Sumith Prasad
Written by Harry and Jack Williams, the thriller series ‘The Tourist’ follows Elliot Stanley, whose car gets hit by a truck with the intention of killing him. Elliot survives the crash but loses his memory when he wakes up in a hospital. In addition, he starts to see a woman in his dreams, whom he can’t remember no matter how much he tries.
During the encounter with the infamous drug lord Kosta Panigiris, Elliot remembers that the woman’s name is Lena Pascal. The first season of the show ends with Lena’s arrival at Burnt Ridge, only for her to reveal startling information concerning Elliot’s unknown past. Well, here’s everything you need to know about the character! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Who is Lena Pascal?
After the car crash and losing the memory, Elliot starts to see a smiling woman in his dreams. Even after trying his best to remember the identity of the person, Elliot fails. However, he remembers that the woman’s name is Lena Pascal, who lives in Adelaide, upon drinking Kosta’s LSD-mixed water. When Rogers’ officers try to arrest Elliot and Helen, he asks a negotiator to bring Lena to him in return for not shooting at a group of hostages to buy time for Helen to prove their innocence. The negotiator brings Lena and Elliot meets her for real.
Elliot’s enthusiasm to know about himself from Lena transforms to unbearable grief when the latter reveals to Elliot that he used a group of women, including her, for heroin trafficking. She tells him how he forced her and her comrades to swallow little plastic bags of heroin to smuggle them. Lena also shows him a terrifying scar of the cut made to retrieve the drugs on her abdomen.
As Elliot crumbles down on guilt, Lena informs him how her comrades died during his smuggling mission. Lena presents herself as the living evidence of Elliot’s cruelty and savagery. Elliot gets startled upon hearing Lena’s revelations. The guilt of harming Lena and her friends leads him to try to kill himself. Lena’s divulgence indicates that she was part of a drug trafficking scheme Elliot ran, possibly during his time with Kosta as the drug lord’s accountant.
Lena, a Russian woman, might have agreed to be part of the smuggling mission for money. Risking her own life, Lena completed the assignment, only to carry emotional and physical aftereffects. Even though she might have come out of the drug trafficking world, Lena still carries the wounds of her time with Elliot, inflicted by the unsettling deaths of her comrades.
Considering that Elliot repeatedly dreams of Lena and sees her in his visions, there’s a possibility that their relationship wasn’t just a mere acquaintance amid a drug trafficking scheme. They might have nurtured a bond together and Elliot possibly had used it for forcing Lena to be part of the heroin trafficking. The repeated dreams can also be Elliot’s subconscious’ efforts to manifest the guilt he suffers for being cruel to Lena and her friends.
Lena’s encounter with Elliot may give her closure to the insufferable hurt she goes through. As far as Elliot’s past is concerned, Lena is the pivotal key to completely unraveling the mystery behind his life prior to the memory loss. If renewed, we can expect Lena to play a significant part in the narrative of the show’s second season, most possibly focusing on Elliot’s association with Lena and Kosta.
Read More: Where Is The Tourist Filmed?
