Killing Eve: Season 2

Tyger, tyger, burning bright 

In the forests of the night, 

What immortal hand or eye 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Tyger by William Blake

Season 1 of Killing Eve found Eve Polastri on the edges of a a web of intrigue as she determinedly persisted pushing herself deeper into that web to locate and stop the assassin Villanelle. 

Season 2 of Killing Eve finds Eve Poslastri closer to the center of the web. Being at the center of the web is never good for anybody. Except the spider. 

Villanelle and Eve out for a stroll

Season 2 began  with the aftermath of where Eve stabbed Villanelle.  

Villanelle escapes but spends the first couple of episodes not exactly on her A-game.  Eventually Villanelle reunites with Konstantin (who is not dead despite Villanelle's efforts to kill him last season) and the two go into the free lance assassin business. Then Villanelle gets a contract hit she wasn't expecting. Her target? Eve Polastri.  

Eve's got her own problems. 

Shell shocked from her encounter with Villanelle, Eve goes back to London where Carolyn re-hires Eve back to MI6 to investigate a string of mysterious deaths that turn out to be...
MURDER!  MURDER! MURDER! MURDER! 

Stealthy and silent where Villanelle is splashy and loud, the MI6 teams name this killer "The Ghost". With almost nothing to go on, Eve is able to profile this killer to a very detailed degree. The woman who is our erstwhile Ghost is located and arrested but she ain't talking. 

The only thing Eve can get out of her is this: 
The Ghost has heard of Villanelle.
The Ghost is scared of Villanelle. 

Eve needs to get to Villanelle. So she arranges to have a hit taken out on herself. 

No, this is not a good plan but dang if it doesn't work. 
Villanelle shows up at Eve’s place and Eve makes her pitch: Eve needs Villanelle's help. 

Eve and Villanelle go out to the woods where the Ghost is being held inside a storage pod. Villanelle goes in. Then she comes out with information.
 
Eve goes into the pod to check on the Ghost. The Ghost is alive but traumatized. She has only one word for Eve: “Monster.” 

Is she describing Villanelle? Or Eve for letting Villanelle in there?  

Anyway… 

The inside skinny is that the Ghost was hired by Aaron Peel, a super rich and super creepy sociopath with a nose for all our dirty little secrets and apparently, he has weaponized his information resources, a weapon of profound impact and influence being sought by a bunch of clandestine organizations including “The Twelve”.  So now the deal is to get close to Aaron Peel to learn more about this weapon. Getting close to Aaron Peel will be tricky as he holds himself aloof and apart from the mere concerns of humanity, ferociously guarding his privacy.  It would take someone of incredible skill and more than a little crazy to worm their way past Peel’s notoriously protected shell. 
 
Skills? And cray-cray? This, thinks Eve, sounds like a job for Villanelle.   

So Eve and Villanelle are… partners? 

One is a psychopath assassin, there other is not. Together they fight crime. 

Sort of. 

Things do not go according to plan. 

MI6 boss Carolyn Martens is pretty clear on this: Villanelle shouldn’t kill anyone.  

Villanelle does manage to worm her way into Aaron Peel's inner sanctum and a trip to Rome with the sinister and smarmy tech billionaire looking to peddle his info-weapon. Eve follows along, keeping tabs on her charge. 

Overhearing the “safe word”, Eve thinks Villanelle is in danger and rushes over to Peel’s hotel. Well, Villanelle is not in danger but the jig is, as they say, up. Villanelle slashes Aaron Peels throat, forcing him to watch in a mirror as he dies. For the first time since we’ve met this bastard, he smiles.  

Now Villanelle and Eve are on the run. A lot of people are going to be angry now, says Villanelle. And assassins do seem to be everywhere. As we learn from Konstantin, these assassins are to kill Villanelle but as a professional courtesy, not to do so until after she’s killed Aaron Peel.  

Since killing Aaron Peel was not allegedly part of the plan, that’s an interesting bit of news.

Eve herself dispatches one of these assassins herself.  

With an axe.  

Yep. An axe.  

In shock, Eve follows Villanelle as they run underneath Rome’s streets before emerging among some ruins.   

It’s in these final minutes my perspective on Villanelle gets seriously bent. 

As they run, Villanelle is riffing on her and Eve running away to Alaska, getting a cabin, hiding away from the world where no one can find them.

She’s talking, rather matter of factly, like she and Eve are a couple.   

Villanelle is crazy, homicidal. But there is in her fantasy of domestic bliss with Eve Polastri something that seems poignant about Villanelle’s delusion she could have anything like a normal life with Eve. 

Eve’s fascination with Villanelle can only carry her so far.

(And if Eve knew what was going on in a locked storage room in London where Villanelle left Eve’s estranged husband, going mad with the dead body of his friend Gemma, killed by Villanelle. Whoa.)

Eve turns her back on Villanelle and walks away. 

Never turn your back on a homicidal psychopath, no matter how much she is proclaiming to love you.
Even more importantly, never turn your back on a homicidal psychopath with a gun.

Villanelle fires a single shot and Eve falls to the ground.

Villanelle turns and walks away.   

There is a symmetry with the events of last season. In an intimate moment when Villanelle lets her guard down, Eve looking her right in the eyes stabbed Villanelle. Now, together and alone against a world conspiring against both women, Eve lets her guard down and turns her back on Villanelle; this time it's Villanelle who takes the shot, literally.  

We watched over the course of the season as Eve kept pulling at various strings, pulling herself deeper and deeper towards the center of a web of intrigue, deception and violence. Eve should've been repulsed, she could've turned away. Instead she kept pulling herself closer to the center of the web, alone with Villanelle.

Being at the center of the web is never good for anybody. Except the spider.

Eve Polastri was never going to be the spider.