#eve polastri analysis

[justapotato89]

The (somewhat accurate) "biblical" parallels in killing eve are insane how am i realising it just now

You have Eve, who is well Eve. In this picture, Lilith is the serpent tempting Eve. Villanelle tempts eve in much the same way. Lilith is not portrayed as seductive, just questioning, planting the seed of doubt, gently suggesting a possibility and offering means. Eve looks doubtful, questioning, just a little uncomfortable. Quite the same way Eve begins to realise her obsession with Villanelle is affecting her relationship with Niko and everything else. This moment of question pops up in the book (Codename: Villanelle) as when she wears the bracelet instead of submitting it for evidence. She questions the way she's impressed by, "the sheer, dazzling effrontery of it".

In the show, we see it when she applies the lipstick, there's a moment of utter, "what am i doing, this is supposed to be evidence". Yet she does it. She doesn't even get mad when the blade cuts her lip.

She just questions herself. Stares at the spectacle Villanelle's made her

Such a bold statement to make. A perfect signature.

Going to Villanelle, the stereotypical Lilith is portrayed as sexually empowering, dominating. In both the shows and the books, Villanelle is portrayed as sexually wanton, despite her choice of career which demands utmost secrecy.

Working for the Dvenadtsat, she couldn't care less about formality and cleanliness even after being warned - the style, the independence is her signature. To her each kill is a work of art, it deserves a proper artist's signature. Quite easy to draw parallels here.

Then we have the comparison of Lilith and Eve, the dominant and submissive counterparts of each other. What if Eve (from bible) wasn't formed from Adam's rib? What if she wasn't damned to be obedient?

That's just exactly the question Eve (the show character) represents. Society, as it always does, expected Eve to be content with a loving husband, a fulfilling job, a house, good colleagues. But Eve is anything but normal. She's the John to Holmes, who tags along for the danger, the adrenaline. She loves the thrill of not knowing if her next step is going to be her last one. And Villanelle takes her as the apprentice, both in the book and in the show.

"You were never like them. You only thought you were."

[wearevillaneve]

I review multiple captivating looks from the hit show Killing Eve, from our favorite characters. However, I couldn't resist indulging in some gushing about my problematic fave, Villanelle. Along with discussing all the stylish (and not so stylish) outfits and the costume designers behind them, I also delve into the origin of the character and the word, "Villanelle," and share exciting updates about Jodie Comer's new Broadway show, upcoming projects, Marvel rumors and... a Star Wars plot twist? Tune in to hear all about the fashion, language, and drama surrounding this fascinating character.

[villanelleskiss]

killing eve vs the last of us: a comparison

A niche post for the likeness of those who are obsessed with Killing Eve or The Last of Us, or both. 

I’ve recently been listening to the TLOU podcast for both the game and show and I’ve noticed a lot of similarities to the characters of Villanelle and Ellie. They are both similar characters, along with similarities between Eve and Dina, with possible similarities between Konstantin and Joel.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR BOTH KILLING EVE AND TLOU 

Villanelle:

Villanelle is a character who we’re introduced to right away in the show. Seeing a speckle of blood across a watch, getting the sense that she is not who she says she is. Hiding her true identity while never shying away from her anger and murderous natures. She has felt these emotions from a very young age and displayed them as well, while also never having any family connections to fall back on for comfort. Her mother sent her to an orphanage, her father passed. In school she hurt and maimed other children before being sent to a juvenile detention center. She had a relationship with her language teacher, whose husband she proceeded to mutilate. Which sent her to prison, where she presumingly killed more people and led to the faking of her death. Where she met Konstantin who recruited her into a twelve, a group of powerful government entities with a mind to create their own militia of seemingly teenagers/young adults whose minds are easily swayed and preyed upon. 

Over time, we see Villanelle has become one of the victims of this group. But does she ever really see herself as a victim? She sees herself as a predator, like a shark, hunting its prey. Given orders to murder who she thinks are random people, but we as viewers know it’s serving a higher purpose to those in charge. She never questions what she does and rather, she enjoys it. Villanelle is flamboyant and creative, acting much like a child. Killing men with fancy poison pins, clamping their balls, holding their ties into elevator doors, and gutting them like pigs in front of their scorned wives. It’s all a game, how she can make each kill more interesting than the last and we enjoy it. Seeing how she does it and what her thought process is behind it. But there really is no thought process, she kills because she wants to and that’s how simple it is. That’s what makes her different from everyone else. 

But what happens when we add Eve to her story? Villanelle becomes unraveled at the seams. Everything that she has worked for and trained herself to be, devoid of emotion with a lavish lifestyle with endless money, slowly becoming a life of the past. Eve shows her what a normal life is and can be for her, that she can put away  her anger and let herself feel all those emotions she’s tried so hard to keep hidden. To be herself, to be happy, and no longer fighting inside. 

Likewise, with Eve who understands Villanelle and wants to know more. She wants to know everything about her and she will throw away her normal life in a moment if she can get even a sliver of that. But Eve is the same, too. She wants to know what it’s like to kill in a world where having dark and angry thoughts is considered to be a bad thing and here’s Villanelle who embraces all of those things with wide open arms. It’s exciting to know that there is someone like her, who can equally understand that. She shows compassion and empathy to Villanelle for the first time ever and that overwhelms her. To know that a person like Villanelle is capable of being loved by someone like Eve, it’s beautiful, but it’s only possible because they are the same. 

Though, there are qualms with how their story unfolds. When we do see these women together, they bicker but they work well together. They’re enemies but they’re lovers. If they choose to and they can, to kill together, it’s one of the most dangerous things possibly ever in the world and everybody should be terrified of that. They can tear the world apart and rule it together. 

Ellie: 

When we first meet Ellie, she’s a bold, defensive 14 year old girl. Orphaned from a young age due to losing her mother, who was bitten by the infected, leaving Ellie with exposure to cordyceps which later would cause her to become immune when bitten by a runner. She’s in military school, where she was put by a somewhat surrogate mother, Marlene, because it is the safest place for her to be in the world we see. Then Joel and Tess come along, who are asked to smuggle her out of the city to Salt Lake to a group called the fireflies, who have a team that can create a vaccine from her. 

At first, we see Ellie as a girl with an extreme childlike wonder due to never being able to experience anything from the world before. All she sees is remnants of it. But when situations become dire, from Tess becoming infected, to the tragedy of Sam and Henry, we start to see a change in her. She learns how to use a gun from Joel, killing only when necessary but she enjoys it when she does. She wants the power that Joel does when he kills. So, where does this darkness come from? Is it who she is? Or is the cordyceps fungus that is growing in her brain? If she wasn’t infected and simply “just a girl”, would she have those same thoughts or feelings? We only ever saw Ellie briefly before becoming infected in The Left Behind DLC, where she was just a girl having fun and exploring the broken world with her best friend. So it’s hard to say if we’ll ever know the truth. 

