Killing Eve sends Villanelle to a qualified therapist, finally
But it may not be enough to save her from her darker impulses.
TV Reviews Villanelle
It’s a very Killing Eve way to go about it, but the life cycle of a psychopath turns out to be an effective way of showing just how sinister the work of the Twelve is. The parallel stories of Pam and Villanelle are opposite ends of one narrative, from the grooming of the psychopath straight through to the collateral damage as that person’s grasp on their own tendencies starts to fray. The result on both ends is a lot of bodies, and an indifference from the Twelve about it.
For Villanelle, this has meant random murder sprees wherever she happens to be at any given moment, as she tries and fails to figure out why she is the way she is, and fails again and again to not be like that anymore. The question of nature versus nurture for her feels too complex to definitively answer—we’ve seen glimpses of her past, but we’re never going to know what the alternative version of her life was like, if someone like Martin had found her rather than a group of people determined to exploit her violent impulses. It’s an easy answer during their enforced therapy session for Martin to say he doesn’t think a true psychopath would want to change her behavior, but it’s not like Villanelle has sat through a lengthy series of diagnostic tests as an adult to figure out what’s going on with her. When we first meet her, she’s all impulse, and if anything has changed about her, it seems to be the experience of doubt. As she herself wonders, is this what it’s like to be insecure? It’s less romantic than her feelings about Eve, but when the base question is whether or not she’s going to keep killing people, that moment of doubt is much more important—it’s what initially saves May, even though Villanelle ends up going through with it later.
And on the other end of this life cycle is Pam, a troubled person with violent tendencies who hadn’t acted on them before Hélène showed up. That latent ability to commit murder might never have gone anywhere while she still experienced doubt about whether or not it was a good idea to strike back against her brother. But when she’s frustrated that her new glamorous mentor doesn’t think she’s ready for more, and she’s going to be stuck in that morgue forever, it spills over into a spontaneous moment of aggression and she goes from potential murderer to remorseless murderer.
This episode highlights how effective a manipulator Hélène is, given her behavior towards Pam and Fernanda, but also how dangerous it is for her to behave this way. Yes, she’s getting a new assassin and gossip on the Twelve, but along the way, she has a young woman murdering people to try to prove she’s ready to murder more people, and an emotional ex who spills all the same gossip to the first person who’s kind to her. There’s no tidy way to maneuver people in this way, because once you’ve pushed them to the limit, you have no control over what else they choose to do in addition to whatever need you have.
There’s also a parallel with Eve, whose manipulation of Fernanda is perhaps shorter term than Hélène’s, but it’s still deeply unkind. She found a woman so desperately unhappy that she was screaming about a handwritten note to a chauffeur in a parking garage, got her drunk and confessional, then stole something from her and abandoned her in a bar. Fernanda may not have invested quite as much emotionally in “Nicole,” but the show isn’t going to let us forget what Eve did; it’s quite pointed to see Fernanda return to their table moments after Eve bailed, and see it abandoned. What Eve did was cruel in the first place, but it’s her indifference to how Fernanda will feel later that makes the entire con that much more callous. Villanelle can kill certain people because they don’t really qualify as people to her; Eve isn’t murdering people, but there’s a similar classification at work about who matters and who doesn’t.
That doesn’t quite make her the scorpion in their little saga, as Villanelle posits. Sure, it’s a betrayal that she called the police on Villanelle…if you only see the universe existing through the lens of their relationship. What she actually did was take action to stop a person from killing again, after she found evidence that Villanelle was doing so pretty indiscriminately. She may express to Yusuf and Villanelle earlier in the episode that she doesn’t care what Villanelle is getting up to, but at a certain point, she has to recognize that she’s the only person who’s going to be able to stop Villanelle from hurting people. It doesn’t exactly reflect well on Eve that she only does so once she sees a picture of the victims and realizes that Villanelle is endangering a friend of hers, but the end result is the same.
