![]() “Killing Eve” has always presented a challenge for whichever showrunner took it over from season to season as if running a particularly tricky relay race. This absolute most basic way to end an otherwise complex story just made everything that came before it seem like an enormous tease. (See also: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” infamously killing off Tara in much the same way over 20 years ago.) For as much as the swelling music and harrowing shots of Villanelle’s corpse floating away tried to underline the drama of the moment, it was way too predictable to be at all effective. But if one or both of them were going to end the series dead, Eve stepping back from an embrace only to see Villanelle blinking through a gunshot wound is as boring a death scene as it gets. This ending working wouldn’t necessarily have come down to both of them making it out alive. Granted, this particular couple was made up of a rogue assassin and spy who flirted with death even more than each other. Hell, anyone who’s gotten invested in a TV love story between two queer women should’ve been steeling themselves for tragedy the second Eve and Villanelle finally found some semblance of happiness. Pulling off such a move, however, requires some serious finesse that this blunt force trauma of an ending just doesn’t have.Īnyone who’s seen a single spy thriller could have called this “twist” from a mile away. Like Carolyn, maybe Season 4 showrunner Laura Neal (who wrote the series finale) wanted to surprise people by not surprising people. If I were to give the show the benefit of the doubt, I’d say that it made such a cliché choice on purpose. When the show’s signature block lettering slams “THE END” onto the screen, it’s so jarring that it feels like a slap in the face. But no: “Killing Eve” really ends with Villanelle drifting away into the Thames, Jack in “Titanic” style, as Eve screams into the night. The whole thing is so abrupt, so hackneyed, so amazingly unoriginal that for one hopeful minute, I was sure it had to be a trick. After the series finale finally lets Villanelle and Eve consummate their long simmering sexual tension and bring down The Twelve, it almost immediately pivots to someone murdering Villanelle in cold blood as Eve stares on in horror. In its last few minutes, though, the show goes in such a completely typical direction that it’s almost more jarring for it. Over four seasons, it spent much of its time and energy subverting spy stories and making genuinely shocking choices that left viewers reeling. “But now I’m going to behave exactly as you’d expect me to - and do something different.”Īs I watched the baffling final sequence of “Killing Eve,” I thought back to this exchange and wondered if this particular flavor of defiance was the show’s goal all along. “I was going to do that, yes,” Carolyn allows.
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