Killing Eve Author Didn't Like The Way Series Ended

Killing Eve author Luke Jennings has spoken out about the ending of the television series.

Four seasons of flamboyant outfits, brutal assassinations and simmering sexual tension, with Jodie Comer pulling off one of the most impressive roles ever seen and Sandra Oh's intricate character development as Eve Polastri - only for the BBC drama to sink rather than swim in many viewers' eyes.

Jennings - whose Villanelle novels were adapted for the series - has since revealed his thoughts on the ending.

Warning! Spoilers ahead.

The season finale - shown in two parts - first aired on 10 April.

Howls of confusion and frustration were likely heard echoing around the country after Comer's character of assassin Villanelle was shot (again).

However this time it marked her death, leaving Oh's Eve Polastri to surface from the River Thames with no happy ever after anywhere in sight.

While one character is a psychopath and another a MI6 agent gone rogue, both having tried and failed to reform their characters - Villanelle with a baffling series of episodes which sees Comer take on the role of Jesus - viewers couldn't help but hold out hope for a happy ending.

One of the final shots of the episode showing the quietly smug face of former head of MI6 Russian section, Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw), victorious in her mission was simply the tip of the iceberg.

Jennings has since given his thoughts on the final episode of the highly-acclaimed series, noting that despite the 'thrill' of having one's work adapted for TV and seeing the story 'taken in unexpected directions' that 'the final series' ending took [him] aback'.

Writing for The Guardian, the author explained that in discussion with season one writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge about the character of Villanelle five years ago, the pair 'agreed that she was defined by what Phoebe called her "glory": her subversiveness, her savage power, her insistence on lovely things'.

He said: "That’s the Villanelle that I wrote, that Phoebe turned into a screen character, and that Jodie ran with so gloriously."

However, the author noted how the ending to season four 'was a bowing to convention'.

He explained: "In the last moments of the last episode, just hours after they’ve shared their first proper kiss, Villanelle is brutally gunned down and killed, leaving Eve screaming.

"We have followed their romance for three and a half years. The charged looks, the tears, the lovingly fetishised wounds, the endlessly deferred consummation.

"[The end of season four was] 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 (Lexa’s death in The 100, immediately after sleeping with her female love interest for the first time, is another example)."

Jennings noted how the ending would have been '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 said.

Unsurprisingly, Jennings' series of books end very differently, with Villanelle and Eve settling down together in St Petersburg.

The author revealed how viewers have reached out to him, calling the show 'a lifeline' with Villanelle acting as a 'comfort character' and one who has provided 'representation, understanding, freedom, strength and bravery,' for one particular gay woman living in Russia.

The woman who wrote to him said: "No TV writers can take her away because she's ours - all of ours - and thanks to your books and our love she will live on forever."

Jennings admitted he had 'learned the outcome of the final episode in advance' and 'suspected, rightly, that fans would be upset'.

However, he concluded: "But to those fans, I would say this: Villanelle lives. And on the page, if not on the screen, she will be back."

Featured Image Credit: BBC

Topics: Killing Eve, TV and Film, BBC

Poppy Bilderbeck

Poppy Bilderbeck is a Senior Journalist at LADbible Group. She graduated from The University of Manchester in 2021 with a First in English Literature and Drama, where alongside her studies she was Editor-in-Chief of The Tab Manchester. Poppy is most comfortable when chatting about all things mental health, is proving a drama degree is far from useless by watching and reviewing as many TV shows and films as possible and is such a crisp fanatic the office has been forced to release them in batches.