Showdown
For a while now, Killing Eve has been teasing Villanelle and Eve crossing paths again and this week’s episode sees this finally come to fruition. A tense confrontation between the two ultimately serves as the best moment of the season but before we can get there, Villanelle begins the episode by antagonizing and eventually killing a man at a car wash. Meanwhile, Ghost is interviewed by Eve who asks her about Villanelle. Ghost calls her a demon, clearly rattled by her name being mentioned, leading Eve to take drastic action to get answers. She decides she needs Villanelle to get the truth out of Ghost. What better way to do that than to hire her as a contract killer to take out the one woman she’s obsessed with. Eve. Despite the objections of the team and a botched presentation on killers, Carolyn sizes Eve up for the task at hand before getting her dressed in a bulletproof vest as preparation for meeting Villanelle. When she gets home, she removes the protection and finally comes face to face with Villanelle, whose dressed in all black and sporting a veil. Eve tries to keep her cool while Villanelle swaggers into the kitchen where they share a drink together. After dropping her phone in champagne, she grins evilly, asking Eve if she’s afraid. A cloud of silence descends over them both, with tension you could cut with a knife. Preventing her voice from breaking, Eve asks Villanelle for her help. “I’m going to kill you,” She replies matter-of-factly before Eve confesses she was the one who hired her all along. Agreeing to bury the hatchet for now, Villanelle and Eve drive off together while Constantin and Carolyn sit together in another car outside, watching from afar. Meanwhile in the Forest Of Dean, The Ghost is taken in a van to the middle of nowhere. Blindfolded and bound, an abandoned shipping container sits eerily in the stillness of the woods where Eve and Villanelle stand waiting for her. After Eve’s fruitless one-on-one talk with the woman, Villanelle takes over and begins torturing the woman for answers. She gets exactly what Eve was requiring too before walking off, leaving Eve to check on the status of The Ghost. Expecting a bloodbath, Eve is surprised to find the woman still alive. She says one word – “monster”. Back in Oxford, Niko runs into Villanelle who somehow manages to teleport from the Forest across to Oxford in record time. He threatens to kill her but she tells him that she’s forgiven Eve for stabbing her in Paris, leaving him shocked and speechless where we leave the episode this week. Ever since the first episode, Killing Eve has been teasing this showdown between the two main characters and this week’s episode certainly doesn’t disappoint. Both actresses are ultimately the glue that hold this entire narrative together and whenever they share the screen, their chemistry lights up the show. This is especially true here during their showdown at Eve’s home and some of these scenes are incredibly tense. While the episode does suffer a little with a few plot inconsistencies and the subplot involving Ghost isn’t terribly exciting, Eve and Villanelle continue to be the driving point of the show. In that respect, this episode certainly doesn’t disappoint and quite where this season is likely to go from here is anyone’s guess.
