Killing Eve boss Sally Woodward Gentle breaks down Villanelle’s fate in the explosive finale of the BBC American spy show.
Going out with a bang, the two-part finale of Killing Eve left fans with plenty of questions. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Killing Eve executive producer Gentle explained the show’s impactful ending.
This new story will contain spoilers – stop reading if you have not watched the episodes Making Dead Things Look Nice or Hello, Losers.
The hit series, loosely based on Luke Jennings’ novellas, came to an end on Sunday (April 10).
If you’ve caught up with the series finale, you’re familiar with the show’s shocking exit death – the tragic fate of fan-favourite Villanelle.
As the season wraps up, Villanelle finds herself shot in the chest, presumably by a sniper, after crashing a boat wedding ad wiping out The Twelve.
Both Eve and Villanelle flee the scene by jumping into the Thames. Villanelle meets her fate after getting shot numerous times and bleeds out in the river.
Killing Eve producer Gentle reveals how British intelligence operative Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw) orchestrated Villanelle’s tragic end.
“But by the end, when she realizes that Villanelle and Eve are after the same thing that she’s after, which is to damage the Twelve in some way, she realizes that she can have them do her dirty work,” Gentle tells Entertainment Weekly.
“She keeps her hands completely clean. She can go to MI6 and go, “Listen, I can deliver you the death of this assassin who’s been taking people out.”
The Killing Eve boss also reveals Eve was an unlikely target, despite also getting shot in the finale: “I suspect it was collateral. If it got them both, absolutely fine.”
While Killing Eve’s finale received mixed reviews, the producer reveals it was an ending they wanted to do “properly” and “honour the new arc for season four”.
At the heart of it, Gentle (and the team of writers, felt that Eve and Villanelle’s fate was justified: “[We] wanted to do was something that felt the most truthful for what we knew about those characters and what we felt the journey that they’d been on.”
Speaking on that character’s death, the producer breaks down the thought behind the scene. ” I think that her instinctive desire to protect Eve and throw her off the side of the boat was a demonstration that she has grown and that she does change and that she feels something. She loved Eve and she loved her properly.”
Gentle also reveals that Eve’s death was a very unlikely outcome, even though some fans have speculated the character allowed herself to drown in the Thames shortly after Villanelle’s end.
“Eve living was incredibly important for us. If you liked the flawed everywoman who had explored what it was like to live life on the edge and without fear, and to really shine a light on the darkest elements of herself survived — we didn’t want her to die because of that,” Gentle explained.
The possibility of both Eve and Villanelle dying had briefly crossed the team’s minds, before dismissing it as “too tragic”.
“We wanted there to be some sort of sense that they had learned and that it felt poetically, romantically true,” the Killing Eve producer added.
Speaking on Killing Eve’s legacy, Gentle hopes to have made a difference. “[We] have created iconic characters who people love to see. That’s not because they stripped down to their undies, and it’s not because they killed people with the strength of their thighs,” she says.
Adding: “I’d really like to think that that [….] we’ve made any difference, it’s the fact that you can still be wildly entertaining. You can fall in love with your characters.”
Killing Eve stars Grey’s Anatomy’s Sandra Oh as a desk-bound M15 officer Eve Polastri who becomes obsessed with a notorious, psychopath assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer).
The fourth and final season of Killing Eve was taken over by executive producer and writer Laura Neal, who is best known for her contributions to Sex Education and Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
You can watch the trailer for the fourth and final season of Killing Eve here or below.
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