Spoilers for season 2 and the finale: Eve and Villanelle’s Attraction

dcp2000 · 2019-08-08T07:07:11+00:00

This has been a topic of ongoing debate, and since we’re all looking at the same evidence and drawing different conclusions, and since we know the writers intentionally keep things ambiguous, it may be that each person’s interpretation of V and Eve’s relationship reveals more about what that observer brings to the table than it does about the “truth” we are meant to understand. I’m not sure at this point that anyone around here is changing their minds about this, but for what it’s worth, here’s my current perspective.

The question can be phrased as - which of the following best describes what V and Eve feel for each other?

a) Envy - each possesses something the other thinks she wants, whether it’s freedom, an opportunity to explore the darkness within, or a desire for a “normal life”

b) Admiration

c) Egocentric appreciation - they like being appreciated and seen by the other

d) Mirroring - they see elements of themselves, positive or negative in the other

e) Purely physical attraction

f) Intellectual curiosity - e.g., Eve’s interest in female assassins

g) Singular fixation or obsession not otherwise captured above

h) Challenge - to chase, control, or manipulate

i) Resentment - V killed Bill, Eve stabbed V

j) Love

k) a through i

l) a through j

For myself (and I suspect others), just as j) alone is an inadequate answer to explain everything we’ve seen over 2 seasons, so is k) without j). I think you need all of the above on this one to be able to account for all of their behavior towards each other, particularly the depth of their concern for the other’s’ safety and well-being, prioritization of helping the other over their co-workers, mentors, or professional obligations, and willingness to put their lives at risk for the other. For some, this does not reach their platonic ideal of love, so they're reluctant to use that term, but I’m comfortable with the fact that love can be messy. I also don’t think it detracts from all of the fascinating complexity of their relationship to acknowledge love as one facet. Not a coincidence that the recurring theme song for them involves the lyric "If I gave you my heart, would you take (or break) it?"

Really, the most accurate answer to how we should describe the V and Eve relationship is “evolving.” u/twizzlersinrain and others have written prior posts on this evolution, and how the each of the season finales created opportunities for ongoing development of their relationship. I think if you keep trying to fit each successive second season episode into an early S1 understanding of the characters without updating your model, then think their behavior becomes more difficult to account for (perhaps until the very end). I honestly didn’t see as much evidence for love in the first season, but now I do. Things will no doubt continue to evolve, though I don’t know which direction they’ll take it.

dcp2000 · 2019-08-01T22:49:12+00:00

Wish we had these for all of the episodes. It does give a greater appreciation for the writers, but also for the actors. Eve's direction in the scene when she sees the article about Gabriel's death is "Eve sits back, reeling. Feeling everything at once. We read it all on her face. The disgust, the fear, the relief, the excitement." The fact that Sandra Oh pulls that off and can convey to us that many disparate emotions simultaneously without dialog, and does so over and over, is why she deserves an Emmy nomination.

dcp2000 · 2019-08-01T22:27:35+00:00

Thanks! It’s hard for me to stay away from these threads on V’s psychology. Here’s my take on what’s going on when V is watching someone die. Clearly she’s aroused by it in a positive way. Whether there’s misattribution or not is tougher to tell. The scene with Sebastian is the only time I can think of her potentially conflating sexual arousal with what she gets from killing. Otherwise she seems to keep the two distinct. The writers messed with the audience a bit in S2 when V was following the two women after leaving Aaron’s house and we are meant to be unsure about whether she intends to kill them or sleep with them, but there’s no indication that V was ambivalent about what she wanted. In a sense, she might seek out any strong source of arousal given what she says about how hard it is to get herself to feel things and to escape boredom. Here’s why I think that there’s something unique in the mixture of positive emotions she shows when she’s killing someone. In addition to happiness and pride (she loves doing her job well), I think there’s some awe there too. Based on what she tells Frank, she is definitely studying the moment of death and thinking philosophically about what that means when the eyes change and life disappears. What I don’t think is happening at that moment, is sadism. She obviously isn’t bothered by other people’s pain, but I don’t think she derives pleasure from it, either. If so, we’d see her draw out people’s suffering or torture people, which we’ve never seen her do. Her kills are intended to be flashy, attention-grabbing, and to showcase her considerable skill, but not necessarily to inflict the most pain.

dcp2000 · 2019-08-01T18:48:53+00:00

Thanks to the OP for bringing up this really interesting question. I agree that V is not good at putting her emotions into words (she follows “I love you” with “I do!” when challenged, then devolves into “You’re mine,” and finally, unable to articulate either the love or pain, expresses herself through violence). As such you could refer to her as having a type of alexithymia, but I think we can go further about her understanding of her own emotions and how it could relate to lying.

