Killing Eve (BBC TV show 2018-2022) and FOREVER MORE!!!

​Warning: this review discusses the ending. Extensively. It is therefore best read after finishing the show. Watch the show first. Definitely watch the show.
 
Once in a while a TV show comes along that’s so good, so dangerously close to perfect that you fear for it to end. The emotional involvement gets too great, you care too much. Can the ending possibly live up to your expectations? Will it devastate?
Well, in this case, yes, it will devastate. It’s probably best to know that going in.
And now that you do, we can talk about the rest of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the tragically beautiful of it all.
So, BBC who is no stranger to quality, went and did it. Made a show you can’t walk away from. Made a show so propulsive, so mesmerizing, so clever that it takes over your life.(And after its ends, makes everything else pale by comparison.)
It started with spy novellas, randomly enough. Potential was spotted and turned into a TV show. It got smart writers. And absolutely aced with pitch perfect casting. Seriously, if somehow all the other aspects of production were flagging, the acting along with keep this ship afloat. Sandra Oh, first cast, is very good, reliably good, but it’s Jodie Comer who is a revelation here.
For someone who had to have been in her early twenties to take on a role this complex and inhabit it so profoundly is absolutely stunning to behold. Yes, she got critical acclaim, awards (BAFTA, Emmy, etc.) but it’s beyond that. It’s a performance almost too consummate for TV because it’s likely difficult to suspend perfection for four seasons, but Comer managed. With aplomb.
On screen, she isn’t merely charismatic, she’s magnetic. She’s a monster you love. She’s a monster Eve loves, although it is killing her.
Because you see, at its source, Killing Eve is a love story. An epic one. A proper, devastating, slow-burn of an undeniable attraction between two very different people. It’s basically love at first sight that is fought against for four seasons. And like any true love, it conquers all. Every obstacle is eventually obliterated on their path to each other, because at the end of the day, you know these two people belong together even if they don’t always know it themselves.
Or rather Eve doesn’t know it. Even’s the one doing most of the fighting. Because Eve is a nice, middle-aged lady with a steady job and reliable marriage who has never counted on falling in love with a bona fide psychopath.
And so on and on it goes—the push and pull of it, the complicated dance around each other, the denial-tinged desire. The serpentine twists the two of them take toward each other are more twisted and convoluted than any spy shenanigans the plot engages in.
Fun fact: I don’t like spy stories. At all. It did nothing to detract from my enormous enjoyment of this show. Because … Villanelle.
What. A. Character.
There’s never been anyone like her on screen. For all the supposed progress being made with gender roles, etc. no one shows women so good at killing, so remorseless about it. And no one definitely shows women taking such visceral pleasure in killing.
She can’t help it, she’s a psychopath. But to be fair, she was trained to be one. From a difficult child with potential sociopathic tendencies to a professional assassin for an international organization dedicated to disrupting the world order was a one-way ticket for Villanelle.
She is exceptional at what she does and has built a nice life for herself  … and then she meets Eve. And slowly but surely her world changes. Because that’s what happens when you fall in love: you change yourself to fit inside another person’s heart.
The process is the same for Eve, only more cataclysmic. Her transformation is radically more comprehensive and dramatic, at least on the surface.
But here’s the problem: while BBC might dare to show women like Villanelle on TV, they are still too bound to social conventions to make her a lead. And thus, books titled Codename Villanelle turn into a TV show titled Killing Eve.
Convention wins over. An infinitely more exciting and original character takes a backseat to a more pedestrian and presumably more relatable one. The audience is allowed the comfort of a plain(ish), older desk jockey with friends and a husband as opposed to a dazzling, young, anti-every-convention assassin.
There is a certain logic there, but it is a travesty. Especially as Villanelle steals scene after scene, focus after focus. Eve is struggling to keep up, it’s almost unfair to her or to Sandra Oh. But the two of them manage. Their chemistry is fire.
It doesn’t matter what they do to others around them or to each other, these two are on a collision course. It’s .. kind of perfect.
 
