Spoiler warning: This article discusses major plot developments in Black Doves Season 2, especially the events of Episodes 5 and 6.
For much of Black Doves Season 2, Sam Young is trapped by a deal that looks like a way out of prison but steadily turns into a new form of captivity. Patrick, an emissary of Kestrel, offers him freedom in exchange for a four-person killing contract. The final target is Mrs. Reed. At almost the same time, Sam discovers that Eleanor and Williams—two assassins who have fought alongside him—have accepted paid contracts on Sam and Laila.
That is the season’s sharpest loyalty test: Sam is being ordered to kill someone he knows, while two familiar colleagues are being paid to kill him. The twist is not simply that everyone has become a traitor. It is that the Black Doves world treats friendship, professional obligation and money as competing forces—and assumes that a contract can override almost anything.
Why Sam becomes a target
Sam enters the season in a vulnerable position. Netflix’s official Season 2 guide describes him as a once high-end triggerman who has fallen into low-rate jobs and lonely drinks in Soho. Patrick offers a way out of his immediate legal trouble, but the deal comes with a price: Sam must carry out four hits without asking too many questions.
The contract gradually reveals its real purpose. The targets connect to the old Black Doves network and to the history Kestrel wants to settle. Reed, whose past identity as Wildflower is central to the conflict, becomes the final target in Sam’s assignment. Sam is therefore not simply taking unrelated jobs for cash. He is being used to reach a person whose survival or capture matters to Kestrel’s wider plan.
Patrick also holds leverage over Sam through compromising material involving Helen. That pressure makes refusal dangerous: Sam’s decision could expose Helen as well as himself. Kestrel has designed the arrangement so that Sam’s personal loyalty becomes the very thing it can exploit.
Why Eleanor and Williams accept the hit
The surprise arrives when Eleanor and Williams discuss the offer to kill Sam during the operation to rescue Reed. They have accepted contracts on both Sam and Laila. Williams is visibly less comfortable with the idea, while Eleanor is more willing to treat the payment as a job worth considering. Their disagreement is revealing because it shows that the pair do not approach risk and money in exactly the same way.
There is an especially uncomfortable irony here. Sam has worked with both women, and they are part of the same loose circle of professional killers. But being on the same side during one operation does not mean they share a permanent code of loyalty. In this world, an alliance can be real and temporary at the same time.
Their decision also puts Williams’s developing relationship with Eleanor under pressure. The season has been building their connection through banter, teamwork and increasingly honest emotional moments. Taking a contract on Sam tests what that new intimacy means when a practical reward is placed in front of them. Williams’s hesitation suggests that her feelings and professional instincts are no longer neatly separated.
Is the contract a betrayal—or just business?
From Sam’s perspective, the contract is a betrayal because it turns familiar faces into a direct threat. From Eleanor’s perspective, the offer can be treated as another paid assignment. Williams occupies the uncomfortable space between those positions: she understands the business, but she is not entirely willing to kill someone simply because the money is available.
The show does not make the choice morally clean. Eleanor and Williams are assassins, not ordinary colleagues who have accidentally found themselves in a workplace dispute. Their profession already depends on accepting lethal assignments. The more interesting question is whether personal history should change the rules when the target is someone they know.
Sam’s own position makes that question harder. He has accepted Patrick’s contract and is preparing to deliver Reed, even though Reed is part of the organization that has shaped his life. He cannot demand absolute loyalty from others while pretending his own hands are clean. Season 2 makes the characters confront the same contradiction from different directions.
Patrick turns the assassins against one another
Patrick’s warning to Sam that Eleanor and Williams have accepted the contract is more than a helpful piece of intelligence. It changes the balance of the rescue mission. Sam now has to consider the possibility that the people beside him may attack him once the immediate job is over. Laila is also in danger, and the group cannot assume that shared objectives mean shared loyalties.