Villanelle’s exhausted return to prison feels of a piece with Carolyn’s weariness, even if Carolyn is periodically disguising it better. The two of them seem very, very tired of all of this—the endless maneuvering, the bloodshed, the way it’s never really over. Eve has been more downtrodden in prior seasons, but it’s hard not to get the sense that she’s the only one with the energy left for this fight. Or rather, the delusion that this fight is winnable.
Stray observations
- I like to use stray observations sometimes for wacky theories, so today’s theory is that Yusuf is the secret assassin. He’s clearly quite skilled, he’s still weirdly mysterious, and Eve is both a good investigator and perpetually oblivious about what her paramours are feeling or doing. Plus, it’s more interesting dramatically if he’s the one doing it rather than another character we’ve never heard of.
- I truly don’t understand what the title cards were supposed to do in this episode. It didn’t even make sense to give them to Yusuf or Elliot, neither of whom had much effect on what’s going on here. This felt like a normally structured episode that arbitrarily had bookmarks in it.
- I choose to see Pam’s rocking out while she works as a reference to We Are Lady Parts and I won’t hear otherwise.
- Fiona Shaw can do almost anything with almost nothing, but it would be nice if this season gave her something approaching a coherent storyline at some point. My personal feeling on this is that she’s so talented that it was impossible to resist giving her more of a backstory, but that it’s proved enduringly difficult to craft a life outside her spycraft that is as compelling.
23 Comments
I truly don’t understand what the title cards were supposed to do in this episode.i was puzzled and now i want answers
I choose to see Pam’s rocking out while she works as a reference to We Are Lady Parts and I won’t hear otherwise.love this haha
Fiona Shaw is so good. Carolyn is almost always calm and composed, and yet her scenes hum with danger and unpredictability. An appropriate ending might be if Eve and Villanelle end up together but in a way that is dissatisfying for both of them, having to lay low in witness protection somewhere boring, since neither really particularly deserves a happy ending
I’m a little concerned that the show is going to try to pull an 11th hour plottwist and reveal Carolyn is the head of the 12. That this investigation she’s running is just her way of making sure noone is getting close to her.
She killed her own son? Or have I fallen so out of love with this show that I’m forgetting why that happened
At the time they probably hadn’t thought that far ahead. But yeah I could see them trying to pull a “she’s so cold, she had her own son killed to protect her double agent status”.
Last season finale revealed Kenny accidentally fell while confronting Konstantin. I don’t know if Carolyn telling Vlad the 12 killed him was a lie or if the writers can’t be bothered with basic continuity.
Maybe they’ll do a Hannibal and they both die at the end (…or do they?).
At this point Killing Eve should rip off The Prisoner & reveal that Eve was running The Twelve all along in the series finale.
Oh man, I keep forgetting I’m an episode ahead.Alright well, I’ll throw in: I kind of want Konstantin’s laugh as my ringtone. That man is infectious.
I’m glad they moved on with the Villanelle plotline, the first two episodes her parts were pretty dire. Eve is the only one whose plotlines have remained consistently interesting.In that clothes changing scene, Sandra Oh showed that under all those unflattering Eve clothes, at age 51 she’s still rocking it. 50 really is the new 30, in Hollywood at least.
So, here’s the issue I have with trying to frame Eve and Villanelle as two starcrossed lovers that can’t seem to catch a break. That’s not the relationship here.Villanelle is an abuser, and Eve is her victim. From the very beginning Villanelle has been systematically abusing Eve. Trying to isolate her, manipulating her, gaslighting her, and even resorting to violence when Eve doesn’t do what she wanted. This is classic Domestic Abuser behavior.So it’s distressing to see you 1) try to play whataboutism cards, and 2) be disappointed that Eve finally took the first step a domestic abuse victim can take. Call the cops.And yes, trying to say Eve and Villanelle are two sides of the same coin. And trying to say there’s a parallel between Villanelle recent behavior and Eve working an asset IS a whataboutism. The two things have nothing to do with each other and you’re trying to say Eve isn’t so different from Villanelle because of it.Villanelle is that abuser who claims they changed 2 days after someone got tired of their abusive shit. Don’t mistake me here, abusers CAN change, but it takes work. It takes the kind of work Villanelle is illequipped to put in because she’s not just a psychopath, she’s a psychopath with ADD. She can’t stay focused long enough to put in the kind of work to finally understand WHY she’s abusive. If the answer doesn’t come immediately, she gets bored and moves on, usually after leaving a pile of dead bodies. If Eve can’t get away from her, she’ll die. Because that’s how abusive relationships end. Very rarely the abuser understands and stops. The abused either gets away, or the abuser kills them.
