This show is reaching a point where it might be better to
exile Eve and Villanelle to an island where they stop making trouble for
everyone else. They’re lurching towards the destination desired by their
various handlers, but there’s quite a lot of collateral damage along the way.
Sent to glamorous Rome to gain the information they need,
the duo…more or less does that, but also fails to anticipate a series of things
about Aaron, such as that he would prevent Villanelle from accessing any of her
things or that he would be observing her all the time. Even aside from the
tremendous riskiness involved in using Villanelle as an asset, this operation,
which is at least ostensibly about preventing a terrible weapon from getting
out into the world, seems like it would benefit from a lot more people working
on it. Aaron is some kind of computer genius, and yet Eve doesn’t even seem to
have tried that hard to craft Villanelle’s false identity.
Despite how Villanelle got there, her interactions with
Aaron have that undercurrent of danger that often mark the best parts of Killing Eve. The thorny question of what human existence is when you live
without emotion or fear of consequences has always been the underlying element
to what makes Villanelle so fascinating. Putting her in a room with Aaron leads
to one of the show’s better debates–if you felt nothing around people, would
you obsessively be around them, or would you avoid them at all costs, as Aaron
does? Villanelle’s response makes her more appealing, and more human-sounding,
but it also means that when you see her wander off with two women, you have no
idea whether she’s going to kill them or hook up with them.
To Hugo’s point, it’s very hard to know whether Villanelle
is still working with Eve and her team, or whether what Aaron has to offer is
so appealing that she’d betray them. His controlling nature suggests that
without the Billy identity stopping her, their interactions would be a lot less
peaceful. The bigger danger is probably in the moment when Konstantin points
out that if something goes wrong, she and Eve are on their own. He means it as
a warning, but it’s clearly appealing to her.
Eve is busy stumbling further down the path of her obsession
with Villanelle. The scene with Martin is one of the only times someone has
expressed meaningful concern about what she’s doing. The resistance has
otherwise come from people like Kenny or Niko, who the show positions as
morally upstanding, but who don’t quite have the ability to push Eve into
questioning her own choices. Martin gets her to admit that she feels constantly
unsafe but “wide awake” because of Villanelle. It’s clear that Villanelle has
made her life objectively worse in many ways, but she’s also ripped the filter
off of the peaceful existence Eve was living. Who wouldn’t want to go through
life feeling wide awake? How could you ever go back? It’s a
meaningful distinction from season 1 Eve, but it also means that she’s spent a
lot of this season desperately unhappy.
And she’s possibly about to get a lot unhappier, when she learns
what Villanelle did to Gemma. Or will she read it as a gesture of love, which
is probably what Villanelle intended? One version of Eve would hate her for it.
This new, darker Eve may not. She’s now seen Villanelle kill someone in front
of her to provoke her and done nothing about it. Is she so far gone in her
Villanelle infatuation that she’ll let this murder of an innocent slide? If she
does, Niko will probably never forgive her, but it’s unclear how much she even
wants him back at this point. And what’s Niko supposed to do with this
information? Imagine witnessing a murder, knowing exactly who the murderer is,
and then the government won’t do anything about it because she’s also working
as their asset.
Regardless of how things shake out back home, Eve and
Villanelle may have bigger issues out in Italy, since their own mission may not
be the real mission, at least according to Kenny. And Kenny wouldn’t lie, would
he?
Stray observations
- “She mustn’t kill Aaron. I mean it. I hate to be strict, but
she really mustn’t kill anyone.” - “He’s killed three women.” “He could kill the shit out of
me.” This is an in-joke about all the “murder me, Sandra Oh” internet comments,
right? - People take contraceptives for a multitude of health reasons beyond
birth control, and Aaron refusing to give her access in a gesture that is clearly intended to
be read as him assuring her they won’t have sex is actually the same as
refusing to give her any other medication she routinely takes. It’s not just
controlling, it’s impacting her health. - It’s a bit tired that the big thing Ivan is trying to
conceal is that he’s in a relationship with a man. - Wait, Villanelle is sleeping in that terrible wig? That would
be extremely uncomfortable, and then she’d wake up in the morning and it would
be all crooked. - We’re shown earlier in the episode that both Aaron and Eve
are observing Villanelle in her room, but then by the time Eve is listening in
late at night, we don’t see Aaron watching, which makes it seem like Villanelle
is only talking to Eve. But she’s still careful to say things in her American
accent that would also make sense to Aaron. Is she talking to both of them, or is she talking to Eve? - There’s an entire essay to be written about the treatment of wealth on this show, which is both aspirational and something that only murderers get and also somehow the only way to really live? It’s hard to tell when the show is making a meaningful critique of wealth and when it’s just saying, look, this seems like it would be cool.
- I enjoyed that Villanelle could not think of a single instance
in which she would organically work the word “gentleman” into conversation.