‘Killing Eve’ Book Author Slams Series Finale – Luke Jennings Backlash
If you were not satisfied with the way Kill Eve done, you’re not alone: even the man who originally created the characters of Eve and Villanelle agrees.
Book author Luke Jennings, who wrote the books Kill Eve is based on, shared his disappointment with the BBC America thriller series finale in a column for The Guardian, criticizing the episode for essentially “punishing” Eve and Villanelle. To recap: The series finale saw Eve and Villanelle team up – and connect – before defeating The Twelve, but in the final minutes a sniper took down Villanelle, leaving Eve screaming at the sky as she went. as the credits rolled. (Read our final post mortem with senior editor Laura Neal here.)
Jennings first shares how thrilled he was to see his work come to life on television, but he admits that “the end of the series surprised me.” He recalls that when series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge “and I first discussed the character of Villanelle five years ago, we agreed that she was defined by what Phoebe called her ‘fame’. : its subversiveness, its wild power, its insistence on beautiful things. It’s the Villanelle that I wrote, that Phoebe turned into an on-screen character, and that Jodie [Comer] ran with it so gloriously.
But the series finale was more like “a bow to convention,” he says, and “a punishment of Villanelle and Eve for the bloody, erotically driven mayhem they’ve caused.” He notes that “a truly subversive storyline would have challenged the trope that same-sex lovers on television series only allowed the most fleeting relationships before one of them was killed”, citing the death of Lexa the The 100 as another infamous example. “How much more darkly satisfying and true to Kill Evethe original spirit, for the couple to walk together towards the sunset? »
In a chat with TVLine, Neal revealed that the Kill Eve the writers “certainly discussed an ending where [Eve and Villanelle] the two live happily ever after. But our problem was that we couldn’t really imagine them doing that. We couldn’t imagine a world where Eve and Villanelle could live very long in domestic bliss. She also saw the episode’s final moments as “a happy ending for Villanelle in some ways, because she gets what she wants, which is to show that she’s changed, and she does that thing for Eve that allows Eve to go on and live it.” life.”
Jennings did not serve in an official capacity on Kill Eve, but he is credited on every episode of the series as the original character designer. He’s still writing Villanelle novels too, and he ends his column with a message to fans upset by Kill Eveends: “I would say this: Villanelle lives. And on the page, if not on the screen, she will come back.”
