#total fail

When the show tires of religion, it takes a quick detour into questions of biological determinism—was Villanelle born a serial killer?—that are never satisfyingly resolved, nor indeed ever revisited. So much of what the season tries to accomplish is foiled by its ending. A large part of why the show never convincingly explores whether Villanelle can change is because it kills her off at the end without any resolution to her moral arc, perhaps the most egregious offense of the season.

While Eve dances at the reception, Villanelle kills the bad guys, and they reunite on deck. Their goal achieved, all obstacles removed, Eve and Villanelle can finally be together in peace. They embrace. And then, while holding Eve, Villanelle is shot in the back by an off-screen sniper.

It’s the personification of “bury your gays,” a problematic trope in media where queer characters are treated as more expendable than straight characters, even if they are one of the major figures in the show. This is not to say that queer women characters cannot or should never die. The reality of queer stories, like all stories, is that some do end in tragedy, and that tragedy deserves to be (tastefully) told. But there is a deeply damaging trend in media where a same-sex relationship will be confirmed between characters shortly before one of them dies.

To be frank, the ending was cheap. It was cheap shock value meant to inspire tragedy porn, where we watch Villanelle sink to the bottom of the Thames while Eve screams into the night. It felt uncomfortably close to the other problematic media trope of fridging women—when shows kill off women as a character development device, usually for men. In this case, Villanelle was fridged for Eve’s development, except it is development that nobody will ever see, because it was the last episode of the show.