Killing Eve offers up a series of face-offs in a taut and conflicted episode
Suffice to say, that was probably not the big kiss people were hoping for.
TV Reviews killing eve
Parallels upon parallels drive this episode, from Konstantin and Eve’s matching hand injuries straight on through to the way all three plot threads are interactions between two characters unsure if the other one is going to kill them.
Although to be fair, Konstantin never seems concerned that any of the incredibly dangerous people he spends time around are going to kill him, even though there’s often quite a high risk that they might do so. Almost everyone on this show seems to be going through some kind of emotional turmoil, except for Konstantin, who remains as jovial as ever. There’s a certain relief when he appears onscreen, because he’s largely immune to the deeper interrogations of the self that everyone else on this show is suffering through. Konstantin just doesn’t care whether his career and actions have some deeper meaning about who he is, nor does he really seem interested in questioning his employers. He liked being mayor, and it would be nice to go back to that, but if Pam is going to turn out to be his latest worthy pupil, then he can make that work, too. He’s the most at peace man on earth, plopped into an incredibly violent world where he should be panicking constantly. It’s almost like he’s the only one actually suited for this line of work.
Eve, on a surface level, doesn’t seem to be going through any kind of crisis, but the brinksmanship she’s engaging in with Hélène seems unlikely to end well for anyone involved. What’s more surprising is how often Hélène seems shocked by Eve’s behavior. She has all the power in their relationship, and she’s mostly been behaving that way, but she does not seem to have predicted that Eve would respond so positively to their little S&M roleplay. On some level, this is just a more overt version of what Eve has been engaging in for four seasons now—she’s excited by the possibility of danger and violence, and Hélène is offering it in less overtly risky way than Villanelle ever did. Hélène is obviously capable of violence, but she’s also more predictable in her behaviors.
The big question about their episode-long battle, though, is what to make of that kiss. Even the way it’s filmed makes it hard to guess what Eve is thinking about it. The camera cuts to Villanelle, back in Havana, but are we supposed to think that this moment is making Eve think of her? Eve is so busy continuing her game with Hélène that she doesn’t break character in the moment—her expression is fairly unreadable as the camera cuts to and away from Villanelle. Is this just a poke in the ribs to viewers to remind us that she’s not kissing Villanelle? It’s also the first time it seems possible that Eve could be sexually interested in women. Her interest in Villanelle has always been more complicated than sexual attraction, despite Villanelle’s ongoing and very clear physical attraction to her. The closest they’ve really come to being together was Eve hooking up with Hugo when she knew Villanelle was listening in.
It’s a moment likely to be turned over and analyzed pretty extensively by a fanbase eager to see Eve and Villanelle finally consummate their relationship in some way. Is Eve really into Hélène, or is she just taking her efforts to go head to head with her to their limit? The scene cut seems for a moment like a gentle fade on an offscreen sex scene, until we go back and see Eve leave. And because the episode ends there, Eve’s own reaction to what she’s done is withheld from us, at least for now.
One thing the cuts to Villanelle do make clear, however, is that this is a betrayal in a way that Eve’s dalliance with Yusuf isn’t. What will Villanelle do when she finds out Eve has lightly canoodled with her boss? Their interactions are, of course, paralleled by Villanelle’s face-off with Carolyn, but her efforts to kill Carolyn are so lackluster it’s surprising Carolyn anxiously begs for her life. Despite being welcomed back into the fold as an assassin, it’s pretty clear that Villanelle’s heart isn’t in this, although a little sparkle comes back to her eye when she gets to torture a man to death. It brings back the Villanelle we saw when this whole thing began, who liked to gaze directly into the eyes of the people she murdered to see the light go out of them. And it comes after Carolyn makes her feel better more effectively than any of the other sources of counsel she’s sought all season, in that Carolyn both hand-waves away her violent impulses, and gives her permission to see her affection for Eve as more than an effort to control her. In other words, if she wants to think she’s capable of loving someone, that possibility exists, at least as suggested by a woman who’s recently thrown her entire career out the window and defected to another country.
And despite the suggestion of a betrayal by Eve at the close of the episode, it ends with Villanelle more free than she’s been all season, although way more endangered than previously. Is she going to get in trouble for her refusal to take out Carolyn? Or was that just Hélène taking advantage of the opportunity to get an annoying nemesis off the playing field?