And by the end of the first game, we start to see where more of this anger and guilt manifest. Because she was not able be the cure due to Joel’s love for her, she questions everything she is. Is she a monster, is she nothing? Her feelings are so strong that despite how hard she tries to hide it, she simply can’t. Every chance she has, she asks Joel the same question, or rather demands it, Tell Me The Truth. And each time she is lied to, the anger just becomes stronger, taking on a personality on its own. 

So, at the event of Joel’s death, it allows this anger to manifest and show itself in the deepest and strongest way possible. By hunting down and killing everyone and everything that had anything to do with it. Murdering people who have lives, who mean something to others, without any mind. And when she does find the people who were directly involved, only God can save them because Ellie does literally become an animal. But inside, we know she is still that girl we met at the mere age of 14. So, does it become difficult for us to see her mindlessly kill or does it become even more exciting and interesting? Because by the end of her journey, she saves and spares the life of the person who killed Joel. Would a monster do the same? That action shows that there is humanity inside her and she is just so broken inside from her own emotions, that, that is what controls her actions. 

With Dina, we see them fight but we see them comfort each other. They bicker but they trust each other and love each other. They are partners and where one goes, the other follows. They kill together and is just as rough around the edges as Ellie is. They protect each other, always. We see the tenderest of moments, sometimes it’s just a song, sometimes it’s through sickness, and other times it’s after Ellie kills someone, but they have each other, through it all. Ellie is loyal at all costs, to everyone she loves in her life. The only time she betrays that is through the pain she feels. But she realizes her mistakes and in the end, wants to make everything right again and follows her heart back to where it belongs. 

Father Figures:

Villanelle’s real father dies when she is young so the only father figure that is in her life, is Konstantin. He believes in her like nobody else does, but he is also afraid of her. He knows what Villanelle is capable of and tries to keep her at a distance, but his own love for her, his own curiosity doesn’t let him. She figures out he has a daughter and later on, takes her away from him by introducing her to the darkness. So, he tries to kill her, she tries to kill him, he tries to save her, she leaves him, it’s an endless cycle but it’s one that works for them. It’s a dynamic only they could have for each other, because they are not a real family, not connected by blood, which is a point Konstantin points out to her. But she is truly the only one that he has. His own actions despite the ones we would be led to think Villanelle caused. But in the last season, their relationship is strained. Why? It could be because of Villanelle’s attempted religious rebirth but it could be the effect of everything they have done to each other. Villanelle finally realizing that Konstantin continues to lie and hurt her, so she does the same to him.  And by the end of the series, it ends with Konstantin’s death, again by his own actions before they’re able to reconcile. 

Joel is Ellie’s father. Wholly and simply. Blood or not, that doesn’t matter. His lies to Ellie about the fireflies would regard the same outcome as if he was her father by blood. The hurt and anger is possibly even more because she knows what they have been through together. They crossed the country and saved each other from infected, and their lives have literally been dependent on each other. It was an easy decision for Joel to save Ellie, killing everyone that got in his way, much like Ellie would later kill everyone in her way to avenge Joel. So, them not speaking to each other and Ellie publicly berating him is not easy for Ellie. Especially when Joel lost his own daughter Sarah. But her choosing to want to fix that relationship is a brave one, when his death was less than 24 hours later. And Ellie finally choosing to let her life with Joel go, so she can live her own with Dina. 

Overview:

If you put these four characters together and switched their places, you would have a nearly similar outcome. Both Villanelle and Ellie are lesbians, while Eve and Dina are both bisexual. They are similar but different, but their stories are unique and borne of trauma, anger, and overwhelming emotions, which are calmed by love and humanity by Eve and Dina. 

(Disclaimer: Eve is not being sidelined to just Villanelle’s counterpart in this post, as Eve is her own person, this is just a comparison to Villanelle and Ellie’s stories)

TLDR:

They are the same person except Villanelle is clean and smells good, while Ellie is stinky and dirty. 

[killingeveperspectives]

Perspective: Eve Polastri and the invisibility of women’s pain

“[A woman] has to know how to love

know how to suffer her love

and be all forgiveness”

These are the final verses of the poem “Sonnet of the ideal woman” written by the acclaimed Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, same guy that brought you Girl from Ipanema®. (Don’t start hum… too late). I remember reading this sonnet only once, but its last verses became branded in my mind like a curse. Society’s view of ideal womanhood is perfectly encapsulated in these three haunting lines. That is women’s purpose, not only for men but for humanity, her suffering frivolous in the face of the redemption to be brought forth through her selflessness. Anything else is egoistical, evil, and dangerous… for everyone. From Pandora in ancient Greece, to biblical Eve, to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, to 90% of all horror movies ever, women are constantly warned of the dangers of curiosity and desire, which lead to destruction and death. Her redemption is to be a vehicle of someone else’s redemption, just like Virgin Mary redeemed biblical Eve by being the vehicle of humankind’s salvation. This narrative is so ingrained in our collective unconscious that it requires an immense effort to not let it slip into its familiar nest within our minds.

The biblical story of Eve’s fall from grace is arguably the most pervasive patriarchal myth to shape our patriarchal society, but if we unwrap its millennia of projections of male anxieties, the myth holds a kernel of universal truth: The flesh is weak. We are dangerously inclined to act on desire over reason by force so strong it is symbolized by the Devil: it possesses the mind. These impulses are irrational, reckless, primal and compelling. While Freud constructed much of his theory on the fascination of unconscious drives, I believe no one has said it better than W.H. Auden: “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand”. Our lives and livelihood depend on striking a fine balance between restriction and satisfaction of impulse, and to those who have ever fell in passion with someone or something, passion can be one of the most disruptive experiences of a lifetime. Thus, Eve’s myth carries layers of meaning both as we understand our nature and also as to how we project these anxieties onto womanhood.

Eve Polastri is not just Eve, she is Eve, she is the proverbial woman. She is morbidly curious, tempted by desire, gives in, and destroys the world around her. But Killing Eve is no cautionary tale, Eve Polastri Is not committing a forbidden sin against a narrative moral code which commands an imposed narrative punishment. Thus, Eve Polastri embodies and transgresses the biblical myth: she is the woman exploring her own impulses in her own story and becoming authentic through it– which makes her a remarkable character in her own right. At the core, the character is also us, a regular person urging to become whole, that sees in the metaphorical abyss of Villanelle’s indulgence a reflection of what she yearns: liberation. There is a courage to Eve, and we watch her entranced, because, whether we want to admit or not, we all fantasize about playing with fire. However, there can be a tacit perverted satisfaction in this story: we want Eve to fall from grace but when she does, we want to punish her for it, thus sublimating and reprimanding our own impulse, and falling back in the old narratives about womanhood. 

