‘Killing Eve’ wants to have more nuanced female leads than last season’s two leads. Will the game change to be more interesting when it’s still hard to tell who’s hunting who?
During its four-season span, Killing Eve‘s biggest draw for audiences was the dynamic that emerged between main characters Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer). The will-they-won’t-they kill/kiss each other struck a chord with viewers who wanted to see how their relationship would evolve, grow, or implode. During its run, the show tapped into a unique angle unrelated to the blossoming romance between the two women. Killing Eve demonstrated how other series had been lacking in exploring this type of rivalry as its main focus.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s loose adaptation of Luke Jennings‘Codename Villanelle initially offered echoes of J.J. Abrams‘ female-led Alias by way of the Luc Besson classic Nikita. Throughout its run, however, the show had different showrunners, with the style, tone, and characters frequently changing. This shifting of gears may have proved divisive for some viewers, but others embraced its wholly unpredictable nature. Still, it was a double-edged sword in many ways: from season to season, the tone changed dramatically, with characters and plotlines often abandoned and incoming showrunners bringing their own stylistic flourishes to the show. It didn’t detract from what was important to viewers, and the relationship between the central duo at the story’s twisted core would remain the primary hook for fans. Tackling female obsession with violence and exploring these women’s capacity for carnage, the BBC America show offered a new variation on the cat-and-mouse dynamic previously unseen in television.
‘Killing Eve’ Tapped Into a Desire For Nuanced Female Roles
Rocking a bold Dries Van Noten pantsuit, Villanelle (Jodie Comer) readies herself for a showdown with Bill (David Haig) and Eve (Sandra Oh)
Audiences didn’t always equate violence with roles played by women in TV drama, unless the concept was a peripheral part, only existing to titillate or serve as part of the subplot within a larger ensemble drama. We’ve had countless male-driven stories on prestige television that revolve around violence, from The Sopranos to Oz to Deadwood. Beyond that, spy thrillers had largely been male-dominated before Killing Eve debuted, effectively changing the landscape.
The show revolves around Eve, an MI5 agent who finds herself in the crosshairs of the sociopathic Villanelle, a ruthless assassin carving her away across Europe. When a rogue investigation results in a hospital ward full of dead bodies, Eve is fired and later recruited by the deceptively innocuous Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) to work an assignment for a secret department within MI6, the British Secret Service. Carolyn enlists Eve’s help in investigating a powerful organization when Eve deduces a man was assassinated by a female perpetrator. Arguably, the main reason for the show’s success was it tapped into the desire for stories exploring less restrictive roles for women on screen. Villanelle and Eve’s constant circling of each other was a dynamic traditionally occupied by a male/female divide, and their relationship transcended the limitations of the designated girl fight trope. Even Jennings raved about the adaptation in The Guardian, saying “It was fast-paced, sexy and very different from anything else on television, with a distinct feminist subtext.”
‘Killing Eve’ Makes It Difficult to Tell Who’s Hunting Whom
Image via Hulu
While Killing Eve initially starts out as an investigation being conducted by Eve herself, she is gradually drawn into Villanelle’s web of secrecy, espionage, and murder. Throughout the show’s duration, it isn’t always easy to tell who is the spider and who is the fly in this relationship, and both circle each other like prey/predator. Villanelle is terrifying and Eve understands this implicitly, but Eve is aware of the game she has become a part of — and though she would never admit to it, she enjoys the dynamic emerging from her investigation. Eve not only has an unhealthy obsession with catching Villanelle, but she also seems empowered by Villanelle’s crimes. Each harbors a dangerous infatuation with the other, leading to some impressive crescendos early on in the show. Villanelle barely escapes getting stabbed by Eve in the first season finale, while Eve is shot by Villanelle at the culmination of Season 2.
Said cat-and-mouse dynamic takes up a lot of plot during the first two years of the series before their relationship turns a corner in the third and fourth seasons. With Eve transforming from a bureaucrat and reluctant wife to a spy more on par with Lisbeth Salander, Villanelle has grown bored with murder and made a genuine stab at redemption, which doesn’t end well. At this stage, Eve has nearly as much blood on her hands as Villanelle, and they both settle for an uneasy alliance to bring down the mysterious organization Villanelle works for, known as the Twelve. It was cathartic for viewers for too many reasons to list, but we lived vicariously through the forbidden and twisted game they played. Nothing quite like it had been seen on television before, but its depiction of an unabashedly violent character and another character being seduced by it was pretty controversial at the time of its initial airing. Comments made by Waller-Bridge during an interview ahead of the Season 2 premiere were even taken out of context by Piers Morgan: “I think they still have the idea that people like watching women saved by men.”
‘Killing Eve’ Paved the Way for More Shows After It
Image via BBC America
As a spy thriller series and a depiction of complex female characters, Killing Eve resonated with viewers. There hadn’t been many fictional women with a penchant for violence on television before, but the BBC America show has no doubt paved the way for more series just like it to follow in its footsteps, shows that depict women who exist within the moral gray areas and don’t always focus on doing the right thing. In recent years, the modern reboot of Dead Ringers starring Rachel Weisz as well as the smash hit Showtime series Yellowjackets have pushed the envelope in terms of expanding the parameters of who and what women can be in genre material. None of these shows have the same exact focus as a spy drama, nor the exact same tantalizing dance that takes place, but who’s to say if they would even be here if Killing Eve hadn’t done it first? (We still bear a grudge over that ending, though.)
