The final series of Killing Eve has its own mood. The characters and dialogue have their same chaotic breadth and charming irreverence, but seriousness has crept into a show that once kept style as its watchword. Finales are notoriously difficult, in part because viewers expect so much of them: to bring the current narrative to a satisfying end, to tie up the loose ends that have become our private bugbears (I really would like an update on Elena!), and to suggest an outline for the characters’ future lives all without betraying what the series said it was going to be about on day one when Villanelle and Eve first spotted each other’s reflections in that long hospital mirror. Season four of Killing Eve has not been perfect, but tonight’s finale was true to the show’s earliest form: It doesn’t make perfect sense, but it belongs almost entirely to Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, and so it never lacks for panache.
The last hour of Killing Eve picks up in the final moments of the previous episode, Gunn’s machete poised at Eve’s neck. I incorrectly assumed Villanelle would ride to her sometimes-lover’s rescue, underestimating Eve’s transformation from bird watcher, as Hélène cruelly put it, into a facsimile of the exotic, deadly things that fascinate her. Eve resourcefully clobbers Gunn over the head with a rock, then capably if also comically climbs a tree and lays in wait. Villanelle watches in amusement as Eve drops in on Gunn, puts her head in a leglock, and gouges out Gunn’s eyeballs with her own human thumbs. Eve may need Villanelle to take on The Twelve, but not to vanquish a romantic rival.
Alas, it wasn’t a death blow. Gunn reanimates as Eve washes the literal blood from her hands and Villanelle scrambles to pack her things. It’s better, darker, and more bonding this way. Villanelle and Eve cast off down river in shambolic fashion as Gunn blindly gropes around her private island in the background. Killing Eve has adopted many forms over many years, but right now we’re watching a road trip movie. The point is not the destination but the people you meet and the memories you make along the way.
Eve is in the middle of a terribly confusing Big Speech — a tepid melange of declaring her feelings, making Villanelle feel needed, and expressing her own vulnerabilities — when they cross paths with a pair of preternaturally sunny hikers just as the rains hit mainland Scotland. The odd couple of odd couples is forced to see the storm through in a bothy, which is kind of like a lean-to but with more walls and electricity. And the other odd couple really is particularly odd. They met when Maggie randomly gave Donny her kidney, a fact they confirm by showing off their corresponding scars without ever being asked.
To pass the time, Maggie reads tarot cards, which prove prescient in how tarot cards always mean something if you squint hard enough. Villanelle’s past is rife with chaos, her present is defined by conflict with her upside-down lover, and her future, unexpectedly, is The Sun card. There’s magnificence in store for Villanelle. Eve, as one could guess, turns up Death, the card she’s always cheating. As they wake up the next morning in the same hard bed, Villanelle traces the bullet scar she left on Eve’s back, a reminder that death has been nearby for a while. They stare into each other’s eyes and, in whispers, conspire to steal the kidney couple’s van. Villanelle and Eve have never before had the luxury of being so squarely on the same side.
On the open road, they do the things regular couples do when they’re on the open road: the passenger (Eve) feeds the driver (Villanelle) chocolates, they let the radio set the tone, they make fun of couples who they think are less cool, they make fun of each other’s quirks, the ones that only come to the surface when you spend large swathes of uninterrupted time together (Eve mustards her curly fries like a lunatic). It isn’t the series’ strongest writing, but perhaps that’s the point. When you have a crush on someone, even the most lethal assassins and intrepid spies are just idiots talking about nothing for the sake of making more conversation with each other.
Only occasionally does the fact that Eve and Villanelle are on a ten-hour drive in the direction of certain death come up, like when Hélène’s phone pings to clarify that The Twelve will meet at the Barn Swallow Pub, the same one Carolyn has in mind. When the real world intrudes, the banter isn’t so easy to maintain. For example, when a memory of Bill comes to Eve’s mind and she can’t even be sure that Villanelle remembers killing him. Even if Villanelle and Eve survive this errand, how could they get past the dead bodies? Not just Bill, but Gemma and what happened to Niko and what happened to Kenny. How does Eve turn to Villanelle in the driver seat and not be reminded how much she’s cost everyone around her?
They finally kiss — FINALLY — after a side-of-the-road pitstop in which they pee side-by-side despite the acres of countryside available to them, a shorthand for intimacy. It’s a relief to see Eve and Villanelle give into their feelings, even if it’s not conventionally steamy to watch a person pet another person’s face with unwashed pee hands. They kiss gently and patiently. Not a frenzied kiss, but a kiss that anticipates more kisses. There’s the implication of more: Villanelle runs around to the side of the car we can’t see and when we cut back to the duo in the cab of the van, they have a sort of postcoital glow. It’s slightly confusing. On the one hand, why would these two humans not have sex right now? On the other hand, why would AMC not show it to me? I’ve earned it!
