“You’re Mine” – aired on May 26, 2019
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Director: Damon Thomas
Grade: 4 out of 5
Notice: All episode reviews contain spoilers
Following the undramatic penultimate episode “Wide Awake,” Killing Eve blasts our screens with a plot-driven, fast-paced – at times chaotic – season finale. There is a lot happening here which makes me wonder if one or two of these twists and turns could not have been used last week to balance out the narrative productivity of both episodes. “Wide Awake” did quite a bit of stalling whereas “You’re Mine” seeks to move with celerity from point A to point B and beyond. Even with zero appearance from three regulars in the cast (Kenny, Jess, and Niko), “You’re Mine” barely has enough time fit its contents into the hour.
Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why season 2’s final outing works in some ways. It keeps you glued to your seat by dint of a relentlessly advancing plot. Two recurring characters’ chapters come to a close, brutally I might add, two other major characters surprise the viewers (and the other characters) with their actions, couple of storylines get resolved, the two leads talk, bicker, and kill, but still fail to sort out their “differences,” and the enigma surrounding a main character gets carried over, I presume, to season 3 – yes, for those who may not yet know, there will be a third season, with yet another new showrunner.
The episode begins with Villanelle wondering about Aaron Peel’s palazzo which looks grossly under-populated and under-supervised considering how the writing room went out of its way for most of the season to portray him as a paranoid maniac utterly concerned with his privacy. She casually walks into his surveillance room because the door is open. She begins to snoop in on his computer because it apparently does not ask any login information. Recordings of his previous murders (read that, ‘evidence’) carry no passwords, thus available to anyone who cares to double-click on the related files, easily accessible on the computer. Villanelle does, of course, and watches Aaron kill a woman named Matilda with a striking resemblance to her. She also sees recordings of herself. Heck, why not? The files are right there, easily accessible.
She is next seen at the table sitting with Aaron who is looking through the “knicker drawers” of some potential buyers on his computer. One of them is Raymond, Villanelle’s season-two handler who had first appeared in “Nice and Neat.” Needless to say, she is alarmed at the sight of his face. She had not seen him since “The Hungry Caterpillar” where she had betrayed him by joining Konstantin. She uses the safeword “gentleman” – assigned by Carolyn in “Wide Awake” to be used in case of emergency – which lets Eve know that she needs help.
Ironically, it’s Eve and Hugo who find themselves in grave danger first. Hugo is shot in the hotel room corridor and Eve narrowly avoids the shooter by hiding under the bed. The funniest (or the cringiest, depending on your perspective) moment comes when Eve finds Hugo on the floor bleeding profusely, says “Oh my God, you’re alive,” but follows it up with, and I mean no more than a second later, “Villanelle used the safe word.” Splendid to see that Eve’s got her priorities in order when a colleague is literally bleeding to death on the floor in front of her eyes. She leaves him to call for an ambulance while he begs her, through heavy breathing, not to leave him alone. Once she gets downstairs and sees nobody at the front desk, she decides to simply scribble a note for the desk clerk (who may or may not arrive soon) to call an ambulance. Hang tough Hugo, someone will ‘eventually’ come to your rescue, but it ain’t gonna be Eve.
Eve dons a maid’s outfit and ventures over to Aaron and Villanelle. Security guards outside (Hallelujah, Aaron does have some security detail after all) direct her to the staff entrance. Once inside, she simply walks all the way to the dining room upstairs, with no interference, where Aaron and Villanelle are sitting together. She opens the door and enters. How trustworthy of Aaron to have no bodyguards around!
The Aaron charade – because, at this point, that is honestly the only way to describe it, since the writing room decided to reduce the intriguingly developed, clever villain of the early season to a cardboard one with a low IQ in a matter of one and a half episodes – comes to an end when he naively expects Villanelle to kill Eve (even after admitting that he “smelled a rat” when he noticed Villanelle’s Russian accent). Instead, to almost no one’s surprise, Villanelle calmly slashes his throat. At least, he enjoys a last quasi-orgasm while looking at himself dying in the mirror. Hurray!
Thankfully, the episode drastically improves from this point forward. Villanelle expects to run away with Eve, but much to her dismay, Eve is not on board with the idea. She must first go back to the hotel and collect the recordings. Villanelle will find a car and wait for her outside.