Less perfect are the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. The switch of writers for every season creates a disparity in tone and style. There’s a very weird thing where for 2 seconds in season one Villanelle is bisexual (there’s a dude and a girl in her bed), wherein for the entirety of the show she is very obviously a lesbian, with all her past and present lovers being women. Presumably she’s bi in the books, and that was a nod, but can we get some consistency here. Not like there’s a surplus of awesome lesbian TV characters.
And that’s nothing compared to the ending which has been accused of everything, from randomly cruel to homophobic, and wasn’t helped at all by the fact the writers said things like they wanted one of the characters to go back to “normal” life.
You’d think someone who’s deep in it, would have a working understanding of the fact that their lives were normal. It was their normal. That was the beauty and uniqueness of it. Love rewrites your ideas of normalcy and everything else.
Though apparently the show writer doesn’t.
There are other logistical snafus throughout, but you forgive them, because … Villanelle.
The only unforgivable thing is the ending.
 
Because apparently these two, after everything they’ve been though, do not get a happy one.
And aren’t we past it? Aren’t we done with punishing women for being “wild”? Aren’t we done driving them off the edge to their death ala Thelma and Louise?
Don’t spout some writer nonsense about Villanelle not dying but transcending to the next plane. What is that garbage? She dies. She gets killed, brutally and unnecessary, just as she is finally happy, because the same sets of narrow minds that tried to make it all about Eve desire to punish a woman for her “disobedience”, for her straying off the social norms. She is deprived of a chance at a happy life and murdered for her trespasses on conventional morality.
It’s the most viciously puritanical of all endings, nasty, mean, inconsiderate of the character. Or the fans.
And Eve, of course, is spared, because Eve was “normal” to begin with, before getting corrupted by the evil gay amoral woman.
Yay, the morality plebes rejoice.
And screw it, because in the end it won’t matter. After the sting passes, Villanelle will remain the bright burning star of the show, and all the rest will fade away.
The writers say Villanelle will live on in Eve? Lame. Seriously, lame. It isn’t how love works. It isn’t how people in love work. Whatever fears and reservations Eve might have had at first about being with Villanelle, she conquered them. Omni vincit amor and all that. The Eve she is at the end of the show did not want to be free of Villanelle. She is devastated by her loss.
So everyone’s punished.
For a show about profoundly immoral people, Killing Eve ends up brutally moralistic. And it all but ruins an otherwise spectacular show.
I watch a lot of things. I read a lot of things. I can’t tell you the last time I had experienced (and make no mistake, it is an  experience) such a  profoundly mesmerizing, complex, and authentic relationship between two people. It isn’t just a  love story. It’s THE love story.
It broke my heart. I let it. I’d do it again. It’s that good.
 
And I will never forgive BBC that ending.
 
So yeah, how is our gender representation in media progress going? Are we still lying to ourselves and saying “swimmingly”?
Because that was the most original one I’ve seen in ages, and they still screwed it up epically.
The moment two female protagonists got to be their best, freest, most uninhibited, strongest, happiest selves, they were crushed.
And just look at the other side of the screen. What did Hollywood do with Jodie Comer after her mesmerizing star turn? They threw her into a romcom as a romantic foil to a dazzling leading man, utilizing the classic Hollywood 15 age difference. (Yes, I am aware Eve is 22 years older than Villanelle in real life, but that’s on purpose, this crap is just vanity and standards.)
Granted, Free Guy, was above average for that sort of movie, and Reynolds is well above average for a lead, but I saw that movie first and didn’t even remember Comer was in it until looking it up afterwards. I did remember her in The Last Duel, but frankly it was a rather dreary historical drama, nothing special.
For someone of her talent, those are seriously underwhelming choices.
Strong, tall woman? Played gay for four seasons? Why, lets present her as straight as possible, throw her in with some tall studs. And now what, Hollywood? She’s got two more movies coming out soon. Let’s hope those will allow her star to shine as brightly as it deserves.
Apparently, she killed it (pun) on stage, doing a one woman show and winning top award for it on both sides of the pond. So here’s hoping she’ll get the fame and acclaim she so obviously deserves.
I mean, seriously, the woman is mesmerizing to watch. Her offbeat beauty, her striking knack for accents, her mannerisms, her natural and inexhaustible charisma—it’s a rare thing. She managed to create a character (that as far as I can tell is as far from her real self as a character can be) and inhabit it so completely, you forgot it was acting. You seldom see a performance so immersive and complete, in any format.  She made Villanelle real. Yeah, I’m now definitely a fan.
 
But first and foremost, I’m a fan of Villanelle. Let’s collectively erase those horrid last few minutes from existence and reimagine the ending the characters earned and deserve. Ride off into the sunset, you wild, beautiful, murderous monsters!