The expressions of everyone watching as this muddled mess of a season concluded
I was never a fan of the idea that the Killing Eve creators were so proud of, that of turning over each season to a new female head writer from the staff, who would step up as showrunner for a year before handing it off to someone else. I’m pretty sure they’re still proud of this, but from what I can see it’s turned out nothing but increasingly poor results. I always thought the show was short on material anyway (it would have been better served as a limited series from the start, with spinoff potential for one of the two leads), and nothing I have seen in each successive season has proven that wrong, as the writers struggle more every year to come up with something, anything for the show to be about as Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) continue to circle each other with no end in sight.
This third season proved itself to be particularly aimless, as new boss Suzanne Heathcote seems to believe the series is entirely about creating individual disjointed scenes meant to generate internet gifs. Newly minted Emmy winner Jodie Comer pretty much takes over this year (she even gets an entire episode about her with sole onscreen starring credit as Oh is nowhere to be found), but is Villanelle the sort of character that can carry a series on her own? Not without developing her a little more, expanding on her backstory and finding new rifts in her character, all of which serves to demystify her allure and lessen the mystique, frankly. It turns out that Villanelle isn’t really the sociopathic serial killer she was made out to be and it all stems from unrealized emotions toward her mother who didn’t love her enough. Boo. Hoo. This turns our delightfully deranged psychopath into a far less interesting, less dangerous, more human figure, and though Comer is still compelling, I did not enjoy this turn of events.
Fiona Shaw never fails to amuse as Carolyn at least
The rest of the show is even worse. What little poor Sandra Oh gets to do this season makes virtually no sense as she hobbles from one inexplicable economic status to another, the unnecessary drama with the Polish husband continues for yet another season with no resolution, she seems to have experienced no residual effects from her murder of the Russian assassin in last year’s finale (I think the show forgot that happened), and gets to solve no mystery or find any conclusions to the setup of the season’s “Who killed Kenny” plotline.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about that storyline, shall we? Fiona Shaw is maybe the one person who fares decently this season, as Carolyn’s son Kenny is unnecessarily and thanklessly killed off in the opener, seemingly only to give Shaw a chance to show off her momentous talent as a coldhearted, grieving mother. She’s great, but unfortunately, instantly saddled with yet another inexplicable subplot that introduces a never before mentioned daughter Geraldine (Gemma Whelan) who spends all eight episodes berating her mother for her lack of emotion over and over and over again. What’s the point of this? You got me. We never come close to resolving this situation and the daughter is such a bizarre addition to the show that I genuinely think the most important scenes she was in were cut, as a completely unexplained affair with Konstantin is hinted at and then dropped so quickly that you wonder if you imagined the inference.
I kind of wonder if I imagined the whole season. It came and went without so much as a baby step’s worth of progression for anyone except Villanelle, whose surprise humanity was not a turn I approved of in any way. On another note, Heathcote seems pretty determined to kill off any worthwhile male on the show, but the offing of Kenny was a horribly miscalculated decision that immediately negated the quality of the series (especially if the point was to replace him, an actual likable character, with his god awful sister who added nothing to the proceedings except confusion and bafflement). Every episode of the season was pretty much spinning its wheels making you wonder where it was going, where they thought it was going, if they ever had any idea for how to move this show forward after Season 1, and if there’s any possible way to get things back on track after this. I doubt it, to be honest.
Grade: D
Eve wonders what she did to get moved to the sidelines of a show for which she’s the titular character