In Season 1, Eve seemed to have been taken as a surrogate for the audience quite unproblematically, nevertheless when desire starts to show its ugly face in Season 2, part of the audience started to feel alienated from the character, and even antagonistic. Which is unfortunate, because her face off with Villanelle in the finale was arguably the most victorious, honest and cathartic moment of the character so far. Season 3 opens with a recluse Eve licking her wounds, trying to pull herself together any way she can, after all she suffered and all she learned. She changed and change is painful – in an abstract sense, violent as well. Her initial isolation was self-imposed by the character but as the season progresses Eve becomes more and more distant, which creates a parallel to how women’s suffering is perceived in real life.

Ironically, when Eve is shutting down from the world around her in the beginning of the season, she is more open to us than she will ever be in the remainder of the episodes. We are allowed to exist with the character through her painfully dull, mundane day-to-day, as the extent of her suffering manifests in the blunt messiness of her exterior life and her valiant effort to keep it together with the help of a budding alcohol and cigarette addiction. Eve is not a strong woman; she is a woman that claimed herself at a great cost. This cost was depicted with frustrating realism, just like in real life, once the thrill of the battle is over, it’s time to tend to the wounded, drag the corpses and count the dead. It’s inglorious. No wonder Eve literally and metaphorically hid, she burned the bridges with the world around her. How could she possibly explain what she went through and how could an outsider possibly understand? A question that mirrors the feeling of many a person, especially women, that entangled themselves in violent dynamics: Alienation and loneliness.

Initially, the character continues the apophatic self-definition, Eve says no a lot, symbolizing her efforts to reassert control over her life. From Villanelle, to Carolyn, to her job, Eve is trying to play by her rules and her truth, she knows what she wants not, but the interesting question posed at the end of Season 2 is “Now that Eve reclaimed herself, what will she do of what she has become?” – Sartre style. However, there is a major shift in Eve’s character after her interactions with Villanelle in episodes 3 and 4. The character’s arc becomes centered towards admitting her feelings for Villanelle as the source of conflict, however one could argue that the main source of conflict is the existence of these feelings itself. Therefore, merely admitting them shouldn’t solve the main conflict, on the contrary, due to their inherent contradictory nature it should exacerbate it. 

This sleight of hand not only impoverishes the character’s emotional landscape, motivations and general arc, but also echoes the verse: ”A woman must know how to suffer love”. Like countless women before, Eve’s story is subtly telling us that the misery comes from her rejection of a phagic “love” and the metaphorical self-annihilation intrinsic to the experience, instead of the authentic ambivalence and paradoxes of the character’s inner self. Eve’s conflict should be at its core about herself not about Villanelle – who serves as a symbolic element.  In the end, good women are expected to erase themselves and to become vessels of God and of others. Coincidentally, Eve’s character becomes oddly redeemed when she becomes a vessel for Villanelle’s need to belong.

Here is where the writers quite painfully abandon an once intriguing and compelling character. Eve doesn’t find nothing new to say about herself, no new path nor synthesis of her desires, and identity – which could and should have given Eve agency in renegotiating her dynamic with Villanelle, especially if it was to bring them closer. Eve ceases to be defined by her own inner conflict and becomes defined by her attraction to Villanelle alone. As Eve obsessively seeks Villanelle, who is in turn occupied with a story of her own, at no point the audience is asked to care about Eve’s suffering nor does the writers bother to interrogate the character about it, let alone let the character process it. Eve is deprived from exploring herself and facing her own pain, almost as if Eve was so devoid of individuality that the character itself is alienated from the obvious pain and conflict it should be experiencing. But nor Eve, nor any other character and, most importantly, nor the audience is asked to care. In the emblematic scene where Eve jumps into a dumpster to literally look for scrapes of Villanelle’s supposed affection as a way of reconnecting with her, no effort is made to reframe it or question the length at which the character lost itself, because no one cares. When in the finale, Eve, who is oblivious to Villanelle’s change of heart, is interrogated with a relevant question “Did I ruin your life? Do you think I am a monster?”, the character straightforwardly reassures the anti-hero at the expense of the rich internal conflict that should have been derived and fleshed out from these points, because no one cares.

Eve believes in Villanelle unconditionally, despite all conceivable lines being crossed, despite the destruction and conflict this relationship has brought her, because Eve is doing precisely what her character is supposed to be doing: erasing her individuality, enduring her pain in the name of this love, forgiving no matter what they do to her so that they can be redeemed through her. “A woman has to know how to suffer her love and be all forgiveness”. Thus, Eve as a character becomes a device in Villanelle’s story arc occupying the same restricted space female characters were always allowed to inhabit. Villanelle goes on a somewhat muddled character growth arc, filled with redemption elements which traditionally involves the presence of a source of acceptance and love, generally in the form of a love interest, that will be granted to the hero at the end of the journey. Eve’s function in the story is not as a compelling protagonist with universal struggles, but as both enabler and trophy in Villanelle’s story. The narrative finds itself trapped in the old tales ingrained in our collective unconscious, in a jarring contrast with the previous seasons’ transgression and uniqueness.

Paradoxically, this precise abandonment gives the season the richest opportunity for the audience to interrogate the place of women’s pain. Eve’s abandonment mirrors the invisibility of the suffering of countless women, who painfully sacrifice their livelihoods in the name of their loved ones, be it Nicos, or Villanelles, or family, or friends, or their communities. Who, day in and out, are responsible for caring and supporting others through their struggles while left stranded with their own conflicts. After all, when so much depends on their self-sacrifice their pain is unimportant, even an expected part of this glorified martyrdom. Are we keen on looking at these women who inhabit these confined roles and acknowledge without judgement the enormous burden they carry? Are we ready to empathize with them when they rebel, when they fail and break, and even more so when they acquiesce? Having a queer twist on this narrative is not enough to claim it transgressive, as this cultural recipe perpetuates itself also into homoromantic relationships, as women often see themselves trapped in this dynamic with their female partners as well. Women are no less oppressed by patriarchal ideas of womanhood if these ideas are perpetuated through their relationships with other women.

 Akin to Eve’s biblical story, the erasure of female pain is also layered, as we all crave unconditional love, and its redemption, so we can be at peace with ourselves – completely satisfied, accepted and safe – which is naturally symbolized by “The mother”. Therefore, it is easy to impose these fantasies in the ideal of womanhood, as easy as it is to relate to Villanelle and romanticize the role Eve plays in her development, her acceptance of Villanelle’s character being a powerful cathartic release for our own need and fantasies of belonging. 

