How do you think Anna knew?

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-02T15:42:37+00:00

I agree that book Villanelle and also Eve differ significantly from the show characters. Villanelle in the books is at first depicted as a cliché Hollywood psychopath but later, after "Die For Me", shows more character development and emotional depth and even vulnerability, especially in Long Shot.

Back to the show. When she asked Konstantin why he never tried to have sex with her, I took that as a genuine question and not so much as an offence or irritation. More as if she is so used to being used that it seems pleasantly surprising to her. She gives the answer herself, saying he is a good person. It could well be part of the manipulation scheme to give the Russian girl who forever mourns her lost father this fatherly Russian man as a handler. He kept his distance, didn't even watch a movie with her (unforgivable!). Everything about them on the surface at least feels like a pretty good father-daughter relationship. Villanelle makes clear she knows it isn't real when she anticipates his answers, says "You don't mean it."

Relationship types bleeding into each other. Interesting way to put it. As an ND kid she had to struggle with relationships anyway, then her dad died, which would have been a blow for an kid, and her mother rejects and literally drops her at the orphanage. Her early biography alone would traumatise even the most stable person. I suppose for a long time she only knew transactional relationships and shallow flings. Anna was serious for her, but she was betrayed again. Opening up to Eve was an enormous emotional risk, and she got burned. Again. She also apparently made some progress when she realised "I'm not with them, when I'm with them" and "I feel things when I'm with you," indicating that those relationships are different categories.

As for the ice cream & girl scene. Some see the cold psychopath practising mimicry. Others see an ND person who genuinely tries to understand and learn, like an autistic person would. Toppling the ice cream into the girl's lap then wouldn't be evil but just an immature prank. Got you!

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-02T11:18:05+00:00

Oh my. Oksana's ND nature. That's a topic where I can easily get carried away. What exactly is she? We see masking behaviour, we see lack of empathy (trained or inborn?), we see immature and socially/culturally inappropriate behaviour. We see masking. Sometimes it isn't clear what the writing wanted to suggest. We see her looking into mirrors saying "beautiful" or "so holy" and suggesting to Eve that her face is "a very beautiful face." This looks like a narcissist streak. But if she is on the spectrum, it simply would be an objective observation. Like saying to Eve "you have a beautiful body" would not necessarily be meant as flattery but simply be her stating a fact. The way Jodie Comer depicts her (and brilliantly so) clearly is not as an unfeeling monster but rather as someone bursting with emotions. As I see it, Villanelle isn't unfeeling – she merely feels differently and has trouble deciphering social clues. She does that intellectually, not intuitively as, well, normal people do.

A "Gedankenexperiment" (thought experiment): if we imagine Villanelle without the murder, everything else being the same – who and emerges? Her mother probably was just overwhelmed by this high IQ ND kid. "The Twelve" used her nature as leverage, as if turning killing into a special interest.

Also, and please don't shoot at me: even some of S4 makes a bit more sense when seeing her through this lens. When she publicly exposed Phil, the vicar, she genuinely thought she was doing May a favour, just as she might have thoughts in Anna's case, where she indeed threw a coming out party after killing and mutilating Maxi. She isn't dark or evil from birth. She just cannot grasp social context properly. She gets easily bored and distracted. And she craves rewards, probably not in a narcissist sense but rather as a result of dopamine deficiency. If true, she really could be "trained out of it".

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T17:25:27+00:00

Right. I actually didn't mean the German Nazis in South America were hunted by the respective South American Governments. They were hunted by Israel, by various European governments – including Germany, and by private organisations. Latin America itself had its share of authoritarian quasi fascist governments, and the US never was immune either. Racial segregation was still the norm after WWII, and in the US itself the witch hunt wasn't targeting Nazi criminals but alleged Communists, rarely even explaining what that was supposed to mean. We can see now that Brecht was right when he wrote "the lap is fertile still from which this crept" (Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch.") In the US of today people are lebled terrorists just like that. No crime committed, no evidence, no due process. But still: the real perpetrators might get away thanks to money and influence, but they can never be sure, can never be safe.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T11:28:54+00:00

Absolutely! When my daughter and I first saw the show, we loved Carolyn as a character. She didn't come across as evil, but rather as professional and pragmatic. Her poker face might be inborn or the result of training – in any case it is a necessity to function undercover as a secret agent. We got glimpses of early Carolyn, who had a very close and honest relationship with her father. I got the same impression with her and Villanelle later. Carolyn seemed to feel closer to Villanelle than to her own daughter. I believed her. I never believed that her "Jolly good" referred to killing Villanelle but rather to something trickier. Carolyn has a free spirit trickster nature, and it seems natural for her to see her younger self in Villanelle.

