Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Tourist’ sets the ground for a mystery with a protagonist who knows nothing about himself. He wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what happened to him and how, and even who he is, to begin with. The loss of memories puts him in a delicate predicament because the more he tries to dig into his past, the more he realizes that he might not be as good of a person as he thought himself to be. While he doesn’t have all the answers, things start to get clearer when he finds out his name. What is it, and what does it say about him? SPOILERS AHEAD
The Man’s Name in The Tourist Adds to the Mystery
Jamie Dornan’s character in ‘The Tourist’ is identified as “the Man” for most of the show, especially by the authorities who are after him and know nothing about him, even as he starts to piece some things together. The fact that he doesn’t even remember his name poses a lot of problems for him because he doesn’t have a clue where to start. Nothing can be traced to or from him if there is no way to identify him.
Luckily, there is a note in his pocket that leads him to a town called Burnt Ridge, where he is to meet someone at a diner. When the person he is supposed to meet doesn’t show up, and a bomb blast destroys the diner, the Man is forced to wonder what he was into and why someone is trying to kill him. It isn’t until later that he discovers that the waitress at the diner, Luci, who claimed to meet him for the first time, actually holds the clue to his identity.
At first, Luci presents herself as a curious soul who just wants to help the Man because he has no one else. Later, however, when he sees her signature, he realizes that she was the one who wrote the note to him. It was she who called him to the diner. When the secret is out, she relents and tells the Man that his name is Elliot Stanley. From here, more details come to the surface, and he discovers that he used to work for an international drug mafia and fell on their bad side after running away with the fiancée of his boss, Luci, aka Victoria.
It soon becomes clear that Luci isn’t who she appears to be either. She holds many passports with multiple identities, which makes it difficult to figure out what her real name is. While she meets a tragic end by the end of Season 1, her arc makes one wonder about the Man as well. While everyone around him calls him Elliot Stanley, how can he be sure that that’s his real name? Luci wasn’t Luci’s real name. She was known as Victoria to the drug mafia boss, Kosta, whom she was conning and used a different name when she needed to flee the country.
The first season of ‘The Tourist’ gives us only a taste of Elliot Stanley’s life. All the people that he crosses paths with are related to the time when he started working for Kosta. But considering that this wouldn’t be his first gig in the criminal world, as he himself wonders why he would go about working for a criminal, then it means that there are other things, further in his past, that he hasn’t come around to yet. Could it be that his real name is still in the shadows? It is possible that he took over the identity of Elliot Stanley to start fresh and that even though the name has stuck to him now, it’s not what he was originally called.
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