Stray observations
- Sandra Oh sort of infamously gave an interview years ago saying that Eve and Villanelle were not a romantic pairing, but the season is definitely exploring their relationship in a way that suggests that might have changed.
- OK, I don’t care how ~intense~ and ~mysterious~ Hélène is, no one puts a freshly glued tiara on their head.
- I know Carolyn is supposed to have been everywhere over the course of her intelligence career, but why in the world would she have visited a Russian orphanage? Would it have killed the show to have her at least offer a single sentence of explanation for what she was doing there?
- We all knew Konstantin was getting shoved in the water the minute he showed up on the pier looking for an allegedly helpless Pam, right? Both for dramatic reasons, and because that’s sort of par for the course for him and his women.
- Carolyn’s costuming this season has been fascinating. Lighter, looser, and more casual. She has been profoundly bereft all season, and somehow wearing lighter colored and more comfortable clothing only emphasizes it.
- The mutual discomfort in the bathtub scene was pretty funny. It felt like almost a meta moment, acknowledging that no matter how seductive or menacing Eve’s move is, it’s actually just hard to fit two people in a tub that way.
- Also noticeable? The Eve/Hélène scene has the usual Killing Eve frisson of potential violence, whereas there’s never any real sense of danger in Villanelle’s encounter with Carolyn, despite the wrench to the head.
27 Comments
I can’t think of any reason for Carolyn to visit young Villanelle in the orphanage unless she was working for The Twelve & grooming her, maybe unknowingly? I am quite confused about thatI love the continued reveals that Carolyn has a torrid sexual history with every male spy of roughly her age, regardless of nationality.Helene is so much less interesting than the other main characters that I am disappointed when we cut to her scenes.
i loved the carolyn and villanelle scenes. i loved their dynamic and i glad we got to see them hang out.Sandra Oh sort of infamously gave an interview years ago saying that Eve and Villanelle were not a romantic pairing.sandra oh in that interviewa fanbase eager to see Eve and Villanelle finally consummate their relationshipeh i don’t really care to see them hook up but i want some resolution to villanelle’s feelings for eve. if they do some kind of fan service and finally do have them hook up i could imagine them cutting to them afterwards in bed awkwardly lying next to each other…
eve: yeah, i’m for sure not into women.
villanelle: i think i expected too much out of that. where were the fireworks?
eve: friends?
villanelle: yes.I know Carolyn is supposed to have been everywhere over the course of
her intelligence career, but why in the world would she have visited a
Russian orphanage? Would it have killed the show to have her at least
offer a single sentence of explanation for what she was doing there?i am not fixed on carolyn at a russian orphanage as you are. i didn’t think a single thing of it but it’s funny how it’s stuck in your head.as for unanswered questions…. next episode! i am so frustrated! it’s not even the ending i’m talking about. i only have one mild annoyance with the ending but that whole episode is just a million unanswered questions.
The new character pairings in this episode should have been exciting but instead felt desultory like they are just moving props around to kill time until it endsI wonder if Carolyn’s revelation about knowing baby Villanelle hints at what I think some have guessed that she basically is The Twelve? Hard to know what else would be a satisfying series ending
And she..has her own son killed?
That must have been a misunderstanding based on garbled orders, she was trying to warn him off
Did he run off the roof in fear? I can’t remember if he was tossed or not.
I think we are meant to believe that Kenny panicked & accidentally fell off the roof
Ahh.. well then I guess anything is possible! I look forward to finding out/being horribly disappointed.
I like it that you think they’re going to resolve “who killed Kenny” in the final episodes. I wish I had your innocence.