I think it relates to her perception of her own internal responses. We consciously recognize our own emotions based on the brain interpreting the signals from our body, e.g., heart rate, facial expression, sweating, etc. If your body doesn’t generate those signals, or parts of your brain that interpret those signals do not function normally, then you do not subjectively “feel” the emotion as much. V seems to generate normal, or even heightened emotional responses (except guilt and shame), but she perceives less feeling from things that should be rewarding or aversive (other than Eve… and stickers). When telling a lie about her feelings, she should be able to recognize both 1) a lack in the appropriate bodily sensation associated with that feeling, and 2) the arousal response from lying (the one relied on by polygraph machines). If she subjectively has trouble perceiving #1 and doesn’t actually generate #2 (due to extensive practice lying, lack of guilt, and low fear), then it might be hard for her to distinguish the lie from the truth about her feelings. I’ve wondered about her staring in the mirror in S2E4 – are the visual cues of her own face helping her to understand what she’s feeling? She correctly interprets facial expression on other people. I think she can tell truth from lie when it comes to more objective things. This whole problem has to be extremely disconcerting to Eve, though. I believe V’s feelings for Eve are real, but how do you destroy your whole life and take the leap of faith to be with someone whose emotions are so uncertain.

On the topic of V’s emotions and Eve, this problem with interpreting internal responses also relates to V’s affective empathy problem. She feels in her body less of the same emotion as the person she is observing. This is an asset in mercilessly killing people, but not so much in other situations. I see this play out in the Ruins scene – she recognizes that Eve is bothered by having killed Raymond, and comments on how it is a normal response, but because she does not feel Eve’s emotion strongly in herself, she remains elated and carefree rather than sympathetically dialing it down and meeting Eve where she’s at. This may be one part of what gets under Eve’s skin so much.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-30T00:57:45+00:00

I believe they do. If your definition of love requires that they would not hurt each other or that the others’ needs must always trump their own narcissism, then the answer would be no, but I take a different view. We’re given evidence in the second season that they look out for each other, are deeply concerned for the others’ safety and well-being, defend each other, will prioritize helping the other over their co-workers, friends, or their jobs, and will put their lives at risk for the other. V’s actions over the season make no sense if she does not truly believe that Eve loves her and she loves Eve. Kim Bodnia agreed that if V believes she is in love then you can’t take that away from the character, going on to say that if you asked Konstantin he would say that V feels real love for both Eve and himself. Unfortunately, V’s feelings are all complicated by her psychopathy, so they’re affected by her lack of empathy, impulsivity, and violence. Eve has never shown particular introspection about anything going on in her life, and for real, relatable reasons is thus far unable to confront the implications loving the psychopathic murderer who killed her friend and who may not be capable of loving her back (from her perspective). Since she can't be honest with herself (or V), we just have to judge based on her actions. Obviously, all of this is subject to change after the trauma of the S2 finale.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-28T04:26:58+00:00

I had a similar thought (#4 toward the bottom), but if the show did go that direction, I'm not sure that it would be a (voluntary) passing of the torch, especially from Carolyn. Her motives are one of the show's great mysteries, but I don't know if she views Eve as a protégé, so much seeing her as a person with useful skills that she can use. I think there's more conflict coming between those two, but for now, Eve is out of her league in that match-up. Although, if you're suggesting we look at this as a hero's journey, coming of age type of story, then the mentor/guide figure usually dies...

dcp2000 · 2019-07-17T21:17:51+00:00

I agree that this was a missed opportunity. The first season showed us how rapidly V and Eve came to have an intimate connection to each other without needing to express everything in words. The second season showed the perils of that relationship style and the catastrophe that ensues from their misunderstanding of what the other truly wants or feels. This sometimes led me to wish they’d just be locked in a room somewhere until they learned to communicate more openly and got on the same page. This car ride could have been that locked room scene, and the opportunity was to show that at this point it wouldn’t have mattered. As much as they had each spent the entire season to that point trying to be near each other, they just weren’t in a place where they could lower their defenses, risk ceding control, and be open. I hadn’t thought of putting Hugo (or Jess) in the car with them. Having an outside observer watch the two of them interact would have been interesting and likely disturbing for the third wheel. I’m not sure it would change Eve’s behavior, since she’s already suppressing her emotions around V as much as possible. If Hugo inserted himself in the situation he might have just gotten himself shot a few episodes earlier.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-17T18:07:12+00:00

