Diksha Sundriyal
If the first season of Netflix ‘The Tourist’ was a chaotic mess that turned the life of the amnesiac protagonist upside down, it is nothing compared to what happens to him in the second season. It turns out that The Man (whose name is revealed to be Elliot Stanley in Season 1) hadn’t even scratched the surface of his past. The next chapter of his life takes him to Ireland, where he wishes to connect with the people who may have known him better and might provide some answers. However, every answer only leads to more questions, and it makes things all the more complicated for him. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Real Elliot Stanley Has a Weird Connection with The Man
Of the many things that Jamie Dornan’s Elliot learns about himself in the second season, the most important one, perhaps, is that his name isn’t Elliot Stanley. It was just an alias he had been using. His real name is Eugene Cassidy, and he belongs to the Cassidy crime family that has been in a rivalry with the McDonnell crime family for as long as they can remember.
The fact that his name is not Elliot Stanley is not as much of a surprise. What catches him off guard is that Elliot Stanley was another man who died before Dornan’s character was even born and was at the center of something that not only sustained the rivalry between the two crime families but also strengthened their hatred for each other.
Elliot Stanley was never directly associated with any crime families. In fact, he was a diver and was approached by Frank McDonnell to retrieve something that was in a plane that had crashed off the coast of Ireland. Turns out that McDonnell’s father had sent him a gift before dying, but McDonnell had no idea what it actually was. Around the same time, Stanley came in touch with Niamh Cassidy. It remains uncertain whether Stanley knew who Niamh was or was aware of the conflict between the McDonnells and the Cassidys. However, it is hinted by Stanley’s wife that Niamh was known to have spent a lot of time with Stanley around the town, so there may or may not have been something between them. Curiously, Stanley’s wife hints at it in a way that might make one believe that Elliot Stanley is the father of Eugene Cassidy.
No matter if there was a romantic connection between them, the contents of the suitcase at the bottom of the ocean were more important to Niamh. Either she convinced Stanley to join him in his quest, or he let her in on the plan, intentionally or unintentionally. In any case, Niamh accompanied Stanley as they both dove into the ocean and found the crashed plane and the suitcase buried in its remains.
Niamh knew that she couldn’t let McDonnell get his hands on the case, even when she didn’t really know what was in the case. She also knew that Elliot Stanley was bound to get that case to Frank, and if he didn’t, he would tell them Niamh took it, and this would cause further complications. She couldn’t have Stanley come back from the water, so just as they’d found the suitcase, Niamh trapped Stanley and cut off his oxygen, even stabbing him a couple of times, ensuring that he never saw the light of day.
Because Stanley never came back and Niamh joining him on the expedition wasn’t exactly an official thing, no one could point a finger at Niamh. She walked away from the murder with the suitcase in her possession. It didn’t take Frank McDonnell to put two and two together and conclude that Niamh was behind the disappearance of his diver. Because Stanley was killed in the water, there is a chance that his body was never retrieved, and hence, his case remained more of a disappearance rather than a murder investigation.
Whatever the case may have been, the cops couldn’t arrest Cassidy without causing a stir, and with no substantial leads in the case, Stanley’s murder was dropped. For her part, Niamh Cassidy denied everything and claimed not to have the contents of the suitcase in her possession. She continued denying it for forty-two years until the truth came to light.
Read More: The Tourist Season 2: What Was in Elliot’s File? Theories
