Killing Eve – Don’t Get Eaten

By: Kelly Kearney

It looks like Villanelle’s personal Jesus is set to roam through her redemption arc this season. After last week’s moment of rebirth where our favorite lethal leading lady killed and then revived her new friend May, something snapped in Villanelle. In that inevitable crack a heavenly delusion spilled out. Of course, this Jesus looks like Villanelle and sounds like every thought and desire she has ever had, but at least she can rock a beard and robe! Meanwhile, Eve finally catches up with Hélène and asks for her help in finding and stopping The Twelve. Someone is murdering this secret cabal of elite assassins and Eve is determined to find out who they are before the killer snuffs them out.

Trackers and Campers

Dressed to the nines for her undercover stake out Eve (Sandra Oh) follows Hélène (Camille Cottin) to a hotel bar in London where she spies on her having a romantic embrace with a spikey haired blonde named Sophie (Kristy Averton). Who is that woman she is with and what, if anything, does she have to do with The Twelve? Whoever she is Eve is very interested in what they’re up to and manages to drop a tracker in Hélène’s purse just as they exit the bathroom and board the elevator heading up.

Next, we catch up with Villanelle (Jodie Comer) on a bus heading to camp with her church group. Right away it’s obvious things are strained between her and May (Zindzi Hudson) after their kiss led to that whole death mess at the baptismal font. Now, May is giving “Nelle” the silent treatment and she can’t stand it. She interrupts Vicar Phil’s (Steve Oram) tour guide and biblical pop quiz game to take his microphone and preach about repentance and forgiveness. It’s an obvious ploy to get May to her forgive her, especially since Villanelle sees her attempted murder has a soul saving event. Even the butterflies want to flit and fly around Nelle’s new cleansed aura. She had her “come to Jesus” moment, so everything before that is a clean slate.

Once the busses arrive everyone is assigned a tent but May makes a beeline to her shelter alone. After an ominous glare from Phil, Villanelle goes inside her tent to find her new pal Jesus or, as the holy being says, her in drag. While that makes total sense to Villanelle, Jesusnelle explains that not only is she acting as a spiritual guide but that their appearance morphs into whatever is rattling around the person’s head who sees them. Sometimes it’s a burning bush and sometimes it’s Jodie Comer in a beard with a Russian accent. Villanelle sits on Jesusnelle’s lap for a chat about her friendship with May and the bearded one says the Vicar will forgive her if she fixes things with his daughter. A happy May means Phil will put her on the path to salvation.

With a stick standing in for an olive branch of peace, Villanelle pushes her way into May’s tent and tries to explain the unexplainable. It’s true that she tried to killer her, but she’s still alive and that’s the main point. Shocking no one May disagrees with that, but when Villanelle says she’s a bad person who spent years being told she could only be bad and started to believe it until she was May takes pity on her. What happened with May made her realize she doesn’t have to stay the person she was and she credits that all to the good influences of people like her. The two friends hug and agree to move on.

Reinvention

Speaking of Eve, she gets intel from Yusuf (Robert Gilbert) who’s been following Hélène’s tracker to her home in Paris. While I question a top assassin who isn’t savvy enough to spot a device in her purse, the file he comprises has Eve giddy. She’s ready to go knock on Hélène’s door; ignoring Yusuf’s metaphor about pet lions ripping their loving owner’s faces off. Eve walks out the door like bring on the scalping because this guy could never slow this woman’s obsessive roll.

After her talk with May it seems the young woman might be ready to forgive Villanelle. She’s obviously drawn to the blonde and drags her out into the woods and away from the other campers to get their scream on. May says it will help her unlock her true self. Eve is also in complete denial right now, but at least she has the good sense to tell Yusuf he’s just a hook-up and can’t spend the night. After a good spin and scream with Jesusnelle, we head back to London with Eve and her criminal psychiatrist buddy, Martin (Adeel Akhtar). As an expert on psychopaths, she asks him how he gets these killers to reveal things without ever feeling threatened or attacked. He gives her tips that mostly consist of feeding into their egos and their need for control, but warns her that whatever she’s planning he’s had decades of experience and a full staff to keep him safe. Eve laughs and ponders the fact that she’s more like them than him these days. Thinking that might give her an edge, her cocky mask slips when he asks how Villanelle is. “She’s a Christian now. Is that possible?” she says and Martin enlightens her on his theories about what is going on. He tells her people believe in change, but when she presses him on what he thinks he says “reinvention is a form of avoidance.” Of course, Eve thinks he’s just talking about Villanelle, but she isn’t the only one in this demented duo of denial and drastic change. Both women go to great lengths to avoid their truths and each other, which at this point, is one in the same.

Treason for Reasons

In Russia we learn Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) defected and now wants to work full-time for the Foreign Intelligence Service if it meant her ex, Vlad (Laurentiu Possa) would support her mission to catch The Twelve. They killed her son and taking them down is now beneficial to both her and Moscow. It’s a “you scratch my back (and give me a corner office) and I’ll scratch yours (by providing all I know about MI6 agents’ exploitable traits).” It’s a no brainer, in her mind, and besides – she loves the work and she’s not getting her needs fulfilled as a cultural attaché. Vlad laughs off her request – she would never be welcomed inside the Kremlin regardless of her defection. She is too big a risk and vengeance doesn’t sit right with the powers that be. If the details she provided about her fellow agents, Hugo included, checks out then they will talk about that corner office. The displeasure is written all over her face. This was treason for nothing!

