‘Killing Eve’ author criticises TV series finale for “bowing to convention”
nme.comKilling Eve author Luke Jennings has criticised the finale of the TV series for “bowing to convention”.After four seasons, the series concluded earlier this month in a finale that saw Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) infiltrate a meeting of The Twelve on the Dixie Queen boat.
However, the latter is fatally shot before they jump into the Thames together.Jennings, who wrote 2017’s Codename Villanelle on which the series is based, has since called out the show’s ending for adhering to the trope of killing off same-sex lovers.“When Phoebe Waller-Bridge and I first discussed Villanelle’s character five years ago, we agreed that she was defined by what Phoebe called her ‘glory’: her subversiveness, her savage power, her insistence on lovely things,” Jennings wrote in the Guardian. “That’s the Villanelle that I wrote, that Phoebe turned into a screen character, and that Jodie ran with so gloriously.“But 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 promised Villanelle “will be back” in a new book.
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