Killing Eve – Season 2 Episode 8 – The Finale – Recap & Review

 

A Poetic Finish

Killing Eve has been quite the wild ride this season and unlike the first, the storyline has kept a reasonable amount of humour running throughout its run time. Even during some fo the darker moments in this final episode, Killing Eve is much more tonally consistent this year, making for a much more even-paced watch across the season. With the final episode, Killing Eve does end on another cliffhanger but delivers a thoroughly enjoyable episode nonetheless.

The episode begins with Villanelle creeping across the hotel room to Aaron’s office where she witnesses video surveillance of herself. From here, we then cut back to Eve who scrambles for cover under the bed as a shadowy man with a gun enters the room, loooking for her. Once the coast is clear, Eve comes out of hiding and finds Hugo, bleeding and slumped against the wall. Unfortunately she doesn’t get long to help as Villanelle says the safe word down the ear-piece, sending Eve rushing off to save her.

Posing as a cleaner to sneak past the guards, Eve bursts into the room to find Aaron sitting down to breakfast with Villanelle, still posing as Billie. After some initial awkwardness, Villanelle reveals her true identity to Aaron and he offers her the opportunity to work with him, and the promise of staving off boredom for the rest of her life. After some deliberation, she slits his throat and makes him watch as he bleeds out.

As Aaron falls into a pool of his own blood, Eve panics, heading back to her hotel room where she finds all the equipment for the operation gone. Carolyn then arrives and talks to her, indifferent to the whole chain of events and brushing off the incident as Villanelle doing what she does best.

Our cold blooded killer then goes and sees Constantin. Realizing that everything has been compromised, she promises to go after his family to which he grins, promising her she won’t find them before leaving her alone, later receiving a mysterious package from Carolyn.

Villanelle then returns home to find an axe wielding man standing in the hallway. She taunts him before he comes after her. As they wrestle in the hallway, he eventually grabs her round the neck and chokes her. With things looking bleak, Eve arrives and chops the man with an axe in the back. Caught in two minds over what to do next, she eventually chops the man into pieces, stumbling out the building in a daze with Villanelle.

They then head to some old ruins together, after escaping through some tunnels under the city, with Eve still clearly in shock as she follows silently behind. As they admire the beautiful view together, Villanelle turns and pleads with Eve to run away with her to Alaska. Realizing she had a gun the whole time, Eve walks away in disgust but as she turns her back on Villanelle, the Russian shoots her in the back, leaving her for dead in a poetic nod to the way the first season ended.

I wasn’t a big fan of the first season, especially with the way the second half careered off track with its plot. In a way, Killing Eve’s second season does follow the same trajectory, losing sight of the conflict between Eve and Villanelle in favour of the narrative involing Aaron but tonally, Killing Eve stays faithful, delivering an entertaining and darkly comical series nonetheless.

What’s happened to Niko? Is Eve still alive? What are the reprecussions for Villanelle killing the axe man? And just what was in that package Carolyn gave Constantin? With season 3 already greenlit, there’s plenty to chew over here  until that point but in the meantime, Killing Eve delivers a really enjoyable season finale and a great foundation for the third season to follow.

 

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