I don’t necessarily find it distressing, but definitely confusing.
It just seems very credulous to believe that Eve and Villanelle love each other in any real way. Their fascination with each other seems entirely based on mystery and the allure of the unattainable. The second that things between them become mundane, Eve would wonder how the fuck she could have been so stupid, and Villanelle would snap her neck out of sheer boredom.
The only honest ending would be this push-and-pull killing them both imo. But given how much of the audience seems to want a romantic happy ending, I’m not sure what to expect
Who was disappointed Eve called the cops? The article is pretty clear that she did the right thing, but should have done it earlier.And I don’t think the article is “whataboutism”. It’s clearly a theme of the show that Eve has certain tendencies to act like Villanelle, but on a whole different scale. And the question of whether that was already her nature, or is her coming under the influence of Villanelle is an interesting one. So the article discusses the ways in which Eve can act like Villanelle as a theme of the show. Nowhere does it excuse Villanelle’s behaviour by pointing out similarities in Eve’s, or seek to equate them.
I went back and reread the section I was thinking of. And I may have misunderstood the intent when the author called Eve calling the police a “betrayal”.
I have a feeling we’re speaking more broadly rather than directly at the reviewer (at least, I was)
Who was disappointed Eve called the cops?
Oh, you poor sweet summer child. There’s this thing called the Internet and its full of Villanelle Stans who swear up and down she is a sweet baby who has never done anything wrong to anyone ever. Most of us know Villanelle is a beautiful woman who would kill you where you stood for passing the salt from the wrong direction.
Plus, there was that whole killing the vicar, her daughter and their cat business. Seems like that should be worth a SWAT team enforced time-out if anything is…
I was talking about the article – as was the poster I was replying to, who then acknowledged they had misunderstood it. I’m also a grumpy old man who was born in winter. But thanks for your input.
I know snark and condescension has been normalized across the internet but I think sometimes we need to take a step back and really take in what we’re saying to other people and whether or not we would actually speak to people this way irl.
It’s really weird that we are an episode ahead in New Zealand – we are usually days, if not weeks behind. This episode and the next have the same director, and I just didn’t care for her over-dramatic style.
I may come back to this show, but I quickly got tired of thinking I was learning something interesting or core to Villanelle’s character, only for her to go “haha or *am* I?” I got tired of parsing through what was true or not, and since I didn’t have *anything to latch on to with her, I lost interest in the show. Maybe if something actually sticks with her it would be interesting. It seems Eve was getting close to that.
A better episode than the last two, but it’s still rough around the edges. Elliot, who we just met as a nervous kid trying to run his family’s funeral home, is actually a cartoonishly over the top abusive brother! The show all but justifies Pam’s murder by making her sympathetic, and it’s trite af.Carolyn still has nothing to do, and the title cards were arbitrary, but I did mostly like Eve’s material. She’s not a good person and hasn’t been for a while, so her manipulating others doesn’t phase me anymore. In the end, she stole a lady’s newspaper after they went out for drinks. Could have been worse. She’s keeping her eyes on the prize.What’s got me twisted is the scene back at her room where she changes in front of V. The text? The subtext? The meta text? I don’t know what to make of it!
Two random things I’ve noticed about this season:1. The show has been almost all interiors this season, which makes for a far different tone to the story. The jet-setting pace of S1 & S2 went a long way in keeping the plot less, I don’t know, bogged down…?2. The music cues this season have been really ham-fisted. Not the song selections as much as the volume levels and placement. I don’t remember them being this distracting.
Good ep- hummed along, some nicely dark humor, and Eve being way competant.