By the time Eve arrives, recordings are gone, room is cleared, and Hugo is nowhere to be found. Much to her surprise, Carolyn shows up and the best scene of the episode ensues. In an electrifying three-minute-long conversation, Carolyn calmly explains to a bewildered Eve that she essentially engineered the whole Rome episode, manipulating Eve and Villanelle into eliminating Peel in the process.
As far as she is concerned, an assassin for The Twelve killed Aaron and it was all Eve’s idea. “You’re the person who made this whole operation possible,” she says. When Eve accuses her of setting her up, Carolyn replies, “It’s my job to get the best out of people.” Her team collected the recording and cleared the room. Eve threatens to tell Kenny everything, but Carolyn nonchalantly informs her, with her trademark wry smile, that he already knows, “he was part of the clean-up operation.” Poor Eve is stupefied, trying to wrap her head around the revelations.
It’s a splendid dialogue scene, sold with dexterity by Fiona Shaw and Sandra Oh and enhanced by the timely back-and-forth camera angles of director Damon Thomas, capturing both characters’ contrasting tones and expressions. It also falls in line with continuity since the enigma surrounding Carolyn’s multi-layered persona, to which earlier episodes alluded, resurfaces. She always operates in oracular fashion.
Eve is angry and no longer interested in working with her. Carolyn warns her against staying with Villanelle because they have a target on their back, but she won’t insist. She wishes Eve “good luck” and leaves.
In the second-best scene of the episode that follows the one above, Konstantin does not fare better (although he tries much harder) in trying to convince Villanelle to leave Eve behind than Carolyn did in trying to convince Eve to leave Villanelle behind and come back with her to the safe confines of MI-6. According to Konstantin, Raymond (and “them”) will be after her, so she should just leave and ride into the sunset. He also reveals his previous knowledge of certain information that he had chosen not to share with Villanelle. She feels deeply betrayed by Konstantin, the only person she thought she could trust (Villanelle’s change of expression in a split second once the truth dawns on her should earn Jodie Comer an award in a parallel universe where such rewards exist). Konstantin essentially chose to go along with Carolyn’s sly scheme because she promised to help him reunite with his family. Konstantin painfully reminds Villanelle that she is his friend, but “not family.”
Villanelle enters the hotel looking for Eve, but instead, finds Raymond waiting for her in the hallway with an axe in his hand. This scene fills the action-sequence quota of the episode and it’s a dandy if you can look past yet another cartoon representation of a villain. If Raymond intended to eliminate Villanelle, why not shoot her? Or why put the axe aside and fight her with bare hands? Just because Villanelle taunted him? Luckily, this discrepancy does not glare as much as the one with Aaron because Raymond had already come across as more of a one-dimensional jerkwad in his previous, brief appearances. In fact, kudos to Adrian Scarborough who milks the most out of his character’s limited scope.
The dialogue preceding the fight, the fight itself, and Eve joining it via the final act of landing the axe on Raymond are extremely well-sequenced. The whole scene is nothing short of entertaining. It also marks a turning point in Eve’s character development. It’s her first kill, a brutally executed one for that matter. Whether it will be her last or not, we have yet to find out, but it’s nevertheless a decisive stepping-stone in her (perhaps unintentional) journey to becoming more like Villanelle who, for her part, seems rejoiced. “You really did take chunks out of him,” she affirms with a smile and blood splattered all over her cheek. Eve is unsettled to say the least. The score and camera work, not to mention Sandra Oh’s performance, perfectly convey the mental disarray in which Eve finds herself as the two women walk out of the hotel.
The remainder of the episode involves Eve and Villanelle avoiding the bad guys by using underground passages in Rome which lead them to an ancient ruin (in case you have not been to Rome, one can safely argue that the whole city feels like a historical museum). The conversation turns interesting when Eve realizes that Villanelle was carrying a gun the whole time during their tussle with Raymond, but chose not to use it. It dawns on her that Villanelle wanted her to kill Raymond. She wanted Eve to know “how it feels.” Eve only needs one word to describe it: “Wet.”
Villanelle is excited to pull a “Bonnie and Clyde” with Eve. She even mentions Alaska as a possible destination for a romantic getaway. Tired of being manipulated, Eve is not going anywhere with her and begins to walk away. Tired of feeling betrayed, Villanelle shoots her in the back. Eve is laying on the ground as Villanelle leaves the scene. End of season 2!
