NOTICE: SPOILERS FROM THE KILLING EVE FINAL!
The final season of Killing Eve has just ended, with an ending that has strongly divided the fans. Result: Season 4 has a 56% on Rotten Tomatoes, little thing compared to 96% of the first. Among the viewers not at all impressed by the conclusion is also Luke Jennings , author of the novels from which the series was based.
Jennings commented on the ending in an editorial published by The Guardian . In particular, the author criticized the way Villanelle ( Jodie Comer ) was killed soon after she and Eve ( Sandra Oh ) finally crowned their dream of love and defeated the Twelve. Jennings writes:
Season 4 has bowed to a convention. Villanelle and Eve’s punishment for the bloody chaos, unleashed by eros, they had caused. A truly subversive story would have avoided the cliché that, in the TV series, allows homosexual lovers only the most elusive relationships before one of them is killed (Lexa’s death in The 100 , immediately after having sex with her beloved for the first time, is another example). How much more grimly satisfying, and true to the original spirit of Killing Eve , would have been if the couple had gone hand-in-hand at sunset? Spoiler alert, but that’s exactly what I thought while writing the books.
Jennings also compared the finale to her first conversations with Phoebe Waller-Bridge , showrunner of the first season of Killing Eve :
When 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 “glory”: her subversive strength, her savage power, her insistence on lovely things. This is the Villanelle I wrote, which Phoebe turned into a screen character and which Jodie played so gloriously.
Villanelle lives
Jennings however promises that Villanelle will “come back”, at least in her books:
I learned of the ending of the final episode early and suspected, with good reason, that fans would be disappointed. But to those fans I would like to say this: Villanelle lives. And on the page, if not on the screen, she will return.