I am so excited for the premiere of Killing Eve! It’s been a great day in the ATL and this is the icing on the cake. Let’s get straight to the first Killing Eve recap of the season!
We pick up thirty seconds after Eve has stabbed Villanelle. The police and a couple of medics arrived. Or at least that is what they appeared to be. Eve manages to get away, But Villanelle is hiding in a utility room near the back alley where the ambulance is parked. The official looking people start packing up all of Villanelle’s stuff. That will take a while. Please be mindful of the Molly Goddard pink dress. I’m quite fond of it.
Because, Sometimes a Girl Just Needs a Sugar Fix.
Eve’s boss, Carolyn Shaw, calls and tells Eve to get her ass back to London where they are supposed to be closing down shop. Instead, we see her at a bulk candy shop in the Gare Du Nord filling a giant sack with candies. Because, sometimes a girl just needs a sugar fix. She whacks the hand of a little boy to tries to grab a candy that fell out of the bag. It reminds me of the very first episode of Killing Eve, when Villanelle flipped an ice cream sundae onto a little girl at an ice cream shoppe. I’m sure that was intentional. The editing always shows how alike Eve and Villanelle are. We have a lot of evidence from the season one Killing Eve recaps that they are both psychopaths.
Meanwhile, Villanelle is wandering the streets of Paris bleeding profusely from the knife wound in her gut. She manages to find a partial bottle of booze in amongst the items in a homeless man’s set up. She guzzles some vodka and pour some on her wound. Then she takes the bottle and his coat and continues on. Where on earth could she be going? She’s pretty much killed or run off everyone she knows in Paris.
I Had A Bad Oyster
Back at Gard Du Nord, as Eve prepares to take a train to… somewhere… she has to go through a metal detector. They are asking for everyone to take off their shoes and belts as if they are going on a plane. I have never seen this before. Maybe they do it now after the terrorist attack on the train. Or maybe she is going to take the chunnel? Either way, she has a problem. So, she leaves her place in line. She has a bloody knife in her coat pocket. She goes to the bathroom and cleans the knife and then puts the knife and the bloody paper towel in the same disposal. What good does that do?
The security guy is none too thrilled that she abandoned her belongings and then return. She told him it was an emergency bathroom trip. She had a bad oyster.
Next, we see Eve sitting at a bar in the terminal stabbing herself in the hand with a pen repeatedly. A blonde sits next to her and thinks she is a drug addict jonesing. Eva finds that hysterical and actually has a good laugh.
Oooooh! Stickers!
Back on the mean streets of Paris, Villanelle looks fierce in her stolen men’s jacket even though she is bleeding slightly from the head. Because, Villanelle. She’s very unsuccessful at hailing a cab though, because she still looks like a deranged psychopathic killer who is homeless. So, she does what any psychopathic killer would do. She throws herself on the front of a taxi. The terrified taxi driver takes her to the hospital thinking all the blood is from the car accident. He drags her onto the sidewalk and speeds away.
Villanelle wakes up in the ER all stitched up and full of painkillers. The doctor says they have to alert the police because of the knife wound. She says her husband is a cop. If he finds out she is there he will kill her. He says he will keep her secret, but the next shift may not. She asks for a lollipop and a sticker from a nearby table. He says they are only for the children. She really wants a sticker.
Eve Shows Off Her Knife Skills… Again
Next, Eve has arrived back at her house in London via the chunnel. While she was on the train, she made a little heart on her tray table. She immediately calls to see if they stabbing has been reported. It has not.
She starts cooking and listening to music. She seems to really enjoy chopping the veggies. Her husband, Niko, comes home and asks how her trip was. She tells him it was fine. Just a boring work trip. He notes the huge mounds of veggies. He cuts off the music and asks if they can talk about what happened when she pissed off to Paris. She says she’s making dinner to apologize for being a dick. Plus, she is fired so everything is back to normal. The the chicken is almost done, she tells him. Niko finds the raw chicken in the fridge.
It Surprised Me Too!
The next time we see Villanelle, she has her “Superbe!”sticker and her lollipop. Because, sometimes a girl just needs a sugar fix. And a sticker. She tosses out her painkillers because as she tells one of the guys on her ward, she needs to be steady to walk. And she is being chased by bad people. Also, she needs to get to London to visit her girlfriend. Actually, she say this in French and in French she only says “friend.”
The longer Villanelle sucks on a lollipop while chatting up her roomie, Gabriel, the more I worry for his life. They exchange injury stories. She says she was stabbed by a women. He says women don’t stab. She responds.”I know! It surprised me too!” The she tells Gabriel that she did it to show how much she cares about her.
