Ah, Killing Eve. What can we say about the series finale that has not already been said? It was disappointing. It was whack. It was nothing like we expected. And it was an atrocious end to a series that started off so strong. I’m still trying to process if what we saw was the actual ending or if someone out there is pranking us.
And the fans aren’t the only ones upset. In a column for The Guardian, Luke Jennings, the author of the books on which Killing Eve is based, said that he too was not too thrilled with how things went down in the end.
In case you haven’t watched the Killing Eve series finale, there are major SPOILERS coming, so here’s your chance to come back once you’ve caught up.
Killing Eve author was “taken aback” by the series finale
One of the most frustrating things about the series finale was that it played into the “bury your gays” trope. After three seasons of teasing the “will they, won’t they” romance between Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and Eve (Sandra Oh), Villanelle is riddled with bullets and floats off into the distance, never to be seen again.
That was the end of their story. That’s it. Nothing more.
“As an author, it’s a thrill having your work adapted for TV, as my Killing Eve novels were,” Jennings said. “You’re never going to love everything the screenwriting team does, that’s a given. It’s an extraordinary privilege to see your characters brought to life so compellingly. But the final series ending took me aback.”
The season four ending was a bowing to convention. A punishing of Villanelle and Eve for the bloody, erotically impelled chaos they have caused. A truly subversive storyline would have defied the trope which sees same-sex lovers in TV dramas permitted only the most fleeting of relationships before one of them is killed off. How much more darkly satisfying, and true to Killing Eve’s original spirit, for the couple to walk off into the sunset together? Spoiler alert, but that’s how it seemed to me when writing the books.
Jennings essentially says what all of us were thinking. Why couldn’t these two murderers just get a weird happy ending?
While Villanelle’s story came to an abrupt end on TV, Jennings promises fans that the character will live on in the books. “I learned the outcome of the final episode in advance, and suspected, rightly, that fans would be upset. But to those fans, I would say this: Villanelle lives. And on the page, if not on the screen, she will be back.”
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h/t AV Club
