Killing Eve – End of Game

By: Kelly Kearney

In this week’s episode of Killing Eve, Villanelle gets a new assignment but after her tragic reunion with her mother, the killer’s heart is just not in it. Speaking of hearts, Eve’s is decimated after the forking Niko took courtesy of Dasha. Can she prove what her heart already knows? That someone is trying to set up her favorite assassin to douse the flames of their obsessions.

How in the Fork?

We are at a Polish hospital and that can only mean one thing…NIKO (Owen McDonnell) SURVIVED HIS FORKING! Now, how in the fork this guy lived says more about the sloppy work of Dasha than anything else. Be that as it may, when Eve (Sandra Oh) shows up at the hospital she’s greeted by her ex-father in law (Oliver Cotton) who angrily informs her that he warned his son to never marry her and now look at him. He’s been kidnapped, terrorized, stabbed in the throat and now communicating through a computerized type and speak. Eve tries her best to convince Niko she will find his attacker, but Niko was done with her games months ago and he wants no part of whatever investigation she’s planning. If his parting typed words, “Piss off forever,” doesn’t clue Eve in on how over all of this he is then she’s really just using this as an excuse to continue her cat and mouse games Villanelle.

No matter what Niko says, Eve isn’t about to give up now, especially when it is obvious to her that it wasn’t Villanelle (Jodie Comer) wielding that pitchfork. For one, Villanelle isn’t known for leaving any of her victims still breathing. She’s thorough and excels at murder, and Niko’s forking was too sloppy. There’s also the matter of Bertha Kruger, the woman Villanelle payed tag and strangle with in the tulip garden. That kill has Villanelle’s proverbial fingerprints all over it and since a killer cant be in two places at once, Niko’s attack must’ve been a set up. But who knows that Niko would be the key to driving a wedge between these two women? Dasha (Harriet Walter), the famous gymnast turned assassin and thanks to Bear’s (Turlough Convery) digging, Eve quickly figures out that Dasha was behind it. She also realizes that the woman must’ve been a mentor to Villanelle and the spicy kill in Spanish specialty shop was just her way of paying homage to her favorite assassin. Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) warns Eve to watch herself with Dasha because the woman is deadly; even the KGB couldn’t deal with her, and they’re an entire organization of government hit men. Ignoring her, Eve is determined to make this Dasha woman pay for what she did to her ex. Even if it means risking her own life.

Bowling for Blood

The next time we see Eve she’s managed to track Dasha down at a bowling alley and the Russian is clearly shaken over the news she left Niko alive. Apparently the woman is slipping in her older years because a younger Dasha would have gotten the job done. She tries to save face by telling Eve that she has no chance of winning this fight and then threatens her with an, “I could kill you at any time.” As if Eve hadn’t heard that before and from more skillful killer than Dasha, the threat doesn’t rattle her in the least. In fact, it seems to have focused her bowling game because she rolls her way to a perfect score! Just more proof Dasha isn’t as scary as she thinks she is.

While her teacher and obsession throw around threats and balls at the alley, Villanelle is ordered to a meeting with mystery power suit, Helene (Camille Cottin). At first, things seem to kick off to a good start with Helene telling Villanelle “they (The Twelve)” are impressed with her work and she’s finally getting promoted to Keeper! Unfortunately, the details of the job aren’t exactly what she had in mind. Sure, the pay is better, but the work is still the same. She’s still taking orders and killing who she’s told to and this takes the excitement out of her new title. When Helene gives Villanelle another assignment, which sounds like all her previous jobs, the flirty boss lady doesn’t understand why Villanelle is so upset. She wanted to be a Keeper and now she is, so what’s the problem?  The problem, and maybe Villanelle hasn’t figured it out yet, is that she had hoped this promotion would take her out of the killing fields and put her into a less bloody corner office.  The Twelve will never see her as anything but an expendable paid for hire killer and she knows it. That’s why after her meeting with Helene she finds Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) at Irina’s (Yuli Lagodinsky) hockey game and tells him she’s done. She’s hanging up her costumes and daggers and quitting the whole assassin scene. She knows this new life means leaving everything, including Eve, behind her and she’s ready. Knowing Konstantin is also planning to leave the organization, he’s been playing every side of this dice trying to find his way out. She asks if she can escape with him. To Villanelle, this request makes sense since she sees him as the only family she has left. There’s just one problem: Konstantin has his own family, namely Irina, and she has no interest in sharing her father with the blonde psychopath who kidnapped her at gun point. Even breaking Irina out of school for an impromptu driving lesson with big pseudo-step sis doesn’t change the kid’s mind. She’s not sharing her father with Villanelle when they flee to Cuba…Yeah, she let that cat out of the bag and you can see the Havana wheels turning in Villanelle’s head. Konstantin might love the blonde assassin like a daughter, but blood is thicker than water. After he learns she murdered her mother, he knows he would be crazy not to think she would do the same thing to him or Irina if they ever disappointed her.