In this context, hidden in Season 3’s oblivious narrative, lays an interesting invitation to evaluate how we individually, and as a society, negotiate our urge to be nurtured and the necessity to nurture others and how these roles are culturally and socially informed by patriarchal ideas we collectively and individually carry about womanhood, and to what extent we are ready to challenge them.

[please-return-to-villanelle]

It’s the way who and what the 12 is never really mattered and was never explained , if it mattered we would have received names and faces of the people Villanelle killed

Its the way what happed during the time jump from season 3 to 4 to explain Villanelle and Eve’s separation was never addressed

It’s the way the ballroom and bridge scenes from season 3 were ignored

It’s the way we will never know what happened on the car ride to the Forest of Dean

It’s the way Kenny’s death was a plot device and left unsolved

It’s the way so many slippery men escaped bodily harm and faced no consequences

It’s the way Geraldine had no impact on the plot and yet received a mention in the finale, once again taking up unnecessary screen time

It’s the way the writers had no idea what to do with Carolyn after season 2

It’s the way Eve never got the screen time she deserved

It’s the way Konstantin’s death didn’t impact the plot since Carolyn already knew everything Pam told her

It’s the way Pam’s skills as a mortician was irrelevant

It’s the way there was more blatant heterosexuality on screen every single season

It’s the way Gunn and Pam were set up as foils to Villanelle and they were both rushed and poorly handled

It’s the fact that we were given multiple foils to Villanelle in the last season after we had Dasha, another foil, in season 3

It’s the way all queer characters on this show were harmed or killed

It’s the way Villanelle and Eve never killed together

It’s the way they injected Christian morality into the last season

It’s the way Villanelle was written a redemption arc when she didn’t need one

It’s the way so many things happened off screen

It’s the way, in the end, none of it even mattered.

Villanelle and Eve were set up as a subversive love story. Two women who behaved badly, recognized that in each other, and fell for each other because of that. That was the whole show. And yet, here we are.

[emcareless]

Portrait of a Lady on Fire // Killing Eve

[noahsartt]

some thoughts i have on the killing eve finale because i can’t think about anything else:

i saw this post :

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.

[eleganttiredcroissant]

Can I just say, I don't understand anything plot-wise of this finale? I don't wanna talk too much in detail about the obvious shock value death (albeit an aesthetically pleasing scene) because the real problem is at its source. The taking down of the twelve is the most anticlimactic thing ever done on Killing Eve. I know most people watched the show solely for villaneve and not giving a single damn about the other plot points but the thing is that in season one through three the bigger plot lines actually worked, in season four it just ends up being unkept promises. And for me that is a huge reason why Villanelle's death comes across as completely unnecessary and purely for shock value: imagine a finale in which the taking down of the twelve is much more earned in a action-spy kinda sequence where we're constantly on the edge and not "oh someone got shot randomly in a low tension moment". At the end of it all and only then you can put in every screenwriter wet dream (we would have never gotten a happy ending, I've made my peace with that a long time ago) and kill one of the main character with a believable plot twist that feels true to the characters and most of all it has to make sense.

I fail to understand anything about Carolyn this season. She's always been an ambiguous character but this is beyond, I don't get anything she does nor any of her motives and I think the worst reaction you could get as a writer from your audience is "I don't understand why this/these characters did the things they did".

Another thing I absolutely hated is that the twelve never end up having a face. It sounds weird but I promise you, one of the reasons if feels unsatisfactory is that we never see it through. You can't just make the character say "we did it" and thinking you did something, you have to make me feel it, you have to make me feel like the storyline I've been watching for four season actually end up going somewhere with closure. They basically started a story with MANY details about it and then closed it in five seconds with zero details.

In short, for me the real problem isn't the shock value death itself, it's everything leading to it, all the shortcomings from the big plot.

[blood-sucking-whore]

Gender in Killing Eve and Hannibal (TV Series)

WARNING: LONG TEXTPOST!!!

(pls tell me ur thoughts)

Both Killing Eve and Hannibal feature characters who perform gender (or don’t) in particularly interesting ways.  Killing Eve’s subversion of female gender roles is rich and complex, especially for a crime drama - a very male dominated genre.  In crime shows, female characters are typically either non-existent, or badly written props for insufferable male protagonists.

The women of K.E. (namely Villanelle and Eve) are not only extremely intelligent and driven, but have a sensitively-described moral greyness.  It is fascinating to see both women’s moralities evolve throughout the series, especially in relation to each other.  

There are consequences to their actions, but the writers allow them to do bad things, to be bad people.  It is refreshing to see ‘strong women’ written in this way: they don’t have to make women look ‘good.’  Often this moral flexibility is only tolerated from male characters.  

That’s not to say that Villanelle and Eve are never vulnerable.  They are people: their worth as characters cannot be based on filling the age-old mold of cold, dull, emotionless male detective characters.  Eve is manipulated by her employers, by Villanelle, affected by the death of her friends, and is a victim to her own guilt.  Villanelle, similarly, is subject to the needs of her employers, is orphaned, and is overall dysfunctional.  

This inhibits their control of their own situations.  But both characters make decisions, and take power for themselves.  And while their intentions are muddied along the way, they both keep fighting for something, even if it's just for themselves and each other.

The two central characters of Hannibal, Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, exhibit a similar relationship to that of Eve and Villanelle.  While they (Will especially) don’t flout the rules of gender as decisively as Villanelle, for example, they also are not typical male crime protagonists.

Will Graham is vulnerable, quiet, and uncomfortable with power.  And, unlike other male underdog characters, this isolation isn’t resolved by, or blamed on a woman.  These descriptors apply most obviously in the first season, but even through Will’s development, he doesn’t exactly become masculine or powerful (at least in the traditional way.)  He is consistently affected by mental illness, which is sensitively depicted, and (character-wise) is sympathetic to other mentally ill characters.  This is a point of weakness which is constantly exploited by other characters such as Jack and Hannibal.

Hannibal, on the other hand, is not very vulnerable (until he becomes more sympathetic to Will.) He is always in control, always able to manipulate the situation to his advantage.  But even he isn’t exactly masculine.  He enjoys art and music, and even through murder, is opulent and flamboyant.  

This is easily comparable to Villanelle’s (fashion, visuals, performance) 

Both Hannibal and Will are very clearly queercoded, and in a relationship that can’t really be described as platonic.  Scenes with them are written, acted, and framed in an intimate way.  Even when stabbing each other, there is romantic tension. This is a union between two people who understand each others’ deepest, most hidden nature. 

