Why did Sam kill the priest in Black Doves? The show saves that answer for his last walk with Reed
Sam once found peace in an Italian village where everyone loved a priest he'd shot. Black Doves season 2 makes him wait almost the entire season to find out why the priest had to die.
Netflix released all six episodes of Black Doves season 2 on November 5, and Ben Whishaw's Sam spends most of it in deeper trouble than Keira Knightley's Helen. His backstory gets the season's quietest episode. Episode 4 takes him back to Italy, to a village and a priest the first season never mentioned.
The village and the priest
Episode 4 is mostly flashback. Sam once went to a small Italian village on a job for Reed (Sarah Lancashire): kill the local priest, Aldo (Mauro Mercatali). He did, in the village church, Netflix's Tudum confirms. The village scenes were shot in Nazzano, outside Rome.
Later, at his lowest point, Sam ended up back in that village. Matteo (Francesco Acquaroli), who runs the village bar, takes him in and slowly draws him back to life. Sam works the bar, joins the village's daily routine, and learns that Matteo was Aldo's close friend, possibly his lover. Matteo has no idea who's pouring his drinks.
When Sam asks the obvious question, Matteo has only a vague one.
"Some people bring light in the world. Some people bring darkness."
— Matteo, on why anyone would want Aldo dead, in episode 4
Then Reed shows up at the church where Aldo died and pulls Sam back to work. He asks her what the priest did to deserve it. Reed won't say.
So why did Sam kill him?
The simple answer is that it was a job. Sam didn't choose Aldo, Reed did, and for most of the season she refuses to explain the order.
She finally answers in episode 5. After the team's post-fight drink, Sam and Reed head out together for a walk he knows is the price of keeping Helen safe from Kestrel. Before it's over, Reed tells him the truth about Father Aldo: he used to be an assassin himself. He killed the wrong man one day, ran, and it took the Black Doves years to catch up with him.
Sam spent years carrying guilt over a priest the whole village loved. It turns out he'd killed a colleague.
The reveal doesn't make the killing clean. It makes it make sense. Aldo wasn't an innocent the Black Doves sacrificed for reasons Sam couldn't see. He was someone from Sam's own world, who'd tried to hide in a parish and eventually ran out of road.
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What it means for his ending
The answer comes right before Sam's darkest choice of the season, and it frames the finale. Sam settles his debt to Kestrel, says goodbye to Helen and tells her to call if she ever really needs him. Then he goes back to the Italian village.
"If you ever need me, you just have to call."
— Sam, to Helen, in the season 2 finale
Before episode 5, Sam was going back to a village built around the memory of a man he'd murdered for reasons he didn't know. After it, he's going back to a place where a retired killer once tried to start over. Aldo's peace didn't last, and neither did his cover.
Netflix hasn't announced a third season.
Previously we wrote: Wendy's death in The Institute isn't in Stephen King's book — season 2 is telling its own story