out, we get a montage showing Reed with her daughter, while Williams, Kai-ming and Eleanor all hang out together too.

The Episode Review

So the ending to Black Doves concludes this season with a glimpse at what’s to come in the upcoming second season, which has already been greenlit and confirmed. This throws up some huge implications for our characters, especially as there’s the danger that the Clarks will come back harder, and come after Wallace, who’s poised to be the next Prime Minister.

We do get some closure surrounding Jason, and also the drama involving Kai-ming, along with who’s responsible for all of this However, the subplot involving Williams and the others feels weak and not particularly well fleshed out at all.

However, the creators clearly have faith in this project and the first season does a decent enough job to keep things ticking over until the end. There’s definitely a lot of potential for this one going into a second season, and for now we’ll have to wait and see what transpires.

As a first season though, this one isn’t bad and has been an enjoyable watch overall.