I am hesitant to compare murder entirely to queerness, because of how this has been used to suggest evil inherent to queer people.  But murder, and wanting to murder, is sensitively and subtly compared to the way queerness is viewed by society, and to an extent how it can be experienced by queer people and their own self-discovery.  The way both characters talk about murder is intensely intimate.  And Will’s development as a murderer, and someone who understands murder, is parallel to his evolving relationship with Hannibal.

Villanelle and Eve are canonically bisexual, and have scenes that are clearly romantic.  They share a similarly obsessive relationship.  It is endlessly entertaining to watch this relationship play out.  It is infinitely toxic, as opposed the clean, unpassionate lesbian romances we’re used to seeing on TV.  It’s also not an oversexualised, voyeuristic male fantasy.  

TV writers need to stop avoiding making queer characters that are bland, moral, nice and boring for fear of making something problematic.  That’s just lazy writing, and it’s up to them to write these characters well.  I am tired of clean, easy ‘girl power’ types, or tick-box diversity.

Another interesting facet of gender performance in the two shows is fashion and costume design.  In particular, Villanelle’s penchant for two or three piece suits is considerably masculine, but not a masculinity typically performed by men in crime shows.  She chooses fashion outside of the default, minimal idea of masculinity, and embodies gender performativity.  

However, Villanelle is just as likely to wear overly feminine clothing (eg. pink tulle dress, black tulle dress) in a way that is just as deliberate and theatrical.  She is fully aware of herself and how she is perceived, and is able to manipulate and enjoy it.  This is an especially enjoyable rebuttal to the ‘beautiful but doesn’t know it’ trope, which I despise.  Her self-confidence is not granted by a man: she seizes it herself. 

Eve is almost the opposite of this.  She wears very neutral, almost utilitarian clothing throughout the show, and rarely considers what she wears, except when she has to.  But this doesn't give way to the aforementioned display of female insecurity.  Both women show a performance of womanhood that is unconventional on TV.  What I think causes this is that the male gaze is rarely applied to either woman.

Will and Hannibal have somewhat of a similar visual comparison to Eve and Villanelle, simply: Hannibal is very attentive to his clothing,  Will, for most of the series, is not.  Hannibal, despite dressing in typically masculine clothing: three piece suits, does it much more deliberately and precisely than many masculine male TV characters.  Will’s clothing is perhaps a choice, less by him than the writers, to make him seem unthreatening and unaware.  This changes in the third season when Will begins to wear fitted suits, and seems to brush his hair more often.  

Some interpret this as Will mirroring Hannibal, but it could be read as Will rivalling Hannibal.  Hannibal was able to, quite literally, keep up appearances of himself as competent, sane and respectable.  He asserts himself as Will’s superior.  However, Will understands that maintaining his appearances is beneficial to him, and shows the viewers, and Hannibal, that he understands the way he works.  He is, by season three, no longer a vulnerable stray, but not a ruthless, efficient killer.

Both series display complex, well written characters: and this is their strength.  But I do wish the writers of Hannibal had developed their female characters better.  

[wearevillaneve]

What we don't talk about in the KE fandom.

Easily one of the best deconstructions of the repulsive way Killing Eve destroyed the four seasons of goodwill it built up was written by Vulture essayist Angelica Jade-Bastien's "Killing Eve Chose Cruelty". In four words, Jade-Bastien captured why weeks after the last gruesome minutes of the show flickered away from the eyes of horrified viewers it continues to burn and sear into their minds.

The fourth installment to the series, but particularly its last two episodes, demonstrates how far the show has fallen from the dizzying heights of its premiere. Gone is the delicious fashion pivoting on moments of transformation in the manner of fairy tales. Gone is the supremely precise characterization, replaced with a confused internal logic that jockeys the characters according to the needs of its threadbare espionage plotting. Gone is the spry presentation, achieved through blocking, editing, and costume and production design. But most important, gone is the tense cat-and-mouse game between Villanelle (Comer) and Eve (Oh) that acted as the engine. Killing Eve is a study in how jumping from different showrunners each season can leave a series without a profound singular voice — and it is evidence that a shallow understanding of representation and the female gaze isn’t enough to create a memorably good, cohesive story that gives a damn about the women onscreen. It amounted to a finale that gave once perpetually ravenous viewers a paltry version of what they wanted before snatching even that away.

Read the entire essay and it makes you feel better about the nonsensical trash Laura Neal dreamed up one night over too much cheap beer. Jade-Bastien brings up the one problem that predates Neal and the KE fandom hasn't talked about nearly enough.

This is a topic that many in Killing Eve's non-White fandom are well aware of, yet many of their White peers are oblivious to. Racism? In my favorite show? How could that be? Real easy.

The obvious and overt racism of Donald Trump or Kanye West is in your face and it can't be easily ignored. The soft, but pernicious bigotry practiced by the KE writers' room was manifested by keeping Eve an enigma from beginning to end. She was never given a family or life outside of her job, marriage, and the obsession with Villanelle that cost her everything. It's an irritation to know less about Eve than we do about Gemma, Geraldine, or Pam, but that's where we are. Eve was an enigma because she was never written to be anything else. A decision was made by someone to ensure nothing more than the bare minimum would ever be known about Eve. She was given a name and the bare bones of a backstory, and that's all.

For many in the KE fandom the Villanelle solo episode is their absolute favorite. It's one of my least favorites because it made erasing Eve official as Villanelle forgets all about her and so much so in "End of Game" even her name isn't uttered.

KONSTANTIN: I don't think you really want this.

VILLANELLE: I want it!

KONSTANTIN: You know what it means? It means you have to leave everything, the clothes, apartment… and her.

VILLANELLE: I know.

"...and her." "Her" has a name and it is Eve, but to Heathcote that wasn't important. That was a disservice to Sandra Oh, the actress who brought Eve Polastri to life even though she was not allowed to be more than a one-dimensional cut-out of a character. Remember Oh was one of the two stars of the show. This was one of those rare occasions where the titular lead character gets less fleshed out than multiple supporting ones.

That's not accidental. It was deliberate and it robbed Eve of her agency and autonomy. She really was little more than "an Asian woman with amazing hair." Eve was the lone woman of color constantly reacting in a world of Whiteness. Phoebe Waller-Bridge boldly chose to be colorblind in casting Sandra Oh as the very British and very White Eve Polastri and deserves all the credit in the world for it. Unfortunately, when she left she didn't leave any instructions to her successors on what to do with Eve, so they all chose to do nothing. After the show ended some sought to scapegoat Sandra Oh for the lousy last season stating as an executive producer she must have approved the direction the show went when Suzanne Heathcote and Laura Neal became the lead writers. Nobody knows how much input Oh had into the writer's room, but if she did that means she went along with a noticeable drop in screen time and the complete absence of a backstory for Eve. It's hard to believe any actor would deliberately reduce their own role in just the third season of a show, but that's exactly what some KE fans believe Oh did. They're the same ones who say Villanelle needed a stand-alone episode to explore her history, but have no issue with Eve being devoid of a past. This isn't racism in the Killing Eve fandom. Most of the fans don't show up that way. What they do instead is fail to notice how little Eve there frequently is in Killing Eve. It's not necessarily racism, which is bad, but it is erasure, which isn't good.