Gabriel says that’s stupid. Oh she will kill him for that alone! Villanelle says, “No it isn’t! Sometimes when you love someone you will do crazy things.” Then she asks if he wants to play a game. He’s definitely a goner.
Do You Have Time To Talk?
Carolyn has been calling Eve since she got home. She’s hiding from everyone in the bathtub since dinner didn’t quite work out. Niko comes in the bathroom. He’s irritated that she won’t answer her phone. Carolyn will not stop calling. She says she has been in there for over an hour.
Niko asks if she is okay. She’s cries. He asked if something happened in Paris. She says nothing happened. He tells her she can talk to him. She says she can’t. He asks she is in trouble. She tells him she doesn’t know. She slowly reaches for the phone that hasn’t stopped ringing for hours. He asks her not to answer but she looks like she’s going to anyway. He storms off to eat alone.
Later we see her dressing after her bath. The phone rings with an unknown caller. It’s a sales call for windows. Armando wants to know if she has time to talk. She does. She’d like to hear everything about Armando’s windows.
You Are Really Good At Stealing, You Should Do It More
Villanelle had the kid who just had surgery go out into the hospital and steal someone’s badge. She dons a white jacket, tosses on the badge and begins her escape. But first, she needs shoes. A nurse has slipped off her nasty old crocs and it literally takes everything our little psychopathic fashionista has to slip them on her feet. But, sometimes, when you love someone, you do crazy things. She limps off to the supply closet and fills a briefcase full of drugs and bandages. Then she tries to steal a handbag from a patient’s room. But, the owner returns to the room. She has to give her good news about her husband’s dire condition to make her escape with nothing but a change purse.
She goes back to her room to try to get money from Gabriel. He has none. She hopes to get money from his parents. Bad news, they died in the car accident. She collapses on the floor.
No Feelings
Finally, it is time for Carolyn and Eve to talk. They meet in the park. Eve lies to Carolyn. She admits to going to look for Villanelle. But, she says when she got to the apartment she wasn’t there. As she was leaving, some people arrived dressed as paramedics. They shot the old woman next door. Carolyn says “The twelve would have brought the cleaners in. She’s on the move if she’s alive.”
I don’t think we are completely certain that Carolyn herself is not one of the twelve. Or however many member of the twelve are still alive. Carolyn asks if she has any feelings about where Villanelle could be. She does not. Eve flips out when a man walks away with the boy Carolyn was sitting with. She says it is probably his father. She didn’t even know the kid. That was odd. Perhaps even important.
Carolyn says that MI6 has a team headed to Villanelle’s apartment now. They won’t find anything since the cleaners were there. Eve is disgruntled to discover that she is not fired anymore.
I’m A Monster!
Villanelle wakes up the next morning in her hospital bed. She asks Gabriel for his clothes and he’s happy to share. Unfortunately, all he has is superhero pajamas. Gabriel asks him to look under his bandages at his face and tell him how bad it is. It’s really bad. And she tells him he looks like a pizza. She asks if he lost an eye. He freaks out. He says he’s a monster!
Forgive The Smell
For reasons as yet unclear to me, we next find Eve and Carolyn in a morgue. The medical examiner and Carolyn crack open a beer. And we get our first smell reference of the season. If you are just joining us, last season we found out that psychopaths often lack a sense of smell or have a very poor sense of smell. Neither Eve nor Villlanelle seem to be able to smell things.
The bodies here are not fresh but have been dug up for some reason. Eve needs to sit down. The “medical examiner” for lack of a better term asks if she can get her anything. She asks for a burger. The medical examiner says it’s the smell of formaldehyde it makes you crave meat. I’m still not convinced she smelled anything. Nonetheless, Carolyn and Even enjoy a burger and a co-cola before continuing their endeavors.
Alastair Peele
The body is that of Alastair Peele or as Eve calls him “the Internet guy.” He died of a heart attack three months or so ago. Back in season one, in the sixth Episode “Take Me To The Hole!” Konstantin put Villanelle in prison to kill an inmate, Nadia. She was supposedly an assassin of some sort. Oddly, he also agreed to let Eve interview Nadia. You should click the link back to read that whole episode. But here is the most important part:
Then we are back in Nadia’s cell. Villanelle is under her bed with the knife. Nadia is begging the guards to let her give them a note. She writes something and puts Eve’s name on the note. Villanelle comes out from under the bed. Nadia says she can get them out of there. She is working with the British. Konstantin is helping get her out. Villanelle wants to know who exactly is helping her. Was it an Asian woman with amazing hair? LOL. She asks what she told her. She said she told her to speak to Anna. Nadia hugs her sobbing. She asks if Villanelle is going to kill her now. She says yes. While Villanelle is trying to figure out how she wants to kill Nadia. Nadia slips the note under the door and into the hallway.
