Review — Killing Eve S3E1 — Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey
--
As much as I wanted to love it, I ultimately found the season three premiere lackluster.
Final Verdict: B-
SPOILER ALERT!
New Beginnings
S3E1 of Killing Eve focused on a strange new daily ritual of moving on, which frustratingly brought Villanelle and Eve’s character development more than a few steps back.
For Eve in particular, who was primed to become even more like Villanelle towards the end of season 2 when she single-handedly kills Raymond (Ok, it was more of a tag team effort), it seemed like the perfect setup for her to be the initiator this season.
With Villanelle (Jodie Comer) thinking she’s dead, Eve not only has the upper hand, but an emotional catalyst for her newfound sociopathic tendencies.
But instead she becomes nothing more than a dull shell of everything her character had built up to in last year’s finale. Same goes for V.
Both characters have spent an excessive amount of time wallowing in their feelings — losing themselves in the art of pretending so much that it seems too forced. Boring even.
Villanelle marries a woman. Eve works in a restaurant.
Correction: Eve works in a restaurant where she turns the craft of butchering meat into art. Sound familiar?
Image Source: Vulture
Villanelle’s arc is more apparent.
After marrying the second woman of her dreams (poor girl, we know this is a desperate attempt to get someone to take Eve’s place), she brings chaos to her own wedding party by picking a fight with an uninvited guest. Dasha, a hitwoman for the Council of Twelve. An old friend.
The scene is very well done, imaginative even, and its stills look like a painting from some Renaissance master.
It’s the appearance of Dasha that leads her back into the field (in film terms this is her inciting incident); where she makes her first kill in a long while in a spice shop in Barcelona.