The Killing Eve finale does such a disservice to its characters
I’ve caught up on the Killing Eve finale and everybody is right to be outraged – it is one of the most maddening conclusions to a series in recent memory.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
After teasing fans with the possibility of Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) getting together for four seasons, they finally got that moment in the finale. They kissed and it seemed like they were going to start a new chapter together. However, just after Villanelle kills The Twelve and it seems like that saga is over, she gets shot in the shoulder. After they jump off the boat into the Thames, Villanelle gets shot a couple more times and sinks down into the depths as Eve cries out. The End. Cut to black. WTF.
Who in their right mind thought this was the best way to end the show?! Why couldn’t they just let her live? Surely showrunner Laura Neal must have realised this ending would upset everyone who had invested in this show and these characters until the bitter end – when many others had bailed out early due to the significant decline in quality (I wrote about this here).
It’s not what happened but how it went down that bothers me most. It offered us no closure whatsoever. This shocking death scene happens literally just before the ending. Villanelle dying and Eve screaming are the final images we see before it cuts to black. It felt like a slap in the face to everyone who had made it this far. It also falls into the tired Bury Your Gays trope so has naturally upset many queer fans who had been rooting for Eve and Villanelle to be together. I highly recommend reading this piece if you’re interested in the LGBTQ+ perspective.
Personally, I wasn’t invested in Eve and Villanelle as a will they-won’t they couple or bothered if they got together or not. I love Oh but by the end of this season, I didn’t care about Eve at all – I thought she was poorly written and had moved too far away from who she originally was. The reason I’ve watched this show for so long is Comer as Villanelle. I find the character fascinating and so watchable. She was my favourite the whole time and so I thought killing her off so callously and suddenly was unfair and unnecessary.
This whole season, Villanelle has been trying to quit the assassin life, escape The Twelve and start over. I was rooting for her – and Eve – to be free of this mess, regardless of whether that was separately or together. In the final episode, she ties up all those loose ends and has finally escaped The Twelve and is about to begin her new chapter – when she is shot. What a disrespectful way to treat such an outstanding, original character.
Look, I know that not all TV shows can end with a happy ever after – but these two characters had earned it and it felt right. So to yank it away so suddenly and offer us no closure is shocking. Neal and her writers have done such a disservice to these characters and I feel frustrated that I invested so much time into this series.