So, overall I loved Killing Eve’s first season but I had to admit I was left a little meh and underwhelmed by its embracing the “psycho lesbian” trope without any real commentary. Which sucks, because Killing Eve wrecked so many other tropes surrounding race, gender, and the all-encompassing forbidden love. A lot more could be done with the dynamic between Eve and Villanelle, and as of April 7 we’ve got a whole new season to get through…
(Look, I’m never going to turn down a Sandra Oh ‘ship, but I can be critical.)
And after an eternity of waiting, season 2 is here at last. Like any good spy flick villain, Villanelle has miraculously escaped life-threatening injury and Eve is in pursuit once again. Except not quite as hot. The reality of Eve’s actions have set in for everyone, and while she’s busy obsessing over the serial killer and her trail of destruction and (not) answering for her actions, Villanelle has found herself in a damsel in distress situation at the hands of a kindly old man she tried to take advantage of. My, how the tables have turned!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLq2BDkCzyA
We get Eve and Villanelle at their most powerless with Eve facing even more secrets, reigning in co-workers, and bureaucratic red tape and Villanelle… Villanelle is going through a bad time. Suffering from stab wounds, robbed of her money and antibiotics at a laundromat, then trapped in the house of a delusional man. The conga line of pain never ends!
One of the lingering questions from season 1 follows into this season: can Villanelle be sympathetic? The opening episodes of the season seem to think so, while never letting the audience forget that she’s an amoral assassin with no conscious and a selfish desire for a woman she doesn’t know. We already know Villanelle literally doesn’t understand the concepts of affection and love, and it’s explored a little more in relation to the deep scar she now bears on her abdomen. Villanelle has convinced herself that the stabbing means that Eve returns her affections, which the show presses is patently untrue. But what can you tell a young girl in love?
Episode 2 brings us Villanelle’s counterpart in the form of Julian, an unassuming man that Villanelle tries to manipulate for protection until it becomes clear that Julian has no intent letting Villanelle actually leave. And so the show slides into full Boxing Helena territory as Villanelle works through an infection fever and relies only on her instincts to escape Julian’s rather well-intentioned if ultimately calamitous clutches!
We’re set up to think that Villanelle is finally going to meet her comeuppance at the hands of another man, but fear not. And you know what? I’m glad. I absolutely do not want to see Villanelle humbled by patriarchy and arbitrary spy tropes because, damnit, she’s better than that and it’s too easy. Villanelle is already fantastic at playing on the perceptions of women as the weaker sex to her advantage, and the last thing I want is to see it backfire on her. I want her to win her woman, nay, win the whole day!
As Killing Eve has decided to just lean in, perhaps so have I. There’s still plenty of time to subvert expectations and have a meaningful piece of bisexual representation on television that takes us past the novelty aspect. And, if not… well, we’ll always have our bi-assassin.