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xxjustoneyesterdayxx · 2 years

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Killing Eve Finale: Eve and Villanelle deserved better.

I’ve been trying to come up with the words to convey what it is that I’ve been feeling over the Killing Eve finale, specifically those last three minutes. There’s been so many emotions that I’ve been going through that it’s hard to even find the mental and emotional energy to write them down. However, there’s a word that I’ve been seeing used over and over again to describe the finale that I feel sums it up well, and that is: cruel.

I remember watching the last few minutes with Eve and Villanelle hugging on the boat hoping that the screen would cut to black before anything bad happened, as my past experiences with queer narratives have conditioned me to always be prepared for the worst…and then the worst happens, with Villanelle being shot. My reaction wasn’t even one of surprise but pure exasperation, as I sat there saying out loud to my screen: “Really? Really?.” It was a predictable and cheap choice that we as queer fans have seen happen way too often with our characters. After that my anger only continued to worsen as the rest of the scene played out and by the end I was left feeling both furious and gutted. It was a shock value ending that wasn’t even shocking but instead played into one of the most predictable and toxic tropes for a queer romance. It felt like such a slap in the face to us as an audience and a tremendous disservice to the characters and their relationship.

Eve

I’ve seen a lot of outrage towards Villanelle’s outcome but Eve’s ending felt just as personal and cruel. Here was a character who throughout this entire series has been trying to find and accept herself for all that she is. Throughout that journey we watched as her life quickly becomes one of chaos and suffering as the further she goes with exploring herself the more that gets taken away. She loses the life she once had, her friends, family, and even herself. Everything is taken. But the one thing that remained a constant for her was Villanelle. It was a relationship that at once felt like it was destroying her but then transformed into being the thing that gave her freedom.

After trying to resist Villanelle for so long she finally allowed her in and through that found the most joy she’s ever had. It was evident how happy she was in finally being with her in such an intimate way. But all of that quickly gets taken away from her and by the end she’s left with nothing…absolutely nothing. A terrible and cruel fate for a queer character who chose to finally love and be happy and then was punished for it. The scream that she emits in the finale pierced straight through my heart, so much that I still can’t go back to listen to it as it’s the most visceral pained cry of a woman who finally felt what it meant to be whole, and was then violently ripped apart. Nothing about her last shot felt beautiful or victorious. The reason why is because she lost complete agency over her choices and was forced to have this outcome. That’s one of the reasons why it angered me so deeply when I read how the head writer claimed this was a “rebirth” for Eve and that she can now go on to live an “amazing life”.

By saying Eve had a “rebirth” because of Villanelle’s demise completely invalidates Eve’s entire journey as it implies that Villanelle was a parasite to her that needed to be removed in order for her to truly be free. While this journey may have been awakened by Villanelle it was Eve’s choice to continue down this path of chaos. Eve in her nature has always had self destructive tendencies but the beauty about it was that she chose it for herself. There were many things that happened to her that was out of her control but through this series she began to reclaim her life by making herself the driver to her own narrative. Her relationship with Villanelle at times was extremely volatile but it also was something she deeply desired. She even expresses those sentiments in the season three finale when she tells Villanelle that she wanted Villanelle’s monster to encourage hers. Was that darkness and violence “good” for her? From a morality sense, no. But Killing Eve was never about morals. It always was about the deep exploration into the darkness and ambiguity of ones own mind and morality, and the freedom that comes in doing so which is exactly what Eve wanted.

She chose to not live a normal life. She chose to feed into her darkness. She chose to be in a relationship with Villanelle, and yet her choices meant nothing as by the end she was forced to conform to what the writers felt was the right outcome for her. They took away her agency and made her suffer by watching the love of her life perish right in front of her and then was unable to even reach her at the end, leaving her with nothing but the imagery of her floating away from her, and that is a fate that will never sit right with me.

Villanelle

Honestly, I don’t think I really need to say much about Villanelle’s fate as I feel many others have already expressed how incredibly egregious it was…but I’m gonna. There were many things that upset me by how Villanelle’s story ended, so let me go down the list.

