Killing Eve – Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body?

By: Kelly Kearney

After last season’s shocking knife to the gut finale Eve is struggling with her own penchant for violence as well as her obsession for the fashionable assassin, Villanelle. Not knowing if Villanelle is alive or dead leaves Eve both traumatized and asking the question, “What’s next?” Carolyn has a surprising answer to that quandary, pushing Eve to be at odds with her husband but back on her lustful hunt for her killer counterpart.

Triggered and Traumatized

Picking back up where we left off a bloody handed Eve (Sandra Oh) flees from Villanelle’s (Jodie Comer) apartment just as the armed and trigger-happy paramedics arrive and kill the assassin’s elderly neighbor Madame Tattevin (Sonia Elliman). Luckily, Eve manages to leave undetected, minus Villanelle who’s watching the entire scene unfold from the building’s alleyway. Since when do paramedics come to the scene with their gun’s blasting? When they’re sent by The Twelve to clean up any lose strings A.K.A. assassins gone rogue. Eve is obviously traumatized by what she’s done and the blood on her hands are a haunting reminder of how far this cat and mouse game has gone. As her phone rings, Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) is wondering where she is. Eve makes it to Gare du Nord train station and she is more than ready to head back to London and leave this entire Villanelle ordeal behind her. There’s just one problem – while standing in the security check line Eve realizes she forgot to toss the bloody knife she shoved into her pocket when she fled the scene of the crime. She exits the line, leaving her belongings on the security’s conveyor belt, and runs to the bathroom to ditch the weapon. When she returns the officer reminds her that she can’t leave her things behind as it’s against the rules. To avoid any more questions she makes up some excuse about a bad oyster and a bathroom emergency.

Once on the train Eve is doing her best Lady McBeth impression when she notices her blood-stained cuticles. The assassins DNA is under her nails as much as the woman herself has creeped her way under Eve’s skin. It’s a connection that no amount of scrubbing can cleanse away and it’s really affecting Eve’s mental state. She is bordering on a total meltdown and because of that, she continues to ignore Carolyn’s phone calls, even when she makes it back to London. Without her job, the former spy has nothing better to do than quietly obsess about Paris while making Niko (Owen McDonald) an apology dinner. Right off the bat Niko tries talking with Eve about how they left things prior to her trip to Moscow, but he catches on quickly that the wife who left is not the same woman who is cooking him a chicken dinner. His first clue is that Eve seems a little off is the mountain of vegetables she’s cutting for a dinner for two. His second clue that something is wrong is when Eve tells him the chicken is almost ready but, in fact, it’s still sitting in the fridge unprepared. He tries to get Eve to open up to him, but with her line of work the truth is all but impossible to tell. She dodges all of his questions and decides to run a bath because bloody fingernails are never a god look at the dinner table.

Love Can Make People Do Crazy Things

Meanwhile, a bloody and wounded Villanelle manages to escape the deadly team of fake paramedics long enough to throw herself in front of a taxi and demand he take her to the hospital. The frightened driver (Mohamed Badissy) tells her the hospital is ten minutes away and as she’s bleeding out Villanelle sarcastically asks him, “Do you know how to dispose of a dead body?” Stunned by that horrifying question, the driver slams on the gas and drops an unconscious Villanelle at the Emergency Room entrance.

With her deep wounds and loss of blood, the doctor (Andre Refig) tells Villanelle that they stitched her up and gave her some medication for the pain. He mentions that her wounds have to be reported to the police, but Villanelle convinces him that her cop husband was the one who tried to kill her. If it’s reported, he will come finish the job he started. The doctor agrees to keep quiet, but can’t promise the next doctor on shift will do the same. With that, the clock is ticking for Villanelle to find a way out of the hospital and back to Eve, who she now calls her girlfriend. She’s even telling her teenage roommate the woman who stabbed her did it to prove her love as “love can make us do crazy things.” With her clothing covered in blood and her passport and money in hospital custody, Villanelle isn’t getting very far without some help. She will need to rope her teenage roommate, Gabriel (Pierre Atri), into swiping a staff ID and lab coat so she can steal from the hospital and its patients to fund her escape. During her looting she almost gets caught rifling through a dying man’s personal belongings, but thanks to the lab coat she’s mistaken for a doctor and decides to play the role of a compassionate care giver. She offers a grieving family member some good news about their loved one and says the test results prove the man will live, regardless of the fact it’s obvious he is on death’s door. The grateful woman hugs Doctor Villanelle just long enough for the imposter to pick the woman’s pocket. Even with her master thieving skills Villanelle doesn’t have enough money to get out of Paris and asks Gabriel if he, or his parents, have money. The bandaged boy offers her a killer getaway look (comic book onesie pajamas) and then tells her his parents died in the crash that landed him in the hospital. He is alone and has no money to offer her, but his pjs sure look great on Villanelle! Gabriel explains that he is an orphaned teen left mangled by a horrible accident that stole his family and any hopes of leading a normal life. The boy hasn’t even seen the total damage to his face and asks his roommate to look under his bandages and tell him what she sees. Known for being brutally honest, Villanelle takes a peek and is comically grossed out. She tells him, “ou look like a pizza. (cringing in disgust) Oh! Wait, did you lose an eye?” Needless to stay, Dr. Villanelle’s bedside manor leaves a lot to be desired. Nonetheless, Gabriel is thankful for her honesty, something nobody else in the hospital offered him.

