Hi! Recently I've been analyzing the scene where Eve puts the heart against her ear, listening to Villanelle's voice in s3 ep3, and would love to hear your take on it as well since I love to read your Tumblr posts. Do you think it was the first time Eve actually gave in to the feeling or just the first time the audience got to see it?
Suzanne Heathcote’s approach to Killing Eve was very much “tell-don’t-show,” so it was not a shock that the impression the viewers were left with was this was the first time Eve was actually owning up to how intense her feelings for Villanelle were.
Except it wasn’t. Not even close. We got that moment back in Season 2 with “Wide Awake” where over a few short minutes Eve is as honest and revealing with the psychologist Martin as she has been with anyone in the entire show.
Eve never tells Martin she’s in love with Villanelle. She hasn't even told Villanelle, but it hardly matters. She is in love with this woman, and she can’t stop thinking about her. It could not be more obvious.
This is a good thing, because under Heathcote’s tender mercies, Eve is just kinda doing stuff to be doing it. The rhyme or reason of it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s only important for her to go dumpster diving for cake boxes and running around Scotland stomping old ladies to death. Motivations be damned and pretty much all Eve's previous character development as well.
In Season 3, Eve never acknowledges out loud how deep under her skin Villanelle has gotten until they are on the bridge where she says she can’t envision a future without her in it. That’s good, but coming off of everything that came after the Rome fiasco, where is this coming from, Eve? Are you just so weary of the pointless snipe hunt that was the “Who Killed Kenny?” story arc or how your personality turned on a damn dime from obsessing over getting back with your husband to obsessing over getting back with your girlfriend?
It would be a revelation for someone to ask Sandra Oh, “At what point in Season 3 does Eve fall back in love/lust with Villanelle, and better yet, WHY does she?”
“Admit it, Eve. You wish I was here.” It’s a great scene. No lie. At first Eve’s flustered and then frustrated and a little pissed by that familiar voice coming out of that goofy toy. Then as she tears the heart out of it, she-can’t-stop-listening-to-it.
Eve's loneliness is matched by her longing for Villanelle. Obsession truly doesn't die even when the objects of obsession keep trying to murder one another.
What the talking bear doesn’t say is, “I can’t stop thinking about you.” Villanelle needs to maintain some distance between her true feelings for Eve and her pride and the admission that she misses Eve would be showing weakness. A swaggering Roman centurion-turned Emperor in a oversized grey suit facing off on a double-decker bus with an old foe who once hurt “him” greatly cannot be so vulnerable and soft (and what the fuck was up with that Roman centurion/smells like power bullshit, anyway?).
Villanelle was weird that whole episode. The opening kills with the Infinity Tuning Fork was weird. Baby-snatching the baby in order to play with it, right up until the kid starts crying or pooping, then the fun’s over, and she cackles with malicious glee when Dasha drops the little shitbird in the trash. Struts around London to select a new customized perfume, buy and customize a toy for Eve, break into Eve’s dump of an apartment, follow her to the bus, change clothes and bust a cap in The Twelve’s accountant while scaring the hell out of Carolyn and Mo, finally returning to a hotel for a shower and a little telly before calling it a night as she and Eve nurse their matching bruises.
That’s a pretty full and totally weird day for Villanelle. In the meantime, Eve gets a restless night tossing and turning all night as she keeps replaying V’s message until the battery dies or she climaxes. Whatever comes first.
Yeah, @dayyneee, I love the scene as much as you do as it comes in my favorite episode of my least favorite season. What bugs me most about it is it has really no effect on the following episodes.
Eve never mentions it again and Villanelle doesn’t even ask if she liked it. Uh--why is that, Killing Eve writers? Seemed like you went out of the way to make a point of the stuffed bear’s heart being a mighty big thing at the time, but after that it swirls down the memory hole never to be referenced again? What’s up with that?
Eve could have referred to the talking heart which would have given Villanelle a chance to ask how she liked her birthday cake and the postcard from Amsterdam intercepted by Carolyn in Season 2. Some might dismiss this as “fan service,” but I call it tying up loose threads that like so many other things on Killing Eve happen and are never heard from again.
If Laura Neal is doing a rewatch of the show, she’s filling up a pad with notes of things that need tidying up before the curtain comes down. What about “the heart?” is not the least of them.