One of my biggest issues with how those last three minutes played out for her was how incredibly rushed, heartless, and cruel the imagery was. To have one of the leads be taken away so ruthlessly was so disrespectful, not only to the character but also to us as the audience who have fallen in love with her. Even Konstantin had a better death scene where he at least died in the arms of someone who cared for him, got to say his final words to try and gain some form of closure, and then his body was respectfully cleaned up and positioned for others to find. But with Villanelle it was the exact opposite. Her final moments were of her separated from the one person she loved, unable to speak, with her body sinking to the bottom of the river most likely never to be discovered. It was such a callous fate that, just like Eve’s scream, I’ve still been unable to re-watch as the deep anguish it fills me with is too much to relive at this time. I still get pings of pain whenever I think too deeply about her fate.

That is why I was so upset reading, once again, how the head writer claimed that her demise was almost “triumphant”. There was absolutely nothing triumphant about it because Villanelle’s last moments weren’t one of glory but of fear. She didn’t meet her demise with a grin or even acceptance. It was her desperately trying to escape and wanting to live only for that to be forcibly taken. I understand that a happy ending may have not been in the cards for Villanelle. But to end it in such a cold-hearted way that played into the toxic ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope right after she finally was able to experience being loved leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth.

This was a character who throughout the series desired freedom. Since she was young her agency over her life has always been controlled by others. Even when she assumed she was the one in control it always turned out to be false. She also deeply desired to find someone she could have as her own and understood her, and that person was Eve. It was through Eve that caused her to begin to question her life and opened her eyes to how she was more of a pawn than a queen. It was Eve that made her begin to feel things when for so long she only found temporary moments of pleasure but deep within was only living a life of boredom. It was Eve who when she looked into her eyes she felt understood, and by the end, loved. Then all of that was stolen.

She tried to gain her freedom only to be met with a gunshot. She found the love she always wanted only for another shot to strike her back. Then when all of it was over she didn’t even get the decency to be held by Eve but instead was left alone to sink into darkness all for their futile attempts at trying to put in some symbolic imagery which was not at all poetic and failed at its job of trying to be so. All it did was make me feel anguish for seeing this character I loved so deeply be treated so cruelly.

VillanEve

Another victim that was treated unfairly in the finale was Eve and Villanelle’s relationship. While the first half of the finale was everything I always wanted to see from them, it only made it more painful in knowing all the wasted potential due to them never giving these two the opportunity to truly explore their chemistry together.

I’ve said this before in previous posts but I think Killing Eve made a mistake in continuing to maintain a distance between Eve and Villanelle. With the first season it made sense as it was a cat and mouse game between these two. Even for part of season two it kind of worked. However, by the third season it was starting to feel old and repetitive, and by the fourth we all were just impatient. I’ve heard from the show runners multiple times how they didn’t want to place these two together too often as it would ruin the chemistry and tension between them. But what they failed to realize was that the magnetism of these two didn’t come from them apart, but how they were when given the chance to be together.

I do think that giving them that space for the first two seasons fit. But as Eve and Villanelle’s relationship continued to grow and evolve the show should’ve also done so by changing how they limited their interactions. I always said that at some point they needed to take the risk of placing these two together because otherwise that spark they wanted to maintain by keeping them apart was going to backfire, and consequently it did for the finale.

I’m not saying that the moments we got from them wasn’t incredible. In fact, it was some of the best scenes we’ve ever gotten of them. But the consequence in leaving that exploration for the very last episode made many of us feel robbed. As beautiful as those scenes were it also was frustrating in knowing what could’ve been had they been brave enough to do this sooner. Then to finally give us those happy moments between them only to take it all away in the last few minutes only made that frustration turn into animosity.

We’ve waited so long for these two to come to that place of acceptance and love with each other and just as quickly as it was given, it was also stolen. It felt like such a slap in the face to have it be so brutally ripped from us after how long we waited for it and how much hope was given at the start of the episode. I’m not saying that Eve and Villanelle needed to have a happy fairytale ending. But they gave us barely any time to really sit with these characters in this new dynamic—something we all were yearning for—before deciding to destroy it in the last few minutes. Four seasons and we only got to experience half an episodes worth of content with them finally being a couple. An injustice for a relationship that has been mentioned many times by the creators to be the “heartbeat” of the show, and yet they drove a dagger straight through it.

Eve deserved better. Villanelle deserved better. Their onscreen relationship deserved better. We, the fans, who have so passionately stayed loyal to this series in hopes of an ending that would match the same love and respect we had for these characters deserved better. It’s unbelievable how a series that started off so strongly and became one of the best shows to date was given one of the most unsatisfying and cruelest of endings, all in the span of three minutes.

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