[merevide]

my highly professional and not totally delusional stance on the ‘who tops/who bottoms’ debate between villaneve

okay prefacing this by saying i think they’re both switches. but if someone had to top the majority of the time it’d be eve. also this is my opinion.

putting it under the cut because i do not want to clog up the dash.

eve’s whole motto is jumping into things impulsively. she’s predicable on the surface but is driven by a desire to not be what people expect her to be. but she’s also been wound up her whole life, suppressing every dark urge unless it is in private. so yeah sure, she’s inexperienced but when has that stopped her. you know if offered the chance she would be so eager to top. she’d just do it.

okay now onto villanelle, i think with other people she’d 100% be a service top. no doubt i think. villanelle likes the control she can have or exert over certain people, she finds it fun. she even thinks eve is that way. but as aforementioned, eve is not like that at all. which is why villanelle is so drawn ( and at times angered ) by eve. she does not act like villanelle expects/wants her to. and throughout how does this turn into her bottoming?

i feel like for her ( and eve too ) their whole character progressions through the seasons can play into this. now stay with me here. villanelle finds her humanity through eve, she finds her happiness. eve is her tether where everyone else in her life has treated her as if she is a full on monster. as if she doesn’t have any complexities behind that. eve understands her, her under the surface longing for a kind of normalcy. so with eve she softens, she lets go.

with eve, it’s basically the same thing but in reverse. she discovers her dark urges through villanelle, her grim impulses are not shunned or repressed, they’re encouraged even. eve’s entire obsession with villanelle stems from the fact that at the surface, she is what eve truly desires deep down, but later down the line falls completely for her. acknowledges her need for her. and through her, she also let’s go in a sense.

the whole top/bottom thing is another shade of a power dynamic, and i’m just choosing to look WAY too deep into literal intimacy roles but eh. who cares. villanelle softens with eve, trusting her with this. eve hardens through vil, but is also soft. she is eager but also wants to please because she loves villanelle. she trusts her to not repress her impulsivity, to let her show her how much she loves her through this physical act.

in the s1 finale i think it displays the point i’m trying to make nicely, vil’s ‘’i know what i’m doing’’, to eve holding a knife to her stomach, to “you can’t”/“i can.”, you get the gist. the knife is a symbol of the shift between them. the first instance of their dynamic, villanelle in the vulnerable position while eve is in full control, obviously it becomes softer and full of love over time (+ added consent. moral of the story don’t stab someone without their permission)and doesn’t involve blood all over the sheets but you get what i’m saying.

so that’s my ‘i’m reading way to far between these lines’ rant. again, i think they’re switches and aren’t stone cold tops/bottoms & this is just my opinion. if you think eve bottoms and vil tops all the power to you. thanks for reading this far. shoutout to the anon that wanted this lol.

[stryc-9]

Part 4 in my series of 5 obvious things Lauren Seal completely misunderstands about storytelling… the purpose of new characters in an established narrative

Well it's been a minute since part 3, but whatever. Laura had two years and look at the shit she churned out.

Anyway she came into an established narrative and decided adding TONS of new characters was a good idea. Not only an established narrative, but THE ENDING of said narrative. This part makes my eyes roll so hard that I'm not sure I can keep typing. Like wtf?!

This is such a simple concept. The purpose of new characters in an established narrative is pretty straightforward, especially as the narrative is winding down to a close. When Laura came in, the story was 75% done!! By that point, the purpose of every new character should be to propel the main characters and the narrative itself toward their conclusion.

If the new character does not serve to push the story toward its (GOOD) ending, THEY. SHOULD. NOT. EXIST.

PERIOD.

*insert limit does not exist.gif -- but with new characters or whatever*

I'm going to speak as if Laura's intentions for her new characters were obvious, because honestly I think they were. I don't think she intended for most of them to serve much of a purpose beyond KEEPING VILLANEVE APART.

That's it. Simple as it gets. She didn't want VE together until the last episode, so there was a ton of screen time to fill with bullshit.

What she thought she was doing with each character...

Yusuf: showing Eve working with another fuck buddy who I guess also had access to information? Oh and he trained her in combat? I don't fucking know. (This was a gap V should've mostly filled.)

Pam: showing who V could've been if she got out and how Konstantin could've been more of a positive presence in her life, killing Daddy K.

Gunn: showing who V could've been if she formed no attachments

Fernanda: Ok, I don't even know here. Someone who Helene fucked over, Eve fucked over, and Pam could kill I guess? You spin that sandwich sign, girl.

The couple introduced in the FINALE: showing a contrast of a couple in "domestic bliss" versus VE (which was stupid because that phrase is so meaningless to start with and those people would be annoying AF to anyone).

This is an aside, but I'm going to toss Helene in here for a second since she was upgraded to a regular. Laura thought she would be the "face" of the 12, a villain to hunt. A foil for V (as well as a stand in) and a worthy opponent for Eve. But she was none of those and a text solved the whole mission anyway, so who cares?

There were probably more characters? Idk. I'm trying to forget this shit.

Suffice it to say she accomplished absolutely none of what she supposedly set out to do and these idiots had their own storylines in a show that's not about them!!

This basically plays into part 3 about screen time utilization. She used new characters, not to serve the narrative or the mains, but to EAT UP SCREEN TIME because she hated the main characters and didn't want them to have an arc together until she was forced to shoehorn it in for the finale.

That's just fucking stupid. Such. A. Hack.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

[wsome1ushouldntve]

THINGS I WANTED TO SEE IN 4X08 OF KE:

“Oksana.” Like, not her alter ego, but her real name, being privately and reverently uttered by Eve.

Why is Eve still a Polastri? Warrants thorough explanation.

A not-so-shitty characterization of Carolyn Martens. A very uninteresting writing off of a potentially nuanced character. Her ending made her one-dimensionally evil, despite all the emotional build-up that was the majority of her arc with Geraldine and Villanelle.

Eve’s “rebirth” being making peace with both sides of her personality; the one that is “normal” and the one that is embracing of her darker tendencies.