The Marten Children Have Secrets

Speaking of awkward family dynamics, Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) learns both of her children have secrets that could’ve led to Kenny’s death and Geraldine (Gemma Whelan) is in imminent danger. The first of the big reveal comes from Kenny and his now unlocked cell phone. He apparently made a series of phone calls to a Russian number before he died. She never learned about these phone calls because Paul (Steve Pemberton) purposefully kept them from her. Carolyn was right not to trust her shady spectacle sporting replacement, but we will get to his true motives later. For now, Carolyn wants to know why her son was calling Konstantin! That’s right, the Russian phone number belonged to him and she finds this out when she shows up unannounced in some random location he’s been hiding out in. The two go for a death ride where Carolyn proves once again why she should be the next Jane Bond. Tearing around corners and barely missing oncoming traffic doesn’t have the terrifying effect on Konstantin she hoped it would, but it does manage to shake the truth out of him. Kenny called to ask if Konstantin was his father! If that’s not shocking enough, he also reveals Geraldine kissed him! Incestuously repulsive as that is, he never succumbed to Geraldine’s advances and nor did he tell Kenny anything about his father since he never knew if Kenny was his son. Carolyn is shocked about both revelations but goes out of her way to avoid admitting the truth, much to Konstantin and Killing Eve fan’s dismay. With that, Konstantin heads back to London where he takes in a meeting with none other than the shady MI-6 and possibly agent for The Twelve – Paul! It’s unclear who Paul’s loyalties lie with, but it’s pretty obvious he’s another angle Konstantin is playing in a plot to extricate himself from is current employment. Paul has apparently been investigating the missing six million dollars that wound up getting Mrs. Kruger killed and wants to know who strangled the kind woman with a gardening hose. It’s a convoluted mess that finds our favorite Russian daddy in a tough predicament. He decides to skip telling Paul about his part in this whole missing money/murder thing and agrees to find out who ordered the woman’s death. With the walls quickly closing in on him, Konstantin decides to up his timeline and run sooner rather than later.

Losing Her Taste for the Kill

While Konstantin gets his ducks in a row for his big escape, Villanelle heads to Romania for the job Helene ordered her to do. She’s decided that to successfully exit this line of work, she can’t show her cards too soon. Acting normal and getting the job done until she can flee with Konstantin and Irina is easier said than done. When she arrives at a hair salon, the setting for her next kill, things go from normal to complete emotional chaos. The target is a Romanian politician (Calin Bleau) and Villanelle manages to murder him, but not before he stabs her in the arm with a pair of scissors! It’s a messy kill and so no typical of the precise techniques she’s known for. Leaving a blood trail behind her, Villanelle stumbles her way back to her hotel where Dasha finds her in a bloody crying heap on the floor. Through her tears she trying to stitch her own wound and chokingly declares, “I’m done with this shit! I’m done with it! I’m leaving.” Dasha takes pity on her and helps with the stitching as Villanelle cries, not from the physical pain (although it looks excruciating), but from the emotional torment of her mother, the loss of Eve and the loneliness that no amount of shopping and fancy apartments seem to fill. The Twelve’s favorite assassin doesn’t want to kill anymore. She’s lost her taste for it, perhaps leaving it in her mother’s flaming house. Be that as it may, Dasha can’t grant her asylum from her life’s choices any more than she can release her from her contract with The Twelve. So, with an unsympathetic look, she ignores Villanelle’s pain and leaves to order pizza.

Whether or not Villanelle wants to kill is besides the point because her ticket out of this life, Konstantin, chooses to go on without her! As she lays bleeding on a Romanian hotel room floor, Konstantin is back in Russia gearing up to flee with Irina before Paul, The Twelve and MI-6 figure out his part in the missing money and Kruger murder. If he was hoping to avoid any further deadly drama by leaving Villanelle behind, he didn’t take into account his daughter Irina and how much like her father she is. He realizes it when from the bushes he watches her jump in a car and run down her mom’s handsy boyfriend. She must’ve taken those driving lessons to heart because she effectively killed the man before his attention to her became too unbearable. Konstantin watches on in shock as his daughter spots him and smiles. Move over Villanelle, there’s a new and very annoying killer in town! Konstantin has his work cut out for him.