This brings us back to the dead guy. The note had only two words. Alastair Peele. So of course this means they should dig up a dead body. He was murdered by an air bubble injected into his bloodstream. “Very hard to trace.”
It’s The Good People You Have To Worry About
Meanwhile, back at the hospital in Paris, Villanelle and Gabriel are chatting about her trip to London to see her girlfriend. They are both decked out in superhero jammies. He’s worried she will stab Villanelle again. Villanelle says she won’t. She knows her better now. She cautions Gabriel not to be deceived by how people look. You can see scary people a mile away. But, she cautions him, “It’s the good people you have to worry about.”
Gabriel asks her if his face is ever going to be normal again. “Probably not,”she says. Gabriel cries. He doesn’t want to look like a monster. He wants to be normal. She tells him normal is boring. Then he seals his fate and says he wishes he would have died in the car accident. He asks if she would want to live like this? As she is agreeing that she wouldn’t she quickly and mercifully breaks his neck. Problem solved. She seems to debate leaving him all the lollipops and stickers. Then she makes a clean getaway.
Are You A Part Of The Twelve?
As Carolyn interrogates Eve about the possibility that Villanelle killed Alastair in London, Eve wonders what is really going on. She asks Eve a barrage of questions about Konstantin and Nadia and what said to Villanelle in prison. And then she blurts out what we have all been wondering, “Are you a part of the twelve?”
Carolyn replies with, “What really happened in Paris? Why was Nadia’s note addressed particularly to you? And why are you and Villanelle so interested in each other? See how it works?” She tells Eve if Villanelle is still alive, she needs to find her before she finds Eve.
Ain’t No River Wide Enough…
Villanelle limps down the street in Gabriel’s superhero onesie toting her briefcase full of pills and medical supplies. She hitches a ride with a trucker to Calais, the large port city in Northern France. It’s an excellent place to stow away on a ship and head to London to see her girlfriend. But it seems she is not quite there yet. She removes all the luggage from a family’s SUV and stows away in the trunk. And off they go in the general direction of the port.
What Have You Done, Eve?
Niko comes home from work and give Eve an ultimatum. He gets that she can’t leave her job. Clearly, there is something about it that she needs. But he can’t take not knowing what the hell is going on. It seems like an ultimatum. So, he asks her what is going on. She can tell him anything.
She says, “I bought a shit ton of expensive windows.”
Please come back for next week’s Killing Eve Recap for Season 2 Episode 2 Nice and Neat. Carolyn introduces Eve to her new team and Eve finds out a secret that Carolyn has been hiding.
Sofaking good!! Poor Gabriel. I was just hoping he would die peacefully, but quick worked too. I feel like an absolute idiot for not picking up on Eve’s psychopathy!!! What game are her and Carolyn playing with each other? Fiona Shaw is perfect. I crave their scenes together!! Thank you for the eye opening recap 🙂
Until this show, and the reading I’ve done since, I didn’t realize there are varying degrees of psychopathy. For instance, I see Eve as exhibiting some anxiety, fear and remorse, but Villanova none, unless it concerns her own well being. The take no prisoners stakes they are both playing in Season 2 puts me all in.
The superhero pajamas worn by Villanova were brilliant, since an argument can be made that superhero’s are but one or two symptoms away from being sociopathic themselves, with the exception of being able to plan (not impulsive) and answerable to some aspect of society.
Villanelle, not Villanova
I wonder what is the significance of the boy in the park because it seems this show doesn’t do random scenes, everything has a meaning.
Interesting that Villanelle views the stabbing as an intimate act or show of love.
LaNy I was thinking about that scene a lot. I have noticed that Carolyn seems to have an intimate connection with everyone she comes across. Maybe it was to show that Carolyn has an ability to give an impression that she’s close to people when in fact she’s not? Probably reaching here but Carolyn has a way of making people feel like long lost friends when they’re just a random boy in a park. God I love this show!
That’s an excellent point I hadn’t thought of before. It’s very interesting that Eve doesn’t seem to know much of anything about Carolyn after years of working together.
They’re all psychotic, LOL! I love this show too
Actually, Carolyn has only been Eve’s boss for a few months. Eve was in sort of a support branch of MI6 so she would see Carolyn at some meeting but was not part of the super duper secret MI6 stuff. It was at one such meeting during episode one of season one where Even said she thought the assasin that MI6 was a female that she caught Carolyn’s notice and was quickly “promoted”/reassigned to MI6 proper and became an actual spy.