“…her expression is fairly unreadable as the camera cuts to and away from Villanelle. Is this just a poke in the ribs to viewers to remind us that she’s not kissing Villanelle? It’s a moment likely to be turned over and analyzed pretty extensively by a fanbase eager to see Eve and Villanelle finally consummate their relationship in some way.”-Aaand that’s exactly what they are going for! It’s bait, it’s obvious, and it makes me want to throw up in my mouth how pander-y the show has gotten. “Did Shippers Ruin Killing Eve?” is the question this series’ legacy will be left with, imo, because as the review mentions, there is just *no sense of danger* anymore. In fact they actively scoff at it.Eve and Helene is less about danger than it is the *smolder* of it all. Sandra Oh’s interview way back when, contextualized the show so interestingly that it’s a shame its come to this. And I can’t even with the Konstantin/ Pam scene. Dude really walked up to the edge of the pier as anyone would, who has been in this dangerous line of work for years. All he was missing was a “Push Me” sign taped to his back. Reminded me of that scene in The SimpsonsThis show doesn’t care anymore. Or maybe I care too much. Carolyn is begging for her life, but also totally amused to Villanelle’s face, because the show can’t pick a lane with how to play the kidnapping. Also, I ask readers to go take a wrench to someone’s head- full swing- and report back on how that goes. It’s like this has become a cartoon.
Shippers didn’t ruin the show. Stretching out the plot to get more seasons and losing PWB are the main culprits. There was always sexual tension between Eve and Villanelle, whatever Sandra Oh or anyone else from the show said years ago. Some kind of physical romance between them was always going to happen, it’s strange to me that there are those that didn’t see that from the start.It’s a shame the show has gone so downhill since season 1, but blaming “shippers” doesn’t make any sense. If the show really wanted to pander to them, it wouldn’t have had Villanelle and Eve barely interact for multiple episodes, hell most of season 3, at a time.
The writers seem to have a weird relationship with Eve and Villanelle shippers. On the hand, they keep pushing an assortment of plots and characters noone cares about in place of Eve and Villanelle interactions and relationship progression but on the other they need throw a bone every once and a while because 99% of the audience doesn’t give a shit about anything other than the two main characters and their relationship.It all comes down to a show with a thin premise being dragged out for too long. They should have just had them get together and then either die or ride out into the sunset by the end of season 2 and finish it there, where it was always going to finish. But here we are. The business side of the industry strikes again as it often does.
For sure the sexual tension was always there, but my point is there is a difference between it being there from the start, and the insistence that’s what it was always about. The inability to entertain a non-romantic avenue for whatever was going on between them really narrowed the scope of the show, imo. That’s on the shippers, who the writers were clearly reacting to. Pheobe Waller Bridge was quite a loss, but she’s still an executive producer, and she couldn’t have been the only person around who knew how to do a cat-and-mouse thriller. It’s just not where things were allowed to go. As you said, a majority of the fans don’t care about anything but Eve and V, and the reason the business side stretched it out was to capitalize on that fervor. So it panders when it can, but to your point, it keeps them apart, so it’s also exploiting the shippers for longevity. We’ve essentially been watching 3 seasons of queerbaiting, and it didn’t have to be that way.I agree about the writers’ relationship with shippers, so I should clarify I don’t mean to blame them in a direct way like it’s their fault. But more that they are inadvertently responsible for series identity crisis.
“From the beginning” is an understatement. I just checked the original trailer. It starts by cutting between Eve and Villanelle, with Villanelle dressed in what looks like a semi-translucent Victorian nightdress stroking a bed and smiling seductively, then continuing to cut between them in a ‘romantic’ scene between Villanelle and a man that ends fatally, then cuts between Villanelle in post-murder sexualised panting and eve, then eve doing an ersatz walk of shame into her office. Posters had them in intimate kitchen embrace (plus knife).
I don’t get why people would watch four seasons of a lightly erotic will-they-wont-they romcom and then complain that too many fans are just there for the romance. I mean, that’s why the show exists. It’s the whole point (it’s not like there’s anything else substantial there), and it was the whole point before the audience even filmed it.It’s like complaining that The Shining focuses too much on the horror aspect and doesn’t spend enough time discussing the period architecture…
I’d give this comment two stars if I could, but you’ll just have to take the one.
Watching this bizarre fanfic of a show where the writers seemingly are following a mandate that we must know everything there is about The Twelve and nothing at all about Eve and Villanelle’s relationship is an out-of-body experience. Killing Eve used to be an obsessive watch and now its like seeing your favorite restaurant wind down to a wheezing end while desperately trying to remember what it was you liked about it in the first place.
