Killing Eve just ended in the worst possible way

Killing Eve season 4 finale spoilers follow.

"It feels like a massive responsibility to get it right for the show."

Killing Eve's head writer, Laura Neal, is talking about the finale in general during this recent chat with Collider. But she could just as easily be talking about the central relationship between Eve and Villanelle, which, despite all of the spy hijinks and stunning fashion, is clearly the bloody, beating heart of this show.

But does the final episode "get it right"? Is this the "glorious" finale that Neal hopes for?

If you've come here after watching the final episode in full, you're probably quite mad right now. Like, Villanelle stabbing Hélène for kissing her "girlfriend" mad. And if you've come here because you bowed out years ago and just want to know what happened, you're probably going to be a bit mad, too. Because this isn't the ending that most of us were hoping for. In fact, it feeds into all of the show's biggest criticisms, only to amplify them tenfold.

Time and time again, Killing Eve has been accused of queer-baiting its audiences, essentially teasing queer themes to bring in queer viewers without ever actually acting upon said themes.

This conversation reached a head around season two when Sandra Oh dismissed the idea of a 'Villaneve' relationship (via Gay Times) just as billboard adverts included slogans like: "Has anyone seen my girlfriend?" and "Have you told your husband about us, Eve?"

Well, we did it, gang. After four long years of piercing eye contact, AKA sapphic edging, Killing Eve finally brought years of fan fiction to life by making Villaneve an actual thing. For a long time, it felt like this day would never come, that the show would continue queer-baiting us until its dying breath.

Sure, it's still measly scraps when you take in the whole story at large, but at least Eve and Villanelle finally get the happy ending they deserve... Oh wait, we're getting mixed up with the books that this show is based on. There, Eve and Oksana find peace in the suburbs of St Petersburg, free of this dangerous life that almost killed them both. But in the show's final episode, it's a different story entirely.

After the cute couple gouge a woman's eyes out and finally give in to their feelings for each other, Villaneve end up discovering the location of The Twelve who have all gathered for one of their semi-regular secret meetings. If it had been that easy all along, you might be wondering why it took us four seasons to reach this point. Or why you bothered investing in these four seasons at all.

Armed with the knowledge of The Twelve's whereabouts, Villaneve briefly stop making out long enough to board the boat where this meeting is being held. To do so, Eve impersonates a wedding officiator for two men, and almost ruins their wedding while doing so. Meanwhile, Villanelle does what she does best, and that's improvise a murder... or twelve.

With essentially no plan and not even a weapon to hand, Jodie Comer's fashionista crashes the party and goes on to methodically kill every faceless member of the Twelve – who we'll never know now. But that was never the point, not really. These shady criminals were always just the catalyst for Eve and Villanelle's twisted relationship, pulling them back and forth with love and lust, just out of reach.

With The Twelve dead, Villaneve celebrate on the boat's deck, but their joy is cut short painfully quick when a marksman shoots Villanelle in the back. Together, the pair both fall into the cold, icy Thames, not far from where they walked away from each other at the end of season three. But this time around, Eve and Villanelle are fighting against the current to come together, all while blood pours out into the water.

We then cut to Carolyn watching from afar, which makes it clear that she's the one who engineered all this, presumably in a bid to find favour with MI6 once again. Whether that works or not, we'll never know. Because we then cut back to Villanelle's dying moments underwater.

Eve's own survival instinct kicks in soon after and she soon makes her way to the surface, without Villanelle. One primal scream later, "The End" appears in big red letters, emblazoned across a nostalgic view of that bridge.

There's no ambiguity here. Villanelle is dead. We know, you thought that before when that arrow pierced her body at the end of episode six. But for realsies, this time. There's no post-credits scene, no extra coda, to reveal yet another surprise escape from the jaws of death.

To be fair, the show has been hinting at this fatal end for a while now. As far back as the season four premiere, and even before that in the promos, Villaneve reunited next to a Romeo + Juliet-style fish tank. And then Eve recounted the (over-used) fable of the scorpion and frog. You know, the one where they both die.

So death was always on the cards, quite literally in the finale when tarot cards suggest Eve will be the one who dies. But, surprise! The writers flipped that around in what might be the least surprising twist ever conceived.

Now, the issue isn't that someone important died. The stakes have always been high on Killing Eve, and you could argue that it would be unrealistic if both characters emerged from all this unscathed.

No, the problem is that given this show's queasy history with LGBTQ+ representation, immortalised by the many queer-baiting think pieces that have been written about Killing Eve since day one, you'd think the writers would try to avoid the biggest, perhaps most problematic queer trope of all.

Yes, we are of course referring to "Bury Your Gays", the fun old notion that LGBTQ+ characters are more likely to be killed off than their straight counterparts just because. Well, not "just because". It's actually because of deep-rooted bigotry across our whole society, but you get the drift. And so, more queer deaths also mean that queer romances are far more likely to end in tragedy too.

"You're never going to be able to please everybody," Laura Neal told Metro, and she's right. No matter how Killing Eve ends, there were always going to be complaints.

Keep both women alive and you run the risk of lowering the stakes to an absurd degree. Or kill them both and you're left with a crushing ending that could cause outcry. Given these two extremes, it's easy to see why the writers chose to kill just one of them, and Villanelle is the obvious pick given her sordid past.

But by ripping Villaneve apart like this, queer fans in particular are left with an ending that's crushing and absurd in equal measure. "Crushing" because the fan-favourite ship had only just got together after all these years, and "absurd" because how could anyone possibly think it's okay to feed into such a harmful trope in the face of all the criticism – and in 2022 no less?

If Villaneve had been positioned as a couple sooner, there would have at least been some time to explore their relationship on screen before they were ripped apart again. Instead, fans sat through four seasons of teasing and hinting only to see Villanelle killed off as soon as happiness finally came the pair's way. And attempts to romanticise this death – notice how the blood almost takes the shape of angel wings in the water behind – somehow make this even worse.

It's hard to imagine that the writers would still be unaware of the discourse that surrounds this show, four seasons in. And that suggests they knowingly chose this ending without a care for how queer viewers, AKA the only viewers at this point, might feel.

Season four's head writer, Laura Neal, wasn't wrong when she told Collider that there's "a massive responsibility" to get this finale right. But by failing the central couple and queer fans alike, season four's final episode ends up failing the show as a whole. Not even the potential spin-offs or even Villanelle Jesus can undo that.

Killing Eve season 4 airs on BBC America in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK.

BBC/Sid Gentle Productions/Universal Pictures UK Killing Eve: The Complete Seasons 1-3 [DVD]

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BBC/Sid Gentle Productions/Universal Pictures UK Killing Eve Season 2 [DVD] [2019]

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BBC/Sid Gentle Productions/Universal Pictures UK Killing Eve - Season 1 [DVD]

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BBC/Sid Gentle Productions Killing Eve season 1 [Digital Download]

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David Opie

After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival. 

In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.

David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.

Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends. 

As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound. 

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