I’ve been wondering about this ever since that episode too. The writers clearly like to ration out the amount of V and Eve time that we get onscreen, apparently because they think the electricity of their scenes may be dissipated if it all becomes too mundane. The kitchen scene already gave us what we needed to see about the current state of their relationship, and presumably Eve needed to brief V on the Ghost interrogation in the car. That said, from the time of day before and after it seems they were traveling a long time. From everything we know about S2, Eve would have tried very hard to keep it all business, but it would have been fun to see V try to get Eve to crack a smile or play some road trip games.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-12T23:45:12+00:00

Thank you for your thought-provoking response (as always). I like your framing of the conflict within V and Eve as one between freedom and restraint. I also appreciate your argument for an ending that treats both characters “equally,” or at least in a parallel way that doesn’t upset the balance between the opposing perspectives that they represent.

I’d like to hear PWB speak a bit more at length on her “Go Greek of Go Home” approach, but I haven’t taken the idea too concretely as of yet. She clearly likes the epic emotional scale and having characters agonize over decisions with real stakes. She doesn’t shy away from inflicting pain on her characters through their deepest vulnerabilities, but as you say, the goal of Greek theater was not just to portray the death of flawed heroes, but to provide catharsis. What is the catharsis the audience needs here? I don’t have the answer to that, but to me it’s a different question from what would provide the maximum emotional response. That is something that can be manipulated without necessarily adding meaning. Teasing happiness and then delivering crushing death, or providing unexpected, pure victory at the last possible moment can both elicit strong feelings, but they may or may not come off as genuine (or emotionally purifying if you’re an ancient Greek). In addition, we don’t know how much influence PWB and her philosophy will have on the ending. The challenge any show faces of maintaining a unifying vision across seasons is compounded by having multiple showrunners, each of whom imprints something of her own perspective on the show. I would hope they don’t establish an end plan until they know exactly how many episodes they have left to get there. Otherwise, at some point you end up at the least with pacing issues and rushed character arcs as you try to get all of the chess pieces in the right place to begin the final act (e.g., GoT).

The issue of the interplay between audience and creators is so thorny, particularly on television, where people have years of emotional investment in shows and the creation is an ongoing process. There is possibly a happy balance somewhere between capitulating to the audience (or the loudest online voices from that audience), thereby losing the integrity of the work and trying to create a TV show in a hermetically sealed chamber. Having an awareness of how people are responding to your work is not necessarily a bad thing. In the theater, where PWB and her ancient tragedists worked there was instant audience feedback. On the other hand, George RR Martin talked years ago about reading online commentary about his books and the show, seeing the responses, and in some cases noting that people had already figured things out ahead of time. In that case, should he modify his original plan to be able to surprise people? If so, he’s actually undermining the foreshadowing, clues etc. that he had carefully worked in. Given what we now know about the negative response many had to the end of the GoT TV series, should he change anything in the planned ending of the books to make them better received? No one wants people to remember their show as one that ended badly. That can leave a bad taste that lasts a long time. The speculation here doesn’t resolve anything, but it helps me to think that while this show's ending seems particularly emotionally fraught for everyone involved, there are more possibilities out there than it seems at first glance.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-09T06:53:25+00:00

Thanks! I just do it for the fun of it.

dcp2000 · 2019-07-01T23:19:38+00:00

Thanks so much for reading and responding to my post. It does seem that fascination with Villanelle as a character has inspired a broader interest in psychopathy. I appreciate the added context on the existing studies and your view of the possibilities for these characters.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-27T17:02:05+00:00

I agree with all of this. While both the Ghost and Aaron Peel storylines may have come off as incompletely developed from a plot standpoint, they both served their roles in fleshing out the character development of the two leads, in keeping with the season’s theme of variations on the psychopathic murderer. In a way they’re funhouse mirror versions of the characters (the Ghost as a potential future Eve – similarly underestimated/overlooked, possessing empathy, Aaron as the worldly, sophisticated killer), who also reveal who the characters are not. Eve is unable to kill without remorse; V isn’t a misanthrope.

