The Tourist Ending: Jamie Dornan’s Character And Final Plot Twist Explained

We’ve all been gripped by Jamie Dornan’s The Tourist on BBC One this past week, which came to a somewhat confusing ending. 

The Fifty Shades star fronted the six-part BBC thriller as a British tourist lost in the Australian outback, injured and with no idea who he is or what he was running from. After a truck succeeds in running him off the road, The Man (Jamie’s unknown character) wakes up in hospital with amnesia.

Viewers are taken along on The Man’s journey to self-discovery, with numerous plot twists and turns along the way. The TV series was released on New Year’s Day and now fans are trying to work out who Jamie Dornan’s character is and what happened.

Warning: Spoilers for The Tourist in the rest of this article.

The Tourist ending explained: who is The Man?

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As the series progresses, we find out The Man’s name is actually Elliot Stanley and that he worked as an accountant to drug lord Kostas.

Turns out, Elliot went on the run from the drug lord after he fell in love with his fiancée and stole his precious bag containing over £1million stashed inside.

But we learn that Elliot did more for Kostas than just crunch numbers; after an LSD-fuelled trip of his own, Elliot discovers the identity of the woman he keeps having flashbacks to.

After tracking down the mystery woman, she revealed that Elliot forced people to smuggle heroin, which led to the death of two girls after the bags exploded inside them.

Unable to live with the knowledge of the person he used to be, and knowing he’d lost his ally and support in Helen (Danielle Macdonald), Elliot takes an overdose. Then, in the last few moments, he sees a text from Helen suggesting they could reconcile.

The ending, quite understandably, left fans confused, with lots of unanswered questions. But despite that, viewers have been praising Jamie Dornan and his co-stars’ performance on Twitter. 

“Just watched the entire series of #TheTourist, on @BBCiPlayer. One word: Epic,” wrote one Twitter user.

“It was worth staying up until 3am to binge watch The Tourist. Well done Jamie Dornan and the other actors it was a top show lots of twists and turns #TheTourist,” said another binge-watcher.

“THE BENCHMARK AS BEEN SET FOR 2022… CAST 100%… WRITING 100%,” exclaimed another.

The Tourist is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.