Although the finale’s closing moments resemble that of Season 1 finale in form (they both feature isolated one-on-one scenes with the two lead), “You’re Mine” sticks the landing much better in content, in my opinion, than the drawn-out ending of last year’s “God, I’m Tired” did when it pushed the boundaries of common sense in more than one ways.
As for the closing sequence, Villanelle’s shooting of Eve fits into her portrait of a passionate-yet-ruthless assassin and provides another apt nod to continuity. Villanelle has been, by her standards, extremely tolerant with Eve. She let Konstantin down to work with her. She helped her (and Carolyn’s cause) by getting close to Aaron. She committed those acts, and more, not because she was offered great things in return (she wasn’t) but rather because she had hoped that they would bring her and Eve closer to each other. And it is not as if Eve did not return some of her passes. You can almost say that she teased Villanelle at times, depending on your perspective, but she also treated her with contempt numerous times.
Those moments of ingratitude, as Villanelle perceived them, resulted in her issuing warnings to Eve on more than one occasion (see the “last-minute thoughts” segment of my “I Hope You Like Missionary” review). The final blow comes when Eve pulls the “I-Ain’t-Goin’-Nowhere-With-U” card at the ruins, less than an hour after Villanelle had already been slapped with Konstantin’s betrayal? Hey, I am fairly certain that even the most calculated assassin on earth – which Villanelle is not – has a snapping point. Villanelle reaches that point when she states with an ice-cold stare, “I thought you were special,” as Eve is walking away. Comer excels once again here, with the split-second shift in facial expression and tone.
I disagree with some reviews that point to a drop in quality this season in comparison to the first. I believe that, unlike the first season in which Killing Eve reached its story-telling zenith in the middle episodes (especially numbers four and five) but appeared to suffer from a lack of direction in the later ones, season 2 remained consistent in terms of narrative coherence and quality from start to finish, and did so despite having the cards stacked against it from the beginning.
Firstly, it faced the daunting task of matching the originality of season 1. It is virtually impossible to solely focus on a cat-and-mouse game between two people and keep it interesting for two successive seasons. Even season 1 alone had a tough time accomplishing that, in my opinion. This is why I thought showrunner Emerald Fennell’s ideas of introducing a new killer (The Ghost), a new villain (Aaron Peel), and bring Villanelle and Eve together to work as a team (drawing attention to their urge for each other, so to speak), worked quite well as an ensemble of story chapters while circumventing the inevitable pitfalls that accompany the “follow-up season” tag.
Secondly, it had to accomplish that task with a less-talented cast, or less interesting characters, or both, depending on your preferences. Yes, it was a luxury to have Fiona Shaw and Kim Bodnia back as Carolyn and Konstantin, but some of season 1’s characters turned out to be quite irreplaceable. Bill, although discarded early in Season 1, was an entertaining presence delightfully portrayed by David Haig. Elena (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) had provided on-the-spot, dialogue-oriented humor relief better than most other recurring characters in the land of spy-oriented TV shows. Darren Boyd had performed wonders as Frank, the idiotic director of operations, prior to getting killed by Villanelle. Hugo and Jess have been decent additions this season, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes shined as Aaron until his character’s multi-faceted portrait got slashed down to a comical one (see above), but this season managed to succeed nonetheless, without having as many compelling characters in recurring roles as season 1 did.
Lastly, and I firmly believe this one for what it’s worth, showrunner Emerald Fennell had to face an uphill climb as a follow-up to Phoebe Waller-Bridge for whom TV experts harbor an intense admiration to the point where, for some among them, a season of Killing Eve helmed by another showrunner could by no means eclipse season 1 regardless of the output.
In any case, Killing Eve continues next season with yet another showrunner as noted above. I cannot say this enough, but I am so glad to have picked this show to review back over a year ago before a single episode aired (which is by the way, if you did not know, how I pick every show that I review). Talk about hitting the jackpot! I can’t wait until season 3!
Last-minute thoughts:
– Konstantin hints at the possibility that not all of Villanelle’s family members are dead, which is news to her. I wonder how much of that will be explored in season 3.
– I did not mention Danny (Tomi May), possibly an operative of The Twelve, in my review because he serves no purpose other than asking Eve out in a funny little scene, when he takes her for the hotel receptionist
– What version of Niko will we find in season 3? He went through a lot in the latter portion of this season.
– Dear new showrunner, I implore you. Please bring Elena back!
Until next season…
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