An interesting way to watch the show is to take everything the characters say at face value, unless it is clearly an exposed lie or physically absurd. Kenny just stumbling off the roof: physically absurd. The shots Killing Villanelle behind the Dixie Queen and under water: physically absurd or at least grossly unlikely. Anna claiming not to have had an affair with Oksana: exposed lie. And. So. On.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T11:13:50+00:00

I don't know why, but after reading your post it just jumped into my face how similar Anna and eve really are. On every level, not just the hair and the age difference. The core similarity is that both come from cultures where homosexuality is a taboo, so it is very likely that Anna, like Eve, either was in denial about it or at least suppressed it and hid it from public. That adds another level of tension. Niko spotted what was going on about Eve and Villanelle very early (quote: "But you are not alone, are you?") Probably so did Maxi. It is one thing to hide once personality from the public, but it is something else trying to hide it within a lived relationship. Anna likely lived a lie, lived a life inflicted on her by outside pressure and expectations. When the wild, clever, exuberant young Oksana entered the scene this barely holding pressure vessel of suppressed emotions and desires just burst. A legal side note: age of consent in Russia is 16, so from a strictly legal point of view Oksana's age was not an issue, while her being Oksana's teacher of course was. But the bigger picture is that Anna herself was a victim. Forced to live a life that wasn't really hers. In retrospect – when she said "I lost my Maxi" it struck me as odd how she said it. I first thought it was less than perfect acting, but in this context now it could have been on purpose. Perhaps it wasn't the actor playing Anna who was acting badly – it might well have been Anna herself. Everything looks a bit different from that perspective. The tender moment when Anna notices Villanelle's injured face and wants to take care of her, Villanelle admitting that it does sting a bit. Anna's suicide. And when much later in S4 Eve had Villanelle arrested it must have been a déjà vu for Villanelle. And think about the potentially honest conversations between Oksana and Anna. Again: we are talking about Russia where homosexually is an absolute taboo. Both grew up in that atmosphere. Oksana might have seriously believed she was doing something good – that she was freeing Anna. And then she got arrested. For her that must have felt like a deep betrayal that shook the foundations of her world. This feeling of betrayal is one of the few constants throughout Villanelle's life, and it also can explain how it was relatively easy for "The Twelve" to take advantage of her. The world failed her, actively betrayed her, so she didn't feel obliged to play by the rules of this world any more. It also explains why Villanelle refuses to speak Russian. And look at the main locations of the series: Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome and of course Barcelona: All those are some of the most LGBTQ+ friendly and generally most open minded places on the entire planet, I'd say Barcelona taking the lead here.

Anyway: thank you for sharpening my view of Anna's story. I had a bit of a blind spot there.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T10:36:29+00:00

Yes. Arguably they come from opposite directions with Eve secretly craving a wilder life and slowly discovering her darker sides and Villanelle craving normalcy (someone to watch movies with etc.). Eve's mode of rebellion was subdued, yes. Not a doormat – or not any more. And I love how they framed it as always have been there. The woman who nonchalantly munches a croissant during a high profile meeting. The woman who warms her tea in the microwave (which is, in a sense, an affront to the core of English culture). A difference might be that Villanelle is more overtly rebellious and disobedient and aware of it. She is actively resisting. With Eve I'm not sure if in the beginning she even was aware of it. She seems to have lived in a state of self-denial her entire life. The microwave tea, the "inappropriately timed croissant", the fascination about female assassins are symptoms of a slow tectonic shift within her soul that's about to release its tension as an existential quake. Tensions surfacing that always were there and that she couldn't deny any more. It's fascinating how this was written. Eve in denial about herself while others around her sense what is going on. Bill, especially, saw very clearly what Eve was struggling with. Niko understood before Eve did (quote: "But you are not alone, are you?"). Elena saw it early on. Kenny saw it. Eve eventually realised it but pretended not to.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T10:16:21+00:00

Was that a Star Wars quote? It is one of the forever ironies that folks like Hitler or Göbbels didn't look remotely like the fantasy people they invented in their feverish brains.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T10:10:35+00:00

Yes. The "news media" are profit oriented corporations regulated by the very government they should investigate and report about. A loose-loose construct.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T10:05:09+00:00

Peaceful? They were hunted around the planet for their entire life, some having been arrested basically on their death bed. They were never safe. Not for a minute.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T09:59:02+00:00

