'Killing Eve' Author Slams the Show's Ending
Killing Eve just came to an end, and some people aren’t happy – including the author of the original books that inspired the show.
Following the show’s four-season run this month, the series faced major backlash on social media for its ending.
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In the end, Villanelle (Jodie Comer) was shot and killed after she and Eve (Sandra Oh) finally ended years of sexual tension with a kiss.
Luke Jennings, who wrote the Codename Villanelle book trilogy that inspired the show, gave his opinion to The Guardian.
“It’s an extraordinary privilege to see your characters brought to life so compellingly, but the final series ending took me aback,” he said.
“You’re never going to love everything the screenwriting team does,” he qualified his remarks.
“When Phoebe Waller-Bridge [Season 1 showrunner] and I first discussed Villanelle’s character five years ago, we agreed that she was defined by what Phoebe called her ‘glory’: her subversiveness, her savage power, her insistence on lovely things. That’s the Villanelle that I wrote, that Phoebe turned into a screen character, and that Jodie ran with so gloriously,” he explained.
“The season 4 ending was a bowing to convention. A punishing of Villanelle and Eve for the bloody, erotically impelled chaos they have caused…a truly subversive storyline would have defied the trope which sees same-sex lovers in TV dramas permitted only the most fleeting of relationships before one of them is killed off.”
“How much more darkly satisfying, and true to Killing Eve’s original spirit, for the couple to walk off into the sunset together? Spoiler alert, but that’s how it seemed to me when writing the books,” he went on to write.
“I learned the outcome of the final episode in advance, and suspected, rightly, that fans would be upset. But to those fans, I would say this: Villanelle lives. And on the page, if not on the screen, she will be back.”
Find out about the possibility of a spinoff!
Several other shows are also coming to an end this month.