Killing Eve Resets Back to Season 2 Dynamics

This Killing EVE article contains spoilers.

Killing Eve Season 4 Episode 6

So much about this episode of Killing Eve feels like a return to old ground. Villanelle is only interested in Eve when she isn’t looking. Eve is aiding and abetting Villanelle while she kills, going so far as to kill herself, and then left alone in a frenzy to deal with the aftermath. Eve brought up the way that Carolyn so horribly mistreated her in season 2, using her as a pawn to get what she wanted, consequences be damned. Carolyn is trying to mastermind from the shadows thanks to her old connections, with mixed results.

With only a few episodes of the series left, Villanelle killing Helene was a much-needed change of pace. Killing Eve mostly used Cuba to tread water, so it’s good to see that rather than keeping Helene in the wings until some sort of final massacre, the plot is progressing meaningfully. Carolyn’s stoic line read to Eve serves as a warning: “Well done. You’ve killed one. They’ll just replace him. Over and over and over.” The remaining two episodes will need to do more than just show us the next Lars and Helene while Villanelle, Eve, and Carolyn take them out.

The notion of caring about The Twelve is still the hardest sell of the season. Villanelle going to meet Gunn, a fellow hired assassin who seems to have found a measure of autonomy within their strange ecosystem, managed to hold more promise in just a few hints and one quick scene than The Twelve has with four seasons of a whole lot of nothing. While The Twelve has been around since the beginning, the show has never been all the invested in the world building of the organization until now, focusing instead on individual assassins that it typically dispenses with by the end of the episode, or the season, at most.

Once again, it’s good to see everyone together. It can be easy to forget what a great scene partner Kim Bodnia is with absolutely everyone. Small moments like Villanelle laughing at Eve shooting Konstantin, Eve refusing to apologize, and Villanelle telling Pam she’s impressed are a reminder that for all the globe-trotting, Killing Eve is at its best when these people are forced to grapple with one another up close, sometimes literally. For her part, Carolyn remains the most connected woman on the continent, and Helene’s respect for that shows. Her father and Helene’s father having been lovers is an interesting twist. I’m not sure if anything will come of it, or if it’s just meant to be one more layer of how small this world truly is.

It’s hard to feel much of anything about Eve killing Lars. He seemed unlikely to give Carolyn the name of the person who killed Kenny, even if her usually coldly discerning eye was clouded for the moment. Just before Eve burst in he was trying to sweet talk Carolyn, pulling a “you’re not like other girls,” like that would ever work on her. The most interesting thing about his death are the notebook Carolyn fished out of his pocket and the way that killing him has sent Eve further into something of a manic state.

For much of this season, Eve seemed in control, but no longer. After Villanelle killed Helene she seemed genuinely shocked, both by what V did, and by the fact that they weren’t then aligned on the same side, figuring out what to do next together. She sounded so relieved to get that phone call from Yusuf, but she didn’t take the life line he represented, choosing instead to press on. Of course that only made matters worse when Eve followed it up by confronting Carolyn and then killing Lars.

After Eve killed Lars, it was hard not to think of what Konstantin had told Pam: once you’ve killed for them, there’s no going back. He meant killing for The Twelve, not killing them, but Killing Eve has long presented these spies and assassins as two sides of the same coin. Besides, at no point this season has Eve had even the pretense of a government position.

Eve has killed before – during the season 2 finale, she killed Raymond to save Villanelle, and maybe she even liked it. But this is different. Eve cased out a location and came, armed, with the express purpose of killing someone. She shot him in the chest and the head, and he appeared to be unarmed, at least at the moment. While Lars is no saint, there’s no pretense of self defense or saving anyone. While she hasn’t been paid, given that Helene ordered her to do it, one could even say that Eve has become an assassin, like Villanelle.

It still feels like there might be one story beat left from Fernanda, Lars’ and Helene’s mutual ex who Pam was ordered to kill. She only needed to be taken care of because of two people that she 1) never suspected who are 2) now both dead. We don’t necessarily know what was in that syringe, or if Pam was even the oen to prepare it. Konstantin has grown awfully fond of Pam and he has a point: she can have another kind of life, a good one, and she should take it. She needed help dealing with the tiny matter of having killed her brother, but if anybody understands the need to spot somebody, it’s Konstantin. Here’s hoping that Fernanda and Pam somehow manage to walk away from all of this, when all is said and done.