Back to May and Villanelle, after their spin and scream, we find the two closer than ever and that worries Phil the Vicar. He doesn’t trust Villanelle and is suspicious of the nature of their friendship. It equally frustrates May, who reveals the real truth about her father and his hypocrisy. If he thinks Villanelle is a deadly it is only because he’s killed, too. This perks up Villanelle, who prods May to spill the ultimate tea; Phil killed her mother while drunk driving and pretends like it wasn’t his fault. May sobs in Villanelle’s arms begging her not to tell anyone and we can literally see the battle waging in the former assassin’s head. Protective mode is her favorite reason to kill, but now that she’s working on her redemption, is Phil safe?

Later, all the campers gather around the fire pit to play word games. It’s Villanelle’s turn to guess the word written on the sticky note placed on her forehead. The campers offer her hints until she realizes the word is”Hitler.” Insulted, but trying to keep her cool she asks who chose that word for her, but everyone brushes it off like it was no big deal. To her, it was a big deal. So much so that when It’s her turn to choose the word for Phil, nobody gets it but May. This one isn’t bible themed, but Phil themed and after a series of guesses Villanelle outs his dreaded secret to the group. The word is his wife’s name, the woman he killed and lied about it! He’s stunned and so is his daughter and the rest of the campers, but not Jesusnelle. They forgive her. Unfortunately, her new church friends don’t agree and choose the man Phil is today over her need to be saved. She storms away from the campfire blaming Jesusnelle for lying about them all liking her.

In a Moscow safehouse, Carolyn makes herself at home unpacking her personal bits and spy bobs while clearing the room for bugs. Over in Paris, Eve can hardly eat her steak dinner now that she’s wondering if it could be her last meal; and this, after she wouldn’t shut up about a juicy slab of meat. She’s planning on confronting Hélène and smart enough to know the survival odds are not in her favor. She’s a real mood killer for Yusuf, who waves the waiter over for their check and then spots her pocketing the steak knife. He confronts her by admitting that he supports her decision to look death in the face but if she goes in with a hidden blade, death is a guarantee. He’s pretty forceful about taking her knife and pulling her out of the restaurant to prepare her for whatever she’s walking into.

Back in Russia, as Carolyn and Vlad enjoy a meal together, she hands him a box full of the bugs from her safehouse and then asks him if her information was proven useful. His response rattles the typically unshaken woman when he says the female agent with the kids, she said had an addiction, committed suicide by hanging. She knows she helped order that woman’s death and struggles to remain emotionless while Vlad judges her reactions. She winds up excusing herself for the restroom and can barely catch her breath as she stares at her reflection in the mirror.

Dinner Time

After skipping her last meal for what looks like one last night of carnal pleasure with Yusuf, Eve leaves him sleeping and escapes into the night and towards Hélène’s. She doesn’t even get the chance to knock on the door before it opens, and the two women are faced to face. “Have you come to get this?” Hélène asks, while waving around the tracker disguised as a tampon she would never use. Eve plays it cool and says she’s there to make her dinner, but she will take the tracker too. Turning up the sizzle, Eve squeezes past Hélène, who is definitely into women and now drawn to whatever this intrusively flirtatious woman is cooking up. Shepherd’s Pie, apparently, only, the food never makes it to the stove because Hélène is too busy holding Eve’s hand down on the lit burner to test her resolve. If she wants to kill the leader of The Twelve, well, that’s what Hélène wants too, but the group is lethal and so is this entire encounter. It does pique Hélène’s interests at how this pie-promising woman showed up at her door offering to make her murder-dreams come true. Too bad torturing Eve with subtext and violence won’t move her emotional needle because both of those tactics tend to turn her on more than anything. Hélène can’t shake her, and their sexual tension is hotter than the burner melting Eve’s palm. Eventually she releases Eve’s hand and tosses her a frozen lobster tail to soothe the burn. She promises that all will be revealed after dessert but right now, she wants her guest to read her daughter a bedtime story. Eve isn’t exactly kid-friendly, so she abruptly leaves with the mother running after asking what her next move might be. Eve jokes that she will find out after dessert, and then walks out the door and into the night.

Back at church camp, Villanelle overhears May tell her father she misjudged their new friend as worthy of love but now she sees she’s totally unlovable and even calls her the devil. Cue the madness! Villanelle grabs a mallet used for driving tent stakes into the ground and brutally murders both father and daughter and then turns her rage on Jesusnelle. She stabs the savior wearing her face and then straddles them, kisses them, and attempts to squeeze the life out of their gasping face. She’s unsuccessful given the fact it’s a delusion of an immortal, so she storms off into the night leaving a trail of bodies behind her. Praise Be! Our messy lovelorn killer is back! Thank you Jesusnelle, indeed.