some thoughts i have on the killing eve finale because i can’t think about anything else:
and i wanted to elaborate and share some messy thoughts.
every reference they had in the finale to ‘divine reunion’ & the kintsugi ‘taking your broken bits and making them stronger by coming together’
but once eve chose to go to villanelle they actually made it work. and that’s what makes me so sad because it wasn’t either of their faults that it ended tragically, they found each other finally. and there was STILL death.
dying in a way that matters is one thing, and it’s heroic which would have been a good callback to carolyn telling eve that ‘the hero only gets the girl in hollywood’. like eve thought she was the hero, but in the end it was villanelle who saved HER. it could have been good like that but instead they chose to murder villanelle for nothing.
it’s pretty cruel of the writers to reduce her life to nothing and make her die due to some plot convenient twist. right when happiness was in her reach and right when she knew for sure that she was capable of being loved, which everyone kept saying she wouldn’t be because she was ‘evil’ and ‘a monster’ etc etc. i’m so happy that she atleast got to feel love from the person she loved the most (even if laura ruined those moments when she talked about them in her interview )
in my own version of an ending for them, they wouldn’t die. as i said, there would be meaningful ways to kill them off but i don’t like to think of them as people who were ‘doomed from the start’. especially not after they have such a beautiful reunion. those romeo & juliet, thelma & louise, and scorpion and frog references were too much for me </3
in my own version of an ending there would still be a degree of ambiguity and open ended-ness, but it would end as them being the versions they were always meant to become, separately and together. i feel like their stories could have started out so differently, and they’d still find themselves together in the end.
let’s a raise a glass to the red string metaphor:
the set up for these characters was so perfect, and the ending felt cheap and rushed compared to the complex and beautiful nature of their story. after everything they’ve been through, they deserved to come out of it. it is not creative, entertaining storytelling to kill off a character last-minute, who’s life had changed because of another. and also in eve’s case, she lost her person right when she accepted her.
also this season in of itself was comprised of so much filler… for example, what was the point of pam and yusuf? hugo could have easily been yusuf. and pam’s character was useless after she ended up rejecting carolyn’s offer when her whole arc was built on learning to follow orders and kill when she’s told to without asking questions ( like she did with helenes ex gf & konstantin). how were the twelve and kenny such a big plot point but we never found out the truths about any of that either. not to mention how villanelle killed the supposed twelves in a 15 second montage while eve was dancing?? it feels like a very bad fanfiction.
they could have easily tied pam into the bigger picture if they followed something like this :
i think it would have payed off a bit better if v & e heard gunshots so they jumped into the water and we thought they got hit but then it cuts to carolyn dead on that bridge and then to pam lowering her gun and walking away. pam once again “choosing” the assassin lifestyle by killing carolyn since at the end of the day carolyn will always be loyal to MI6. then it would cut back to v & e and they’d floating in the water, not shot, and very much alive.
a greater plot twist than what we got.
what actually ended up happening seemed like a failed attempt to visually re create dani & jamie’s ending in ‘bly manor’. unlike with killing eve, dani died with purpose, and died a real hero; her death was a key plot point and it was not some half-assed last second attempt at shock.
it could have been so much better if laura gave a shit about these characters the way phoebe did.
also, the entire subplot of villanelle being obsessed with christianity out of the blue, wanting to “get better” and finally when she accepts herself and is loved for who she is, then she dies—and according to laura, eve has had a “rebirth” and is going to go on and live the life she “deserves”…. how homophobic does she want to be?? that was not a scream of relief from eve as laura is trying to make us believe it was, sandra oh screamed in pain and horror. eve was heartbroken. she was not relieved.
i also cannot believe that laura said eve was happier around “human beings”… basically saying villanelle isn’t one, and dehumanising her so bad. when the POINT of the show is for us to empathise with the villains as phoebe said, and villanelle’s own journey was realising she was more than just an assassin and that she was capable of a life that satisfied her, a life with love. but no, laura really just dehumanised the fuck out of her and said slay eve is better off without her.