Villanelle working through her trauma. “Are You From Pinner?” did a somewhat inadequate job of this. So did her kidnapping Martin and having a small and civil breakdown. I would have liked to see her tackle all this head-on. Nothing needs to be obvious or voiced-out about it (like that “I remember Bill” left so many things unsaid in the most wordlessly eloquent way possible and was good, but her “Goodbye, old bastard” while throwing darts felt too on-the-surface, even beside Pam)

WHERE IS IRINA WHAT HAPPENED TO HER

THE TWELVE. For all that talk, all that suspense, all that mystery, this may be the single biggest anticlimactic and incomplete sorry excuse of a resolution to such a significant and insidious part of the plot (esp. In S3 and 4)

Pam is seen as a parallel to Oksana. Konstantin offers her a way out, and it is only after making the mistake of killing him does she realize what a gift it is that he’s given her, so she defies Carolyn and leaves. Oksana, in contrast, grows closer to Carolyn across S4 and is ultimately betrayed in the most undignifying way, without confrontation and without grace. I would have liked to see more of Pam and Oksana, certainly more than that arrow removal scene (rare example of good, snappy dialogue and tension in S4) and the darts in the Barn Swallow (boring, lacking in meaning, a dull lull in pacing).

I need! Very much! An at-peace smile from Oksana the moment she realises her efforts have not been in vain. The closest thing we got to security was 1. the look of enrapturing adoration when she saw Eve on that dance floor and 2. the certain reflex of her shielding Eve from the bullets and pushing her to jump. I’m not sure if it was a trick of light or something but I could have sworn that after a bullet missed Eve underwater Oksana doubled her efforts in swimming towards her, trying to block more bullets, knowing she probably had little chance at survival. I would have liked to see just a subtle indicator of her giving Eve the chance to live and being happy about it, completing her arc of discovery of self, peace, and love, whether that be a satisfied smile or even a panicked “go” or “live” that should have happened in the last seconds of life underwater, in contrast to Eve’s yell of torment after resurfacing was animalistic.

Nothing needs to be obvious or even voiced in this. What little excellence I found in this season overall was the blatant choice to not have them voice out their feelings vocally but still make it painfully obvious in their comforting familiarity of that dance they have around each other and with each other. An example would be the “piss kiss,” no words exchanged and no words needed. Another more subtle one would be the sleeping bag scene, especially the bit where Oksana traces Eve’s scar after they’d shared a look when the bothy couple had showed off their kidney replacement marks. They’ve never had explicit sex. They’ve never even properly exchanged “I love you’s” onscreen. Neither is needed, because in their actions and looks and obsession we can decode the underlying tension that finally comes to domestic fruition in the comfort with which they not so much collide but rather tentatively meet in the middle. Refreshing.

Regarding the silence with which Oksana had died, swallowed up by water while Eve had emerged fighting and yelling and breathing, it was a good anti-parallel showcasing character development where once Eve was restrained and Villanelle was flashy and notorious for her violent outbursts, BUT BUT BUT taking the fight out of Villanelle, while adding another dimension to her fluctuating personality, does ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN NOTHING to the development of her personal life/ feelings towards Eve. She should not have died in such a quiet, muted, dismissive way.

Which begs the question: Should either of them have even died? My view on this is that, pushing aside the debate of the “bury your gays” trope or even the tangent on queerbaiting, is that this is quite lazy writing on what could have been a much more meaningful resolution independent of the decision of killing off one of the title characters. The show’s title is Killing Eve. The twist is inherently clever. What I want to reiterate is that what is decidedly NOT CLEVER is the way they executed (no pun intended) Oksana’s death without much dignity, with so many strings left untied.

These are just some very immediate thoughts. Might think of others.

[earth-electric]

The Case of Eve Polastri: Aimed to Kill

(CONTENT WARNING: DETAILED GUN DISCUSSION, DETAILED PHYSICAL TRAUMA DISCUSSION, MEDICAL DISCUSSION AND IMAGES)

The season 2 finale of Killing Eve was the dramatic ruin of Villaneve’s budding romance. What little grasp the two had on each other after a titillating dance of their power-play was in a word - combusting. Eve should be dead, plain and simple. And yes Villanelle DID aim to kill, the little asshole was not playing around. She didn't miss, Eve just got lucky. I'm going to try and explain this as clearly as possible so bear with me, this is a long one.

It's a miracle Eve is alive, but to be lucky alive and lucky to have healed so quickly - that's called TV magic. The injury the creatives gave Eve is among the worst kinds to survive from at her age. I can imagine them thinking 'oh that gun was tiny didn't do that much damage haha'-wrong. I do not believe they conversed with a medical professional. The writers most likely just did some basic research, nothing to deep, because if they actually did a deep dive they would have realized their timeline is bogus. Of course it's a show, so whatever right? (I mean remember Konstantin 'death' s1 to s2, that shit made no sense). Fuck that, especially when it's a character you sidelined at their expense. The season 3 writers dismissal of Eve's recovery and pain along with their own timeline and plot is whack.

Because of my ability to actually do my research, I'm going to give Eve's pain and suffering the attention she deserves because the writers could never. I'm going to detail the ballistics, how extensive Eve's injury was, and how long really is that time jump, because it's not 6 months.

Now lets start with the crime...of passion

I know many have commented on the size of the gun Villanelle used to shoot Eve, but let me tell you that gun is no joke. That is a 9mm hand gun. If you wanted a gun that is easily concealed and has lethal fire power you get this gun; it uses a small caliber, high speed bullet (this is why it’s so dangerous; the higher the speed, the more damage). This gun is highly recommended for women for self defense. It's even more lethal if it's a hollow point 9mm bullet instead of a regular 9mm bullet. An ordinary bullet is much more cleaner, and the wound heals nicely. You are most likely going to survive and heal quickly if shot by this hand gun and bullet (people survive more when shot by a hand gun depending on where you were hit). But a hollow point bullet leaves you fucked up and most likely very injured or dead. The wound takes longer to heal because it leaves it jagged as the hollow point of the bullet explodes through your body.

Note, we all know guns are terrible things, they may leave a pretty little bullet hole on the surface (depending on the bullet), but they tear up your insides. I describe bullets like a mini bomb, the bullet pierces the sound barrier and when it hits its target creates a domino effect that reverberates into pockets of fragmentation of victims surrounding tissues.

Eve was most likely hit with a hollow point bullet, if you were someone apart of a criminal organization and wanted the target for sure dead you will use a hollow point. Hollow points can kill almost instantly depending where you shoot, hunters don't use them because of bullet fragments that are left over in the flesh. A 9mm bullet is notorious for getting lost in the body since it's a small caliber bullet and becomes even smaller through its journey. But being a hollow point 9mm you have a lost bullet and a mess of shell fragments scattered in the tissues.