Despite the tattered allegiances she’s left in her wake, Carolyn gets her own road dog for the series finale. Not Hugo, who intercepts her when she lands at Heathrow on her Russian passport. She dispatches that sniveling little shit by revealing his now live-in girlfriend to be Moscow’s honeypot; in fact, she even gets Hugo to order her a taxi to Hampstead Heath, where Pam would like to meet to pass along Konstantin’s note, along with his posthumous pledge of eternal love. Carolyn looks genuinely affected by Konstantin’s death. Maybe she loved him, too — another man, like her father and her son, that the job has stolen.
Always efficient at recruiting new acolytes, Carolyn has Pam settle in for some unsolicited advice: linen clothes are breathable and good, emotions are constricting and bad. Despite the cold, despite the heavy coat she’s wearing, Carolyn scoots off the dock and plunges into the swimming pond. Pam follows suit. It’s not quite a baptism but somehow curative: they’re washed clean of the guilt and shame that haunt them.
Carolyn and Pam arrive at the Barn Swallow Pub (not a real place, in case you’re curious) to find it mostly empty. The Twelve aren’t there. In fact, no one is really there until Eve and Villanelle show up. Pam tells Villanelle that Konstantin is dead and her eyes well with tears — everyone loves that guy. The run-in also provides Eve and Carolyn one last shot at reconciliation, which they blow past in favor of insults and recriminations. Eve thanks Carolyn for spotting her in that meeting so many years ago; in response, Carolyn disowns the decision. There’s nothing special about Eve except that she keeps insisting on getting involved. Eve might actually be the more cruel, accusing Carolyn of ignoring the truth of Kenny’s killer so that she wouldn’t have to give up her silly little spy games.
The unpleasantness is still building when Hélène’s cell phone pings again with an updated location, a giant party boat called The Dixie Queen that’s about to disembark with a wedding aboard. Carolyn graciously steps aside, though I’m not sure she has any other option because she doesn’t have a sneaky cell phone. Or maybe, as she tells Pam, that was her plan all along. Wait for the other movers to move and insert herself in such a way that she might be able to show her face again at MI6. Sensing there’s no future with someone who changes partners so fast, Pam wisely walks away. Goodbye, Pam. I liked you.
From here, things get Killing Eve-y in the classical sense: inane, silly, confected, fun. To talk their way onboard, Eve poses as a wedding officiant, which affords her the chance to deliver her uncharacteristically optimistic theory of romantic love. She tells the happy couple that the ways they come back together after periods of discord will be more defining than whatever caused the rift in the first place. While Eve celebrates the newlyweds, Villanelle goes below deck to kill The Twelve, who at this point seem to number more like six or seven. The juxtaposition is completely batshit. Eve seems absorbed in the Electric Slide, oblivious to what’s happening in the other room, where Villanelle is doing murders with a Champagne bucket stand.
Emerging victorious, Villanelle’s face is tricky to decode. She clearly likes Eve’s boogie-woogie, but is it not a little callous to line dance while your girl takes on what’s left of an international assassin ring? When Eve follows her onto the open deck, it’s clear Villanelle’s just happy to see her, happy to be free of the force that’s controlled her life basically since girlhood. From The Dixie Queen, Eve and Villanelle can see Tower Bridge, the same bridge where they made their big goodbye at the end of season three, the one that didn’t stick. They’re still embracing each other under its shadow when the first bullet pierces Villanelle’s shoulder. Villanelle throws them both overboard as the shooting rains down, but even beneath the Thames, the shots keep finding their target. Eve’s floating underwater nearby when Villanelle’s eyes close, her arms wide and Christlike, her face haloed by the spotlights off the bridge. Eve reaches out a beautifully lit hand, but the tide steals Villanelle away.
I don’t think most viewers will be surprised to see Villanelle die. Television has its own morality and some kinds of people never make it. A Russian assassin, however reformed, doesn’t get a long loving life with a former spy, however bold. But Villanelle did die free, and that’s something. I wonder what she’d make of the fact that Carolyn Martens was the one to order her execution. My guess is that, despite their recent bonhomie, Villanelle wouldn’t have taken it personally. She liked straightforward people, and Carolyn never hid that her highest allegiance wasn’t friends and family. It wasn’t even queen and country. She was always looking out for number one.
But how to parse Eve’s miserable resurfacing? Killing Eve could never put its protagonist’s life back together. She doesn’t get to call Niko a year from now or meet Yusuf for coffee. I like where Eve’s been left, in the midst of the cold, dark wet. It’s a fitting end, faithful to the terrible morass she’s made for herself. She surfaces alive, always improbably alive, screaming as loud as she did in the pilot’s opening moments with no one left to hear her. I don’t think she’s mourning Villanelle, at least not entirely. She screams because she’s still here, still feeling things, still swimming against the danger she courted without an answer to the question “what part of yourself can you bear,†worried that her best chance at a life that holds her interest is already being pulled to sea.