‘Killing Eve’ Season 4 Has a Dangerous Twist for Villanelle (SPOILERS)
Published March 27 2022, 12:59 p.m. ET
Should Killing Eve be called Killing Villanelle? Or to put it more bluntly, does Villanelle die in Killing Eve? As the fourth and final season of the BBC America hit continues, we’ve got spoilers about the upcoming episodes.
Last warning: Spoilers for Killing Eve and the Luke Jennings book series ahead!
It seems like Season 4, Episode 5 — titled “Don’t Get Attached” — puts the Jodie Comer character in mortal peril. The episode doesn’t air on TV until tonight, Sunday, March 27, debuting on BBC America at 8 p.m. ET. But episodes have been streaming online a week early this season, and fans have already seen Episode 5’s bloody twist…
Does Villanelle die in Episode 5?
According to a Digital Spy recap of “Don’t Get Attached,” Villanelle is felled by the arrow at the end of the episode — with an assassin hired by Hélène (Camille Cottin) on the other end of the crossbow — and she seemingly dies in the arms of a panicking Eve (Sandra Oh).
But fans aren’t buying that Villanelle is actually dead. On Reddit, one person ridiculed “the fact that they didn’t put Villanelle in the sneak peek for next week’s episode, as if we all don’t know she’s still alive at this point.”
Another fan wrote, “I’ve rewatched that scene. I’m starting to think it’s some ridiculous arrow laced with some agent that renders you unconscious.”
And a third fan agreed, writing, “I do also believe that there was something on the arrow. We’ve seen from the Season 4 teaser that her arm seems partially paralyzed, and she and Eve are still wearing the same clothes from this episode.”
Will Villanelle die at the end of the series?
The show might follow the ending of its source material, Luke Jennings’ Villanelle series. Luke released four e-book novellas between 2014 and 2016, and those four stories were then compiled as a 2017 novel titled Codename Villanelle. With the success of those stories and Killing Eve, Luke then released two sequel novels, 2018’s Killing Eve: No Tomorrow and 2020’s Killing Eve: Die for Me.
And the books end with Eve and Villanelle alive and in a relationship, according to TV Insider. (A Reddit user summed up the end of Die for Me, writing, “Villanelle’s death is faked after assassinating the Russian president. Fast forward to them living a quiet life in a Moscow suburb, Villanelle going to college for languages, and Eve teaching part-time online. Ends with them walking arm and arm past a pretty river.”)
But the show has already deviated far from the book series, so don’t assume Luke’s plot is gospel for Killing Eve. In fact, the show may have already telegraphed that both Eve and Villanelle will die. In Season 4, the two characters discuss the fable of The Scorpion and the Frog, in which a frog ferries a scorpion across a river, but the scorpion stings the frog halfway across, dooming them both, all because the scorpion “can’t change its nature.”
Following that analogy, perhaps Eve and Villanelle’s pursuit of one another will lead to their mutual destruction? We’ll find out as Season 4 continues! Catch new episodes of Killing Eve Sunday nights on BBC America, Monday nights on AMC, and streaming on AMC+.