Killing Evedelighted fans for three years with a murderous assassin-filled cat-and-mouse tale fueled by strong feminine energy. Then the global pandemic hit, causing production to come to a screeching halt. From the end of season 3 in March 2022 until almost two years later, we were left wondering what was in store for these now-beloved characters.
After the two-year hiatus, the show’s creators and cast decided theywanted to end the show after season fourinstead of dragging out a belabored storyline. With that announcement, fans expected the final season and series finale to blow us out of the water. Unfortunately, it was not the audience who was blown out of the water, but rather one of the two main characters in a shocking and disappointing turn of events.
Overall, the show’s final season was a major disappointment, so let’s dive into what went wrong and how those missteps can be rectified with a spin-off series that is rumored to be in the works.
Season Four Missteps
The first three seasons ofKilling Evegave fans a seductive and thrilling view of the world of espionage and assassins. Every season had its own story arc of eight episodes, giving the audience enough digestible action and narrative to follow. There were no superfluous plot lines or characters. While season four kept to the standard eight-episode run, it did not follow the other well-established metrics.
Season four tried to condense too much action and narrative into such a short amount of show time. As a result, the story was often hard to follow, and there were characters introduced that, in the end, seemed pointless as their presence and development served no real purpose. For example, at the beginning of the final season, Villanelle, the antagonistic assassin with psychopathic tendencies, is portrayed as a repentant Christian awaiting her baptism as she lives with the vicar and his daughter. This internal battle of good versus evil, leaving the audience to wonder if Villanelle is serious in her newfound religion or just feigning it for attention, could have been the subject of an entire compelling season. However, after just two episodes, Villanelle has embraced her roots and kills the vicar and his daughter, two characters whose development and introduction were rendered pointless with two stabs of a tent stake. Those are just a few examples of many throughout the season.
Not only were new and pointless characters introduced just to be killed or written off, but there were also major characters who suffered quick, anticlimactic, and even nonsensical deaths. Hélène was an uber-feminine and terrifying force of nature who wrangled a swathe of lethal assassins. Over two seasons, she was built up as a smart, cunning, and wickedly dangerous character. One would expect such a woman to be extremely difficult to kill. On the contrary, she was killed in the middle of an episode with absolutely no struggle as Villanelle hid under her hotel room bed. Similarly, Konstantin, a character who handled and trained assassins and appeared in almost every episode of the entire show, was killed without warning and without reason.
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But perhaps the biggest cause for complaint among the show’s fans was the series finale. While the rest of the season was rushed and confusing, the final episode, in contrast, seemed to drag on unnecessarily. Very little happened in the first thirty minutes of the episode, and then a deluge of disappointment struck. The entire series followed the hunting of the elusive head honchos of evil known as The Twelve, a group of revolutionaries who sought to cause havoc on the world stage. Upon learning of the whereabouts of a secret meeting of this group, Villanelle and the Eve (Sandra Oh) board a boat to find them. Without any build-up or sense of tension, Villanelle enters the room and, in a matter of seconds, kills all of them without any struggle or hardship. The audience does not even get to see their faces. As we try to process what just occurred, Villanelle exits to the deck of the boat, where she is subsequently shot several times, falls into the water, and presumably dies, signaling an abrupt and devastating end of the series.
Loose Ends
The series finale obviously angered and disappointed many fans, but it also left some loose ends that can and should be resolved in a possible spin-off series. First and foremost, what happened to Eve? The writers did not have the grace to kill off the titular character in a series literally namedKilling Eve. It was reported byTVLinethat there was at one point a version of the finale in which Eve died, but in the end, it was changed. Last we see of her, she is in the water trying to save Villanelle from her certain death. Does Eve die too? Does she seek to avenge Villanelle’s death? Does she assume another persona in hopes of moving on in a normal life? Any of these scenarios is a possibility, and fans deserve to know the fate of the main character they spent years getting to know.
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Then there is the question of the future of Carolyn Mertens, the MI6 agent and mastermind behind the original instantiation of The Twelve. In the last few minutes of the series finale, we see that Carolyn is behind the assassination and death of Villanelle. We also were made privy to the beginning of her career in espionage and revolutionary activity in the 1970s during the run of season four. A possible spin-off series could detail either Carolyn’s past leading up to her work in MI6, her future now that The Twelve and Villanelle are gone, or even a mash-up of the two.
Spin-Off Rumors
A spin-off series featuring Carolyn is exactly what is rumored to be in the works. It is reported byDeadlinethat the series is in pre-production by BBC America and AMC, but it has not officially been given the green light as of yet.
The potential series is said to follow the life of Carolyn and her work for the British Secret Service leading up to her job as an MI6 agent in the Russian division, where we saw her at the beginning ofKilling Eve. Back when it was announced that season four would be the last of the series, AMC Networks President of Original Programming Dan McDermott teased the possibility of a spin-off citing the “potential extensions of this compelling universe.”
After a disappointing and anticlimactic final season and series finale, fans are sure to want some sort of resolution to the story. One way to satisfy them would be this spin-off series that will hopefully answer some of the lingering questions we all have.