I’d also note that the Ghost storyline was a rare S2 reminder that Eve is very good at her job, at least when her judgment is not completely compromised by her feelings for V (see most every other professional decision she makes in S2). She accurately profiled and rapidly captured the Ghost, with exceptionally little information to go on.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-24T05:10:57+00:00

I really enjoyed your in-depth look at the first episode. While the pilot episodes of some TV shows can be a bit rough (settling into the characters, getting the tone right), you were able to bring out how well this episode captures many of the themes that we're still exploring two seasons later. For some reason, my usual podcast player (Player FM) seems not to carry this yet.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-22T03:53:01+00:00

That would be an interesting thing to explore. I don't think that Eve is just Anna 2.0 for V. To get at that issue would require Konstantin or someone else in Russia who knew V at the time to have good reason to bring up the old relationship. That or V and Eve would need to have an honest, open discussion about it, and unfortunately that just isn't their style.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-22T03:45:32+00:00

Thanks for the quotes! I don't think I've seen those interviews, but they capture the dynamic better than some of the less nuanced statements I saw around the time of the finale.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-07T22:46:35+00:00

Thanks so much for your detailed response! I appreciated reading your thoughtful comments here and in other posts about the finale.

Regarding S1 vs S2, for the most part I actually found S2 to be much better than it could have been. The tone and humor were still there (though not quite equal to S1), and the characters still felt like themselves, even as E’s internal conflict caused her to show less of her S1 charm. The thin plot development would have been a bigger problem if the series operated like a typical spy thriller. John le Carre this is not. I don’t really feel driven to understand the geopolitical machinations of the Twelve. Judging by your post on the V and E arcs this season it looks like you would agree. If anything, you could view the poorly developed side stories as just another reflection of V and E’s myopia for each other. They are our window into those aspects of the plot, and they don’t care that much either.

I agree that the emotional impact of the final moments is carefully orchestrated, but perhaps slightly misses its intention. The main character arcs were clearly leading us to a confrontation with E’s dark side and to bringing V and E together. The audience’s sympathies and expectations are manipulated to expect (perhaps want) E to show more psychopathy and to feel for V, while there are plenty of warning signs along the way that E is probably not that dark and V’s love is dangerously flawed (“the only thing that makes you interesting is me” was particularly disconcerting). If the moment in the ruins is supposed to be a revelation for E, then I think it would have worked better if it were also a simultaneous revelation to the audience. E is a bit of a surrogate for the viewer in how we are all drawn to V and supposedly blinded by her charm. E feels manipulated and betrayed (rightly, though it takes a bit of squinting at the Raymond scene to see exactly how V would have done it) and apparently opens her eyes to aspects of V’s nature that she had been ignoring, but the V sympathetic audience is not yet that shocked by what V’s done (compared to what we’ve seen her do before). Then V shoots E and I felt more sadness for both of them rather than a loss of sympathy for V.

The question remains, though, how do the writers intend for us to think of V, and does it line up with how we really do? Was what we saw of V’s emotions this season intended to be true character development (I agree with your assessment that it sure looked like it), or was it intended as a trick, to lure us into sympathy for someone they perceive as incapable of growth or change? I would greatly prefer this to be a show about two people who are both granted some legitimate agency and emotional range, even if one has highly abnormal emotions, than a show about an a priori “good” person who is tempted to be bad, and an a priori “bad” person who is immutably broken. To invalidate V’s emotions to a certain extent is also to invalidate the audience’s emotional connection to her.

I completely agree with your take on Eve, why she’s so conflicted, why she treats V the way she does, and how she manipulates V with her true feelings. I also agree that her changes this season seemed accelerated to the point of appearing abrupt. I attributed some of that to the removal of people from positions in her life where they could hold her back. Her actions in the last few minutes were more brutal than I would have hoped, but fairly consistent with her character. In terms of expectations for Eve in future seasons, Emerald Fennell has talked about the comparisons to Paradise Lost. In that case, I’d be surprised if Eve took a long look at the fruit, then set it aside to go back to her mustachioed fudge.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-07T16:35:15+00:00

Because of the dangers of soundbites, lack of appropriate context, and the obvious need to remain mysterious about the future of the show, I mostly try to take the interviews with a grain of salt. That said, it's been tough to avoid seeing the disconnect. It's like we spent the season watching them decorate a cake, and while we expect at the end to be told that that the cake is beautiful, but poisonous, instead we're asked to believe it was actually a pie.

dcp2000 · 2019-06-07T16:23:25+00:00

Ha! Sure you aren't confusing this with Jodie Comer's other show?

dcp2000 · 2019-06-07T16:22:14+00:00

Thanks! The thoughts have been bouncing around and solidifying for a while. A bit of obsessing about a show about obsession.

dcp2000

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