why can't people see that eve doesn't want another ‘chance' to 'get it right.' she's not the same woman from s1 (maybe she never was). i think she surrounded herself with people who were forcibly doing ‘the right thing' so she could pretend she was happy that way. but she wasn't.
and it was so obvious with the way she was chasing after villanelle. because villanelle represented this part of her that she pretended wasn’t there and she didn’t realise how powerful that part was until she found someone else who embraced it. on a surface level it’s the killing and the murder, but the subtext screams with queer undertones and that’s why the story between them resonated a lot with the majority wlw audience.
i don’t think fictional stories are ever just stories, not when they impact people in real life to this capacity. the amount of people who were re-thinking if they deserved to be happy in their own lives because of the way killing eve ended really broke me. and it’s not this dramatic overreaction either because traumatic endings with queer couples is all we’ve ever known.
it was devastating that killing eve, a show that had subverted those stereotypes in the past, built its legacy around it, had followed through with the worst one of them all in the end. bury your gays is such lazy writing i’m so tired. with eve in the earlier seasons, even her husband couldn't see that side of her that villanelle had & it frustrated her because she was scared of it. but then villanelle made it make sense and it scared her more that someone lived so freely that way. that's why she was so hesitant & she walked away so many times. being confronted is scary. that was good storytelling.( i mean of course villanelle was in a cage of her own) but eve saw everything she could be in villanelle. through everything, all her hesitation and morality, she found her way to villanelle and the two of them finally made it work, they finally had it all. her happiness WAS villanelle. it’s sad to see how the s4 writers saw villanelle the same way her mother did , a one dimensional psychopath with an incurable darkness :(
it’s so clear too. when it comes to the tarot cards, villanelle got the sun card, and to her being loved back by eve = the sun, pure and true happiness (even if it was only a few hours). eve got the death card, having to live without villanelle especially after they came together is worse than a physical 'death' for her.
it's unfathomable to be that people can't see that. and furthermore, why would the writers write eve to have been happy to “escape villanelle” when they wrote her to say that she didn’t like it when villanelle got shot with the arrow, just 3 episodes earlier…nothing is adding up between what we see on screen and the narrative laura neal has in her head. if we aren’t interpreting it the way you wanted us to, laura, (which NOBODY is) than that’s on you , not us. especially, ESPECIALLY when you never seemed to know the souls of these characters to begin with.
killing eve is a love story at its core. their mutual understanding of each other was the only thing in both of their lives that made sense. there would be no point otherwise. phoebe literelly said that every scene in the show was for the purpose of getting v and e to be close, everything was supposed to lead up to it. being seen by someone beats everything else, that's real love. the implications of the finale felt very homophobic. i'm so tired.
what i used to love about killing eve was the complex nature of the femme fatale trope, and the way it was so effortlessly queer. it was powerful the way the queerness was never this massive talking point. it just was. villanelle’s female gaze for example>>>>. i have never seen anything depicted as well as it was depicted through her eyes. and the subtle emphasis of how femininity could be vile , scary and lethal. villanelle changed so many things just by existing in that show and that’s why it means so much , that’s why the fourth season feels like such a slap in the face because it didn’t feel like the others (s3 was questionable too ).
and more so the fact that straight viewers and professionals recognise how bad this ending was. it’s a huge backstab. eve’s speech at the end was completely about how beautiful reuniting with villanelle was, and they killed her after that for what? shock factor doesn’t work anymore :/ not even the actors were satisfied , but jodie and sandra did their best and really made the episode what it was. especially after reading laura’s interviews … yikes she really lost the plot and it infuriates me. it felt as though she hated these characters and never understood them at all. i could go on about this for ages but i don’t have to, just look at any news article on the finale or the 4x08 ratings…
i guess i’m just happy that villanelle got to experience that love from eve because that was what everything was ever for. for her story alone, i think killing eve will always be remembered despite the horrible ending. we have a right to be devastated.
there’s so much more i could and have said other times about this, but physically i am drained at the moment. and it’s been said and re-said all over twitter and in recent articles so i think you’re all aware.
rip villanelle you will always be famous to us.