Corpses, Meat Cravings and the Twelve

After dodging Niko’s questions about why she’s avoiding her phone calls, Eve finally answers and it’s, of course, Carolyn. She is requesting a meeting in the park to talk about what happened in Moscow and what led her to Paris. The two women meet on a park bench and after a brief and altogether humorous story about Carolyn’s father and the London gay baths, they get down to business. Carolyn wants to know why Eve disobeyed orders and went to Paris. Eve responds with half-truths, claiming she went to Villanelle’s apartment based on a feeling, but the woman wasn’t home. Carolyn wonders what the apartment was like and Eve says, “chic as shit,” as both women smile, seemingly impressed with the fashionable and deadly assassin. Carolyn thinks Villanelle in now an enemy of The Twelve and claims they won’t stop coming for her anymore than she will stop coming for Eve. That’s when she offers Eve her job back, wiping the Moscow slate clean. The first order of business is a stop off at the morgue where Carolyn had the body of Alastair Peele exhumed. What does his body have to do with Eve?  We find out after Carolyn and her old medical examiner buddy, Julia (Barbara Flynn), eat lunch over Peele’s rank body. According to the master spy and her doctor friend the smell of death makes the living crave meat!

With lunch over, Carolyn and Julia walk Eve through Alastair’s decomposed condition. The man died two months ago from a pulmonary embolism, which isn’t out of the ordinary except his name was on a piece of paper Nadja addressed to Eve right before she was killed in prison. This means Alistair’s death could be tied to Villanelle and that’s what makes him of interest to Carolyn. Once again, Eve is thrown back into this deadly assassin/spy game with the woman she can’t seem to escape, not that she’s even sure she wants to. It’s always confusing when opposites attract and when those opposites are trying to kill each other it makes it difficult for a spy to do her job. Now that Eve knows this is Villanelle related and not just some test to prove to Carolyn, she’s still worthy of the M-16 title she starts to dissect the Peele case. When she learns that Alastair left his reclusive life for weekly pedicures, Eve asks the doctor to check his foot for puncture wounds. It’s likely she will find a pin prick that delivered a deadly air bubble resulting in his death. She, of course, is correct because Eve is great at her job and knows a little bit about how Villanelle thinks. That’s why there is no question that Eve is meant for this case. She has no choice but to accept Carolyn’s reinstatement, who shockingly still offers it even after Eve accuses her of being one of the Twelve. Carolyn deflects that like a pro by pushing Eve to admit she is the only one that can find Villanelle. Scratch that…she is the only one that Villanelle will let find her. The assassin will never stop coming for her and The Twelve will never stop gunning for their AWOL killer. Noticing her overall unease, Carolyn offers Eve an out by way of Witness Protection, but Eve reluctantly turns her down. Smirking, Carolyn knows spies and their taste for the game and she recognizes that hunger in Eve. It’s why she laughs off her ungrateful attitude, saying, “There’s no need to play the reluctant ingenue with me. Save it for your husband.”

Love, Marriage and Mercy Killings

Speaking of Niko, he’s still trying to play the supportive husband and practically begs Eve to be honest with him. He knows this job is in her blood and asking her to give it up will only end in her resenting him. He wants the truth and Eve does the only thing she can do when faced with telling her husband she is in a deadly and lustful game with a woman who cuts men’s genitals off for fun…she lies. She tells him she’s been upset because she bought a slew of expensive windows and even Niko isn’t naïve enough to buy that.

As for everyone’s favorite fashion-assassin, Villanelle is about to leave the hospital in her onesie when Gabriel starts to cry. The boy thanks her for her honesty and then mentions that he wished he had died in the accident with his parents. It’s hard for psychopaths to process emotion and this kid’s plight is seeping into Villanelle’s cracked heart. She hugs the boy and offers him a friendly shoulder to lean on, just long enough to snap his neck and put him down like a wounded animal. In her warped mind she granted his wish with a mercy killing, an act of kindness that got lost when it got tangled in the web of her brain’s psychopathy. She takes a minute to process her latest kill and then leaves the hospital in search of a way to London. She finds it when she hitches a ride in the back of an English family’s minivan headed for home. As the sun sets and the night envelopes the sky, both Villanelle and Eve lie awake thinking of the other. The anticipation weighs heavy on them both, but their desire for this game and each other moves them towards an obvious outcome. It won’t be long until the two women are face to face…Heaven help anyone who gets in their way.