9mm bullets are also known to not exit the body (torso), as they can't make it because of their small caliber - but that doesn't mean the bullet can't pierce your heart. You may think since Eve was shot so far away that damage would not have been so severe, and you'll be wrong. Yes, it is good that Villanelle shot Eve from a good distance, because if that gun was any closer Eve would be dead by a bullet to the heart. But as I stated you are wrong to believe that her injury would not have been life threatening, she still could have died. We don't know how long she laid there, but she was bleeding out and definitely had a collapsed lung.

The Path of a Bullet

The bullet hit Eve in the left side of her upper back, less than 4 inches from her left scapula bone and maybe more than a centimeter from her spinal region. The bullet traveled through the thick muscular wall and nerve plexus, then went between the 6th and 7th rib, but it's likely the bullet was slowed down by hitting one of these ribs, breaking it. It continued through and into the thoracic cavity, lodging itself into the inferior lobe of her left lung. Her heart is probably an inch away from where the bullet slowed and stopped, if it continued: bye bye Eve.

With an injury like that at her age and poor habits, even getting her to the hospital rapidly she still would of had a slim chance of survival. Again a miracle. The bullet is currently floating somewhere in Eve Polastri's Park's left lung. In my opinion the bullet should have made it's target, even from that distance (remember the 9mm is small but its a high speed bullet making up for the small caliber). This little bit of metal could of had been fished out but for the patients high risk and sake of recovery and healing it probably wasn't this lost bullet will cause her pain for years into the future.

Let's break it down. Eve's main problems from being shot were a collapsed lung, damaged nerve plexus, severe blood loss, broken rib, and probable infection/inflammation of wound.

The effects of collapsed lung, it's dire; your lung is unable to inflate. The danger of being shot in the lung is air escaping which causes the lung to collapse. Eve was shot in the back of her left lung, which is the inferior left lobe which takes up all the upper posterior portion of the left thoracic cavity. Blood of course would escape the wound as well. This is dangerous as this can lead to greater risk of infection. For a typical young person it would take 3 to 4 months just for the collapsed lung to heal, but Eve in her mid forties and poor lifestyle habits that time is extended roughly a month. Would like to add, one can still run away with one collapsed lung, so Eve's fall and failure to get back up was probably due to her knocking out when colliding with the ground and of course having her air literally slammed out of her by the impact.

The damaged nerve plexus is no joke, as stated previously she was shot in the nerve plexus, the subtrapezial plexus to be exact. Plexuses are like electrical junction boxes, they distribute wires to different parts of the house (body), and your body has many of them and many are connected to each other by major nerves. Eve was shot right in the subtrapezial plexus, which is also connected to the brachial plexus. Both these plexuses hold numerous nerves that support the function of the upper back, shoulder, and arm. The way Eve fell, twisted irregularly also added to the injury to her brachial plexus and subtrapezial plexus that houses the accessory nerve, the nerve sends signals from the brain to the trapezius muscle, and other important nerves that support the shoulder.

This injury would of caused great pain, ample healing time and much needed rigorous physical therapy, medication, and most likely surgery. Shoulder stabilization (reconstruction) surgery to help cure her plexus disorder comes months after being shot, they wouldn't know the full extent of her plexus trauma until she could move her arm and shoulder. Evidence of this surgery is the deep red/brown scar next to her shoulder blade, which came months after being shot. Compare to her jagged gun shot wound near her spine, which is flesh colored. The outer portion of a bullet wound (the skin) heals quickly, about 10 to 14 days unlike the internal injury's.

Healing and Mental Health

The estimation of the healing process is based on each person and case. What I can say is Eve can not have been chopping thick meat and bone 6 months after being shot like that, I state that the actual time lapse is over a year (based on Eve's injury and the change of seasons, more on that is in my post about Killing Eve timeline: see my meta and analysis tab on my blog). In retrospect after a gun shot wound it takes victims 1 year to just get back to some form of normal, and that says nothing of the residual pain and the psychological toll.

Eve is not okay. I believe in season 3 she was purposely working in the kitchens because it was hard work and hard on the body. I believe she sent herself into her own personal purgatory, a way of paying ones dues. She was very defensive about not wanting to work outside the kitchen, and I believe she used the pain in her body to distract from her thoughts and mental health. I bet she started working at the restaurant when she definitely was not supposed too, it probably slowed her internal healing process. On the flip side her working would have helped her gain full motor control in her shoulder after her plexus disorder, but of course pain inflames. We see just the tip of the iceberg of her pain; physically, mentally, and emotionally. Eve needs a good therapy session and we understand that’s never going to happen, so I’m looking forward to how Eve rehabilitates and reinvents herself, and hopefully see the writers give her character the time she needs.

[iseeitbutidonotseeit]

Chile..

Now, you would think the KE writers would take note from GoT when the actors CLEARLY didn’t agree with the ending…but no. If your actors, who know the characters very VERY well do not seem to agree with or think the direction your taking the characters is inaccurate, you should probably LISTEN to them. It’s unfair and reckless to just do whatever with them, especially with such an unoriginal and lazy way. The ending was a shock but not in the ‘ooo that’s new’ type of way but more so in the ‘oh. We’re STILL doing this?’ type of way💀. I’m just soooo confused how writers can still get away with this LMAO.

[please-return-to-villanelle]

I’d love to stop but the thoughts keep coming and are literally keeping me up at night…

It’s the way “Hello, Losers” wasn’t a line of significant dialogue spoken between Villanelle and Eve like every other finale episode title

It’s the way the real losers were the fans, the faceless people slaughtered by the end

It’s the way the Villaneve significance of episode 5 was buried forever

It’s the way Eve never talked about how she really felt about killing Raymond, unless you count her talking about it off screen with Yusuf

It’s the way no one, including Eve, ever told Villanelle “I love you” and truly meant it

It’s they way Villanelle’s trauma over killing her mother was completely ignored

It’s the way Eve didn’t kill a single member of the 12 on the boat despite her ridiculous suicidal revenge mission

It’s the way Eve never called Elena, her one living friend she didn’t have a falling out with

It’s the way the Bitter Pill was pointless

It’s the way Villanelle smiled before, during, and after Eve kissed her

It’s the way Eve finally relaxed and was her true self around the one person who knows her soul inside and out

It’s the way Villanelle’s final word was “Eve”

It’s the way Eve’s final “Villanelle” was a haunting, blood curdling scream

It’s the way Eve never traced the scar she gave Villanelle

It’s the way Eve vocalized her belief that she was connected to Villanelle by fate

It’s the way the sun shinning in all her majesty will never look the same again

It’s the way Villanelle and Eve never watched a single movie together