That tub magically doubled in size between shots.
Is it going to do a flashback episode to the period detailing the relationship viewers were invested in? Or do they want fanfic to do all the heavy lifting of filling in the blanks?
It feels like it has even less substance than ever before.
Last week I replied to a comment where I posited that Carolyn is the leader of the 12 and everything she’s doing is tying up loose ends and making sure noone gets close to her. I think her being in a Russian orphanage suggests she’s always worked for the 12. And you might ask “why would she send Villanelle after herself then?”. Well the answer to that is simple. Carolyn has always been for want of a better word, cocksure about her ability to manipulate people. It is her greatest asset, and I think what we’re seeing here is a classic manipulation tactic. Present yourself as a victim of an enemy your target is also fighting against in an attempt to steer them in the direction you want. What better way to manipulate Villanelle than by hiding in plain sight as you take a hands on approach? Every other attempt to get Villanelle working with the 12 again has failed, now it’s time for the boss to step in and take matters into her own hand.
The idea that Carolyn is the head of The Twelve (or maybe she is The Twelve FAIAP) would be a pretty cool reveal, although that would suggest she had a hand in her own son’s murder, which is a stretch, but not an impossibility for this story. Judging from her relationship with her daughter, she seems like the kind of mastermind who might feel something but could ultimately justify something like that to herself.
So Hélène visits Villanelle in prison, gets her released, and then orders her to kill Carolyn. Villanelle nabs Carolyn and takes her to a secluded spot, at which point she…agrees to go to work for Carolyn now? All it takes is a sob story?Even if it’s been established that Villanelle isn’t so much a professional assassin as she is a well-financed serial killer, seems like even she might think twice about double-crossing someone like Hélène.
Killing Eve Logic (aka writers just makin’ up shit) explains why it is Helene can walk into a cop shop, spring an international assassin who just whacked a vicar and his daughter, walk out and disappear without anyone batting an eyelash. It’s plot armor plus steroids.
Help me. Is Eve legitimately bisexual, or is she “acting?” It doesn’t FEEL like she’s acting. Also, it feels SO LONG since my wife and I watched seasons 1-3, we honestly can’t remember if Eve and Villanelle have gotten together or not. My wife thought they had. And I thought they had never quite consumated. Who has a better memory? Just tell us!
eve’s sexuality hasn’t been determined on the show. she has only physically been with men but she has a psychosexual relationship with villanelle. they have never hooked up physically with each other. eve kissed villanelle once during a fight with each other only to startle and stun villanelle. eve also had sex with hugo while listening to villanelle talk to her and masturbate so they kind of had some kind of proxy sex?sandra oh said their relationship wasn’t romantic though so… idk.
Can someone explain how Helene was able to get Villanelle out of jail? I’m obviously confused.
Villanelle was wearing plot armor at the time of the arrest.
“””We all knew Konstantin was getting shoved in the water the minute he showed up on the pier looking for an allegedly helpless Pam, right?”””We also knew he would give his big belly laugh when he came out of the water and saw Pam.
Any chance to hear that laugh, I’m in.
This show makes even less sense than it did last season, and that is quite a feat.
Revealing Carolyn as THE Twelve, or a member of the Twelve, in a pull-it-out-of-your-ass reveal would be typical of so many of these series nowadays. They think writing an implausible ending “that you didn’t see coming” is clever. It’s really just shit writing. Building tension, craftily using foreshadowing, Chekov’s Gun, legitimate clues, cleverly hiding in plain site – that takes great writing. And that my friends is what is SORELY lacking in this age of streaming entertainment overload.
When this season debuted with Sandra Oh riding a crotch rocket and brandishing a pistol, and Villanelle bumbling around in what looks like a convent, I knew another new showrunner thought they more clever than the original writer and went and screwed the ending of this series all to hell.
And, I’m sorry, I know some people worship Sandra Oh, but I don’t get it. Every other cast member shows her up. She’s tried to re-invent her character as a bad ass in the last season, but it doesn’t work relative to plot or performance. Her go-to redirected stares and come backs aren’t funny. Her f***ing the stud co-worker side story just doesn’t work either. And he might as well be wearing a red shirt because you KNOW he’s going to get killed.