This is one of Kestrel’s most effective tactics: it does not need every assassin to be personally loyal to the organization. It can use money, blackmail and carefully timed information to make people suspicious of one another. A group that might be formidable when working together becomes much easier to fracture when each member has a different contract and a different reason to distrust the others.
For the Black Doves, the threat is not limited to a physical attack on headquarters. The organization’s deeper weakness is that its agents and contractors have overlapping loyalties that can be bought or manipulated. Kestrel exploits that weakness by making the people who know one another best into potential targets.
What happens to the bounty in the finale?
The final episode does not turn the contract into a simple story of Eleanor and Williams successfully killing Sam. The conflict feeds into the wider assault on the Black Doves and the rescue of Reed. The season’s final movements leave the organization badly damaged, while Patrick survives and Sam ultimately chooses to leave for Italy rather than remain in the same cycle of violence.
That outcome matters because Sam’s departure is not proof that the danger has vanished. The contract shows how easily his former colleagues can be pulled into a job against him, and Kestrel’s survival means the network capable of arranging such jobs has not necessarily disappeared. A quiet exit is not the same as a clean slate.
For Eleanor and Williams, the episode also leaves their relationship at a turning point. They have acknowledged their feelings, but their profession continues to put those feelings under pressure. Their bond may be genuine; it does not automatically make them harmless or predictable.
Why this storyline matters for a possible Season 3
The hit contracts create several story threads without confirming what a future season will do. Sam has a reason to distrust people who once worked beside him. Eleanor and Williams have to live with the fact that they were willing to consider killing someone from their own circle. Laila has also been drawn into the same web of paid violence. And Kestrel has demonstrated that it can turn professional relationships into weapons.
Those are useful unresolved tensions, but they should not be mistaken for an official Season 3 announcement. Netflix’s published Season 2 materials explain the events and the characters’ choices; they do not establish that a third season has been commissioned or that any particular character will return. Until Netflix confirms those details, predictions about the next contract or target remain speculation.
The bottom line
Yes, Sam’s own professional circle becomes a threat in Black Doves Season 2. Eleanor and Williams accept paid hits on Sam and Laila while Sam is still bound to Patrick’s contract to deliver Reed. Williams’s reluctance and Eleanor’s more pragmatic response expose the tension between friendship and paid work. The bigger point is that Kestrel does not need to defeat the Black Doves in a straight fight if it can make their own people question—and potentially hunt—one another.
Frequently asked questions
Who puts a hit contract on Sam in Black Doves Season 2?
Eleanor and Williams accept a paid contract to kill Sam. Patrick warns Sam that the two assassins have taken the job.
Why do Eleanor and Williams agree to kill Sam?
The contract is presented as a paid assignment. Eleanor is more willing to consider the money, while Williams is reluctant because Sam is someone they know and have worked alongside.
Is Laila also a target?
Yes. The same pair have accepted a contract on Laila as well as Sam, adding another layer of danger to the group’s attempt to rescue Reed.
Who is Sam supposed to kill for Patrick?
Patrick secures Sam’s release through a four-target contract. Reed becomes the final target in that assignment, although Sam’s task and Kestrel’s wider plan are more complicated than a straightforward assassination.
Does Eleanor or Williams kill Sam?
The season does not end with a straightforward scene in which either woman kills Sam. The contract contributes to the wider conflict, and Sam later leaves for Italy.
Does this confirm a Black Doves Season 3 storyline?
No. The contracts leave possible conflicts for a future season, but they do not confirm renewal, a production schedule or a character’s return.
Related coverage
- Sam’s Four Targets Contract Explained: How Kestrel Forces Him Back Into the Game
- Eleanor & Williams Still the Chaos Duo: How the Hit Squad Ups the Body Count This Season
Sources
- Netflix Tudum: Black Doves Season 2 — release, cast and story guide
- Netflix Tudum: Black Doves Season 2 ending explained
- Esquire: Black Doves Season 2 ending explained
- Show Snob: Black Doves Season 2 Episode 5 recap
- TV Guide: Black Doves Season 2 ending and Kestrel storyline
By Shivam Das
