*Warning: spoilers ahead for Killing Eve season 4 episode 3*
“I should have done this when we first met,” Eve tells Villanelle, the pair sat on a therapist’s couch while the therapist in question, Martin, is at the same time lying unconscious on the floor, courtesy of (who else?) Villanelle.
But while some fans may be labouring under the impression that Eve (Sandra Oh in the Killing Eve cast) is about to kill Villanelle (Jodie Comer), and others convinced she is about to kiss her or even propose (who can tell with these two?), Villanelle soon realises that Eve had, in fact, turned her in to the British police, as a team of armed officers burst in (presumably stepping over the prostrate Martin).
The twist comes close to the end of the episode, and although we’ve seen Villanelle in prison before, in Russia (during the sixth episode of season 1), she was in fact smuggled in to complete a mission, and this marks the first time we’ve seen her actually behind bars against her will.
The run-up to the twist was mainly exposition, as each major character landed on the next stepping stone in their inquiries into The Twelve – or, in the case of Villanelle, her journey to feeling less like “s**t all the time”.
That’s where Martin (played by Sweet Tooth‘s Adeel Akhtar) comes in. A returning character, he’s an expert on psychopaths and an employee at the infamous British prison Belmarsh. He was previously hired by Carolyn as a consultant on psychopaths, to help impart wisdom on Villanelle’s possible mental state (while also secretly assessing Eve’s own interest in psychopaths).
!["Adeel]("https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2019/06/Adeel-Akhtar-plays-psychopath-expert-Martin-in-Killing-Eve-cbac8d5.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413" "\"Adeel")
There’s hardly anyone more qualified for the role of Villanelle’s therapist, but unfortunately for Martin, she’s also using their impromptu sessions (during which poor Martin is cable-tied to his garden deck chair) as a means of attracting Eve’s attention.
During the majority of the episode, Eve is seemingly far to busy tracking down the glamorous and sadistic French handler Helene (Camille Cottin) to spare Villanelle a thought. She manages to track down a recent ex of Helene’s, called Fernanda, and after plying the broken-hearted woman with wine, Eve learns that Fernanda’s wealthy ex-husband had a murky, possibly criminal past, suggesting Helene had targeted Fernanda as a means of getting to the husband.
However, by the end of the episode it’s clear that Villanelle has in fact been at the forefront of Eve’s thoughts – not to mention her discovery that Villanelle recently murdered a vicar and his daughter.
But for Villanelle, that sought-after attention she so craved from Eve turns out to be her undoing – at least for now…
New episodes of Killing Eve will launch on iPlayer on Mondays and air on BBC One at 9pm on Saturdays. Killing Eve season 4 episode 2 to drop on iPlayer on Monday 7th March, before that second episode reaches BBC One on Saturday 12th March.
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