Killing Eve season 4 episodes 1 and 2 review: A slow start, some frazzled writing, coupled with wonderful performances

3/5

Story:

After they agree to part with each other, Eve (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer) start new chapters in their lives. Still not over the immense grief and loss, she had to face since she got associated with the terrorist organisation, Twelve, Eve decides to channel her rage to single-handedly take them down. She takes up a job as a private investigator. Villanelle, on the other hand, is out to prove that she is not the ‘monster’, people make her out to be by embracing Christianity and taking solace in the church. Carolyn’s (Fiona Shaw) emotion that fuelled murder in the last season finds her shunned by the MI6. But as a series of murders start popping up with a strange pattern, Carolyn decides to enlist Eve’s help. As Eve continues her investigation in light of the new tip she receives, Villanelle starts to wrestle with her newfound ‘faith’, until she is handed a miracle.

Review:

The latest and final season of Killing Eve shoulders the twin responsibility of wrapping up Eve’s and Villanelle’s stories in a satisfactory way, while trying to hold its own against the previous wildly successful seasons. The first two episodes do not open the new season strongly per se, but the way the story unravels as it progresses coupled with seeing the beloved characters, from past seasons on the screen, come as its saving grace.

As far as the new season’s start goes, Eve is given the meatiest story to work with, one that offers the perfect picture of how far she has come since viewers first met her. She decides to be a ‘lone wolf’ this season, albeit with some help from a new character, determined to bring the Twelve down on her own. The writer this season, Laura Neal, does a splendid job with Eve’s character arc, as she feels familiar, yet different to audiences. Her growth through the tragic things she had to go through the course of her job drives her in her mission.

Neal replicates the same with Carolyn’s story too while retaining the things about the character that made viewers fall in love with her. Still, as sophisticated and calculating as ever, we see her start to come undone at the seams, although her years of expertise do not let her go astray too far. Like Eve, she too is consumed with taking down the Twelve, although from a position of less power than she is used to.

In a surprising turn of events, it is Villanelle’s story this season that turns out to be unremarkable, although it seemed to be the one with the most promise at the beginning. Her ‘turning over a new leaf’ tale starts to become stale as the series progresses, and becomes predictable as we see her follow the same old patterns, just in a new package. A risk Neal took to add an element of strangeness by giving a bizarre form to Villanelle’s inside voice does not pay off. But although, Villanelle’s story is weak, Neal still retains the best parts of the character’s personality, so that the dragging and monotonous story do not become too hard to watch.

As in the previous seasons, Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw give riveting performances, nailing the nuances of their characters and are a joy to watch on the screen.

Verdict:

The final season of Killing Eve does start on a sedated note, and the writing falters along the way. But of course, the series is not known for giving it all away, right at the beginning of a new season. So, there is still a chance for the story to develop in a far more interesting way than the first two episodes have teased.

The first two episodes of the final season of Killing Eve are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.