Killing Eve season 3 episode 2 review: Management does indeed suck

Killing Eve season 3 continues, as Eve navigates the fallout from Kenny’s death, and Villanelle tries her hand at joining upper management.

The season 3 premiere of Killing Eve ended on a shocking note – the surprise, violent death of Kenny Martens, Carolyn’s son and one of the original members of the MI-6 team that was put together to hunt Villanelle back in season 1. And, if this episode is anything to go by, it certainly seems as though his murder will be what brings the disparate strands of our various characters’ stories back together again. Sort of.

Everyone’s processing Kenny’s death differently. Carolyn’s repressing all her emotions and throwing herself back into work, barely even seeming to pause long enough to acknowledge her son is dead. (There’s a character thread here that I deeply hope this season tugs at as it goes on, and that’s that Carolyn was, in large part, a rather terrible mother to Kenny, and I wish we could even begin to understand why that’s the case.) For her part, Eve is drinking to cope. She gets sloshed at Kenny’s funeral, refuses to returns Carolyn’s calls and is furious that everyone appears to think that her friend’s death was simply a tragic suicide rather than the murder she knows it to be.

Elsewhere, Villanelle has relocated to Barcelona and move into a legitimately gorgeous posh new apartment Dasha has found for her as part of her compensation package for going back to work for The Twelve. Though our favorite lady assassin seems to largely be existing on a different show for the bulk of this episode, her subplots are by far the most entertaining. Sporting several to-die for dresses, as well as an unfortunate clown suit, Villanelle attempts to mentor a new recruit Felix and help him through his first kill.

Perhaps Villanelle ends up murdering her new protege because he was simply bad at the whole being an assassin thing. But it’s also likely because he was too like her. His backstory about committing mass murder because of a boy he loved feels eerily similar to her obsession with Eve, and his immediate discarding of all rules in terms of carrying out his mission is also sort of something we’d seen before.

And, truly, the idea of Villanelle as a mentor has significant merit. Sure, she doesn’t exactly play well with others and never has, but it seems likely that something like a real friend – or, perhaps more specifically, someone to look up to and even emulate her, would go a long way toward filling that bottomless void inside Villanelle that apparently needs constant attention. All she wants is to be the most important thing to someone – or, rather, someone she deems worthy.

Felix, it is true, was probably never going to be that person. But I was genuinely looking forward to seeing what kind of relationship developed between the two. Serves me right for thinking anything on Killing Eve would last. Including our leads’ separation.

Eve and Villanelle’s stories have never quite felt so far apart as they do for most of this episode. Until, of course, its final scene, in which Konstantin shows up at Villanelle’s flashy new assassin digs to inform her that Eve is still alive. One has to wonder exactly what angle he’s playing here – he claims to have never stopped working for the Twelve, even as he attends Kenny’s funeral and hangs out with Carolyn. Though, to be fair, he does appear to have purposefully bugged the Martens’ home, so perhaps there’s actually something to his claim of being what would be, at this point, something like a quadruple agent.

(Honestly, I totally get why Villanelle would trust Dasha over this guy right now, too.)

Jodie Comer’s face in this moment is a wondrously done mix of emotions – something like rage, grief, and joy all combined together into something half horrifying and half charming. Right up until she laughs and the credits roll, you’d be forgiven for having literal zero idea how she might react to this revelation. After all, she’s clearly not over her Eve obsession – and wasn’t even when she though the woman was dead. But, on the other hand, Eve continuing to live is sort of a stain on her professional report card. She’s supposed to be the best there is at this whole killing thing, after all.

Which side will win out?

Given that we know one of the big trends of season 3 will be that Villanelle and Eve are kept apart for a not-insignificant chunk of it, it’s a bit surprising that the assassin learned of her ex’s situation just two episodes in. Will Villanelle deliberately try to avoid Eve for real this time? Or just try to kill her again and solve the problem?

Killing Eve continues Sunday on BBC America.