‘killing eve’: “villanelle lives”, says author of original novels in response to fan criticism over finale

SPOILER ALERT: _THIS STORY INCLUDES DETAILS FROM THE SERIES FINALE OF BBC AMERICA‘S_ KILLING EVE_._ Television finales are an incredibly tough beast – just ask the team behind _The Sopranos

_or_ Lost._ The finale of BBC America’s _Killing Eve_ has also received its share of criticism from fans, disappointed with the way the series played out in its finale episode that aired

earlier this month, during which Villanelle is gunned down and killed. However, the author of the original material, Luke Jennings, has hoped to assuage fans’ unhappiness by declaring that

“Villanelle lives,” at least on paper. “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,” he wrote in the _Guardian_. Jennings added that he felt the Season 4 finale was “bowing to convention” and said

that he believed 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.” WATCH ON DEADLINE “When Phoebe Waller-Bridge 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

added. Earlier this month, _Killing Eve_ exec producer Sally Gentle told Deadline that they knew what was going to happen in the final episode “quite early on” and it “never really changed.”

“When you consider that Villanelle has always worked in a high-risk industry, there was a degree of inevitability about it. We were keen, in terms of the arc for this season, was a sense

that Villanelle had embraced humanity. Her selfless shoving of Eve over the side of the boat was something that we felt connected to where she started in episode one, trying to prove to

other people that she could be a good human being,” Gentle said. “It also felt right that Eve should survive as the sort of extraordinary every woman, that she should be reborn out of this

sort of extraordinary performance and adventure that she’s been on.”