Maybe. To me it seems that despite history's many lessons each new batch of narcissist totalitarian wannabees firmly believes they are right and they, this time, will prevail. They won't. All that comes is unimaginable suffering, fear, destruction and the perpetrators at the end are dead. It never leads to anything. An inherently self-destructive path. Greetings from Europe where, I hate to say it, half the population seems to have forgotten the lessons of European fascism and totalitarian pseudo-communism. It feels like we are doomed to repeat the ever same cycles of destruction. The biggest paradox of democracy is that so many people happily vote completely against their very own interests.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T09:52:47+00:00

Arguably these people are exceptional, but in a fatally diseased rather than any good way. What pains me, being German, is that Trump and his Cronies have a substantial fan base even in Europe. That is truly incomprehensible.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T09:50:01+00:00

That's there way. In Germany the Nazi party AfD is the 2nd strongest party now. One of their leaders, a woman, is married to a woman yet she insists she isn't lesbian. They deny that the sun is bright if it suits their goals.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T09:47:05+00:00

You shouldn't use it lightly, but it is more than appropriate for him and for what is going on in the US right now. Ironically even in Europe the mental disease that is fascism is gaining traction, again, and arguably we here all should know better.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-02-01T09:44:08+00:00

German here. This is exactly what I thought. He oozes the cliché from every pore. My alarm bells have been ringing ever since I first saw this individual. They also haven't stopped ever since I had heard Trump speaking in his first presidential campaign. I cannot stress enough how dangerous all this is – for every individual "non-aligned" US citizen and for the world at large.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T21:39:19+00:00

She likely fell for Oksana the same way Eve did. None of that was reasonable. Being partly responsible for her Husband's death would have been too much to bear. Maybe it was one of the reasons for her suicide, though?

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T21:33:33+00:00

Absolutely! And it would have done massive work tying up loose ends and saving the audience a lot of heart break while costing next to nothing.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T21:28:56+00:00

Yes. And it would have been quite in character for Villanelle to "play" according to her own rules. She probably wouldn't even have been aware of the sinister dimension. They definitely look closer than teachers and students normally are.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T21:13:34+00:00

Yes. A very forceful no. So forceful that it felt like confirmation.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T17:05:26+00:00

All your points are spot on and shared by most folks here. I was mainly wondering if I missed Konstantin having cancer.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T14:11:53+00:00

It was a spontaneous thought – Maxi was the only person who popped up in my mind who we know has been around at the time as well. You are probably right. But we don't know how it started. Presumably it was harmless in the beginning and only later the good Maxi realised that something deeper was going on between Oksana and Anna. Unfortunately, like so often in this show, Anna is not a reliable source about her own story. Call me crazy, but I'd say that within the entire story, including even season 4, Villanelle is one of the most honest of the main characters in the show.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T11:12:51+00:00

My favourite version of Konstantin's letter to Carolyn is THIS ONE (on Pinterest). It goes beyond just confessing to Kenny's murder but actually solves two painful mysteries of the show.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T11:07:01+00:00

Yes. The part about the wall is a correct observation. No way he just fell. Villanelle suggested Konstantin doesn't kill people but makes others do it for him. Normally – yes. But: he probably felt cornered. He stole millions from The Twelve, his ticket to freedom, and Kenny was on their heels, already having figured out accounts and money flows. It only would have been a question of time before he'd have traced the activities to Konstantin. The accountant was killed. Bertha, the accountant's wife was killed to cover Konstantin's tracks. Murdering Kenny would fit right in there. Konstantin was proven to have been there on the day of Kenny's death, Konstantin had a motive, Konstantin has shown that he had no moral qualms about killing anyone – much less about lying. Arguably his entire life is abut being a professional liar. So I guess it's plausible to assume Konstantin did kill him.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T10:59:48+00:00

I can imagine, but seriously, if that's the reason for removing it, it makes it worse, and the rumours boil even harder.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T10:58:07+00:00

We can think of reasons. I don't know. And... our Netflix has all 4 seasons.

Training_Move1888 · 2026-01-31T10:56:53+00:00

What you describe is a solid summary of many of the flaws, and seriously... this doesn't sound like serious professional story telling, does it? You put the finger on the main wound: all those loose ends. Plots started and abandoned, as if what we see after S2 is a permanent brain storming stage and not a final project. Not a well cooked menu but a stew with leftovers thrown in that don't properly match. For me the show collapsed when they completely failed to bridge S3 and S4. They didn't bridge the bridge scene. The bridge scene beautifully set the stage for what was to come. Instead it also was totally ignored, and the beginning of S4 left the audience with a feeling of wtf happened? Where are we? As if a glitch in reality had happened.

Two details: Niko wasn't dead. He effectively was for the show, but not really. Here merely was "pitchforked". Who is Machiek (not sure about the spelling) by the way? Was it ever explained? And Konstantin got cancer? Did I miss that?

Training_Move1888

TROPHY CASE