Killing Eve (Season 4)

[queer_scribbling]

I finally got caught up on season 3, and I've started in on the fourth - and final - season. Each episode will be in its own comment.


Archival note: I also went on to collect these comments into a fanwork on AO3 here. The 'mid-season thoughts' in particular are longer and more fleshed out over on AO3. You can also find the fanwork on SquidgeWorld Archive.

Comments

[queer_scribbling]

Originally commented on 18 April 2022:

Episode 5: Don't Get Attached

Watched: 18 April 2022

So... Is the 1979 group of young people in Berlin supposed to be socialists, anarchists, or communists? I'm not saying they couldn't be a mixture of vaguely coalesced leftists, but I do wish there was a smidge of clarity about that when some shows just throw out names, have someone say ‘bourgeoisie’ at least once, and make sure there's drinking and/or drug use. Am I really supposed to believe that The Twelve was born out of this group?

(A somewhat shadowy international group that’s powerful and can pull certain governmental strings does not sound like an outgrowth of some leftist party group in ‘70s Berlin. The name could be independently chosen, “ironic” or whatever, or this show is following in the tradition of non-leftist in practice but leftist in name groups.)

I thought Eve watching Chloe’s tennis lessons was a parallel to Villanelle stopping by Konstantin’s daughter’s hockey match back in season 3, and I was expecting Helene to show up at some point to talk. I did not see the sort of minor child abduction coming.

“People like us don’t get happy endings.” Carolyn, characters like you don’t seem to get happy anything. Honestly, that is a helluva backstory for introducing Konstantin and Kenny’s probable conception. (Konstantin slept with Carolyn in order to get information on her father, and he wound up blackmailed and then dead, and they thought they killed Johan after he tried to kill Konstantin in the middle of the reveal. And that’s who was in Cuba, except he’s now hiding in a cabin of Karolina’s somewhere in Germany.)

In contrast, Helene going after Villanelle because Eve went after her child looks like a simple tit-for-tat. I could do without it, but at least it wasn’t hidden behind a few layers of different identities, Cold War spying, and people pretending to be dead. I’m hesitantly updating the ao3 version with the Major Character Death archive warning early because I’m not sure how we’re handling Villanelle being shot in the back by an arrow. It could've been chosen because of the whole Psyche and Eros lesson Eve had to sit in on in order to talk to the professor, but like, arrows can also do some damage.

(I'm not sure how to describe my indifference to Eve's panic at watching Villanelle be shot. Like, she wasn't as interesting or didn't seem to matter earlier in this season, but Eve cares now that she's in a life-or-death situation. Eh, if you say so, I guess.)

Thoughts about what will happen next: There's still time for Yusuf to get hurt by being too close to Eve and her investigation, so I'm cautious. I really hope we don't have one of those weird 'I'm on death's door and imagining what could have been' scenes with Villanelle. I don't know if Carolyn is going to for realsies kill Johan this time or what, but I feel like someone in the circle of Carolyn reliving her spy youth days will not make it out of this season alive.