some thoughts i have on the killing eve finale because i canāt think about anything else:
and i wanted to elaborate and share some messy thoughts.
every reference they had in the finale to ādivine reunionā & the kintsugi ātaking your broken bits and making them stronger by coming togetherā
but once eve chose to go to villanelle they actually made it work. and thatās what makes me so sad because it wasnāt 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 itās heroic which would have been a good callback to carolyn telling eve that āthe hero only gets the girl in hollywoodā. 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.
itās 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 wouldnāt be because she was āevilā and āa monsterā etc etc. iām 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 wouldnāt die. as i said, there would be meaningful ways to kill them off but i donāt like to think of them as people who were ādoomed from the startā. 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 theyād still find themselves together in the end.
letās 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 theyāve been through, they deserved to come out of it. it is not creative, entertaining storytelling to kill off a character last-minute, whoās life had changed because of another. and also in eveās 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 pamās character was useless after she ended up rejecting carolynās offer when her whole arc was built on learning to follow orders and kill when sheās 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 āchoosingā 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 theyād 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 & jamieās ending in ābly manorā. 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 āget betterā and finally when she accepts herself and is loved for who she is, then she diesāand according to laura, eve has had a ārebirthā and is going to go on and live the life she ādeservesāā¦. 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 āhuman beingsā⦠basically saying villanelle isnāt one, and dehumanising her so bad. when the POINT of the show is for us to empathise with the villains as phoebe said, and villanelleās 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 āchance' 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 āthe 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 wasnāt there and she didnāt realise how powerful that part was until she found someone else who embraced it. on a surface level itās the killing and the murder, but the subtext screams with queer undertones and thatās why the story between them resonated a lot with the majority wlw audience.
i donāt 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 itās not this dramatic overreaction either because traumatic endings with queer couples is all weāve 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 iām 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. itās sad to see how the s4 writers saw villanelle the same way her mother did , a one dimensional psychopath with an incurable darkness :(
itās 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 āescape villanelleā when they wrote her to say that she didnāt like it when villanelle got shot with the arrow, just 3 episodes earlierā¦nothing is adding up between what we see on screen and the narrative laura neal has in her head. if we arenāt interpreting it the way you wanted us to, laura, (which NOBODY is) than thatās 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. villanelleās 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 thatās why it means so much , thatās why the fourth season feels like such a slap in the face because it didnāt feel like the others (s3 was questionable too ).
and more so the fact that straight viewers and professionals recognise how bad this ending was. itās a huge backstab. eveās speech at the end was completely about how beautiful reuniting with villanelle was, and they killed her after that for what? shock factor doesnāt 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 lauraās 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 donāt have to, just look at any news article on the finale or the 4x08 ratingsā¦
i guess iām 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.
thereās so much more i could and have said other times about this, but physically i am drained at the moment. and itās been said and re-said all over twitter and in recent articles so i think youāre all aware.
rip villanelle you will always be famous to us.