WARNING: SPOILERS ahead for the first season of Black Doves.
Keira Knightley's Helen Webb has a complicated relationship with her murderous friend Sam, whose first kill was her own father in the Netflix spy series Black Doves. Created by Joe Barton (The Lazarus Project, Giri/Haji), Black Doves has excellent reviews, earning a 98% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes following its December 5, 2024 release date. Knightley (Atonement, Pirates of the Caribbean) leads the cast of Black Doves together with Ben Whishaw's Sam Young, best known for playing Q in Daniel Craig's James Bond films. Black Doves features a stellar supporting cast, including Sarah Lancashire's Reed, Kathryn Hunter's Lenny, and Ella Lily Hyland's Williams.
Black Doves follows public figure 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 secret spy organization known as the Black Doves, of which Mrs. Reed is the head. Reed confronts Helen about an affair she was having with a civil servant named Jason (Andrew Koji), who was shockingly shot and killed in a park long distance. Suspecting that Helen may be in trouble with a powerful criminal conspiracy, Reed recruits a trusted sniper named Sam Young, who has many dark secrets to hide.
Sam's first death for Lenny was his own father
Lenny gave Sam a brutally difficult first assignment
The most shocking death of Black Doves it is also Sam's first death, which is revealed in one of the series' extended flashback sequences. As revealed in a flashback scene, Lenny gave Sam the unthinkable first blow to his own father, Frank. When Sam was a boy, he closely watched his menacing, imposing father and listened to his oblique advice about how to be an assassin. His father used to tell him that he “I've never pulled a trigger that didn't make the world a better place“an ideology that Sam also adopted when he initially approached Reed and Lenny to become an assassin.
By giving Sam this first brutal task, Lenny was able to understand how serious Sam was about becoming a killer. It proved to Lenny that Sam could be one of his most reliable killers, as any other kill after that would theoretically be easier, so to speak. That's why Lenny was surprised that “Reliable Sam,” as she calls him, didn't kill Hector Newman, even though he was just a boy. At that moment, Sam developed his own code that allowed him to kill his own father – which he must have deserved in some way – but not take young Hector's life.
Why did Lenny make Sam kill his father
Frank crossed the line and lost his honor in Lenny's eyes
All over Black Doves In the first season, Lenny is ruthless and seemingly callous, which is how she gets Sam to cooperate and go after her own father – and later Hector Newman – in the first place. Despite her profession, Sam has a good heart, so he wanted to see if Lenny also had something good inside her at the end of Black Doves season 1. Sam was introduced to Lenny by Mrs. Reed, who he was working for as a sort of “odd jobs” fixer when he also met Helen Webb. After telling Reed that he wanted a more serious line of work, Reed referred him to the notorious Lenny Lileswhich gave Sam an unbelievable first task.
Lenny hired Sam to kill his own father after Frank “crossed a line” which is not specifically elaborated on in the first season of Black Doves. As a murderer himself, Frank has crossed many moral lines in his line of work, but apparently he overstepped and did something unforgivable in Lenny's eyes. Whatever Frank has done to reject his own code, Sam appears to have accepted his decision to take his father's life while at the same time carrying on the touch of his family's business. Sam appears unrepentant about his father's death, implying that he knew he would make the world a better place. killing him.
How Sam Killing His Father Connects to the Triggerman Code He Taught Him
Sam killed his father to make the world a better place
There's a deep connection between the lesson Frank taught Sam and the tragic conclusion to their relationship. While Black Doves The first season doesn't reveal anything atrocious that Frank must have done to make Lenny attack him, it makes it clear that Sam would follow the lessons Frank taught him. Sam must have noticed this Frank failed to practice what he preached when he said that all his deaths made the world a better place.
Lenny probably believed Frank “had to go” for one of two reasons. First, Frank disobeyed her and refused to kill a target because of his own moral code, considering it wouldn't happen.make the world better.” Alternatively, Frank broke his own code and perhaps killed an innocent person, leaving Lenny to appeal to Sam to right his father's wrongs. Hopefully, Sam or Lenny will reveal what Frank really did in Black Doves season 2.