As for the scene with Caroline and the boy, I just took it as Caroline creating a diversion at the park. She gave the appearance of a grandma with a kid rather than two spies meeting to discuss a psychopathic killer. Perhaps it was more than that. But I just took it as her “cover” that was so good even Eve fell for it and played along.
Thanks for that reminder about the first episode. I binged watched season 1 for a refresher but this show has so much going on I can’t keep up because my brain is mush from watching too much mindless Bravo programming
I know! This show is the antidote to Bravo. I stayed up nearly all night writing the recap. Because, thinking is hard when you aren’t used to it. Hopefully it will get easier as the season goes on.
How glorious is Killing Eve? It’s the best TV since Orphan Black. I don’t forget you, Tatiana Maslany! <3
#KillingEve The scenery. The clothes. THE ACTING. The scripts!
Season Two Episode One delivered another riveting hour of television. I could not be more pleased with the way it played out.
We are seeing Eve and Villanelle move closer to being more alike than they are different.
I am seriously intrigued at how much Eve is going to be able to trust her husband Niko. Something felt "off" when he told her that he was not okay with her keeping secrets. There was a brief flash on Eve's face that looked like she was wondering if she could trust him. Do we know how long they've been married? I may try to google that later if no one knows. Others have already commented that no scene is random on this show and I agree. I wonder if the relationship between Eve and Niko is going to implode due to deceit from one or the other or both of them?
The reasons Eve and Villanelle might both be eating sugar are that some people say sugar helps with the after-effects of having been in adrenaline rush and some people say small amounts of sugar help ease pain. Eve definitely experienced heavy-duty adrenaline rush and Villanelle has a high tolerance for pain so sugar helped them both. Eve needed to even herself out and Villanelle needed to staunch pain without the pain meds. I think them both partaking of sugar for their respective physical needs is yet another example of them being more alike than they are different. Eve smacking her hand down on the stray piece of candy made me laugh!
Villanelle snapping Gabriel's neck was as a big an act of compassion as she's capable of at this stage in her life. She is a psychopathic broken-down and then built back up killing machine who is in the throes of severe pain and the clock is ticking for her to extricate herself from this hospital so for her to even consider this young man much less put herself in his place is her digging deep for whatever humanity she still has left.
Ahhhh…Carolyn Martens. So many layers to this character and all of them seem decadently off-kilter! She exhibits so much control that it will be explosive when they finally let her lose it completely.
Villanelle's face while she was putting her feet into the nurse's ugly, battered clogs was priceless!
Eating burgers over the corpse was disgusting and I'd never heard of nor have I have ever experienced hunger when in contact with formaldehyde. And I was exposed to it in 8th grade biology class when I sat right next to the open door where the science teacher kept all of his specimens. But it seems this is legitimate. I did google this because I'd never heard of it. I am chalking it up to learning something new all the time.
I admit I am longing to see Villanelle finally standing in front of an antique armoire so full of delicious couture that she cannot make up her mind about what to wear.
Bring on the rest of Season Two! We are all ready here at Tamara Tattles!
I love this show. Thank you for the re-cap. I knew Gabriel was a goner. I agree with Villanelle that crocks should be banned! I love how Carolyn answers Eve’s questions with a question. Carolyn never will be honest with Eve. I worked in a morgue and it is true…something about autopsies make a person hungry. The police officers who would witness the autopsies would always go out for a big meal after we were done.
That is such a bizarre and interesting thing about the autopsies. Is it only because of the smell or does some type of survival instinct kick in too? Both? It totally goes against how you think you would react in that situation.
Awesome recap for the best show!! I’m so happy it’s back! And thank you for breaking it down, you see so much that I miss.
Thanks TT for mentioning this great show! I sat on my tail yesterday and watched season one. I somehow missed the lack of smell point. Not somehow, I’ve wasted so much time watching non thought provoking housewives shows my brain missed this! Thanks for recapping it. I’ll need it for awhile until my brain catches up with its capabilities. Im actually disappointed I missed a key point. I can always figure out the killers quickly on the ID channel. Now I’ll have to watch it again. Sober.
It took an episode or two for me to pay attention as well. In the first few episodes, the MI6 office and it’s odor problem was a topic of conversation. Carolyn and Kenny both constantly apologized for the smell. A LOT and Eve seemed to have no reaction.
Then in a later episode, Villanelle makes a deadly perfume but doesn’t add any scent because she can’t tell the difference. It really didn’t matter because people have to smell perfume to notice it doesn’t smell like anything so her victim died anyway. You could read into this that Villanelle didn’t add a scent because she wanted her weapon to involve an ability that she lacks. Maybe she feels some kinda way about not being able to smell.
I watched the entire first season yesterday. This show is amazing! Regarding the discussion on the lack of smell as a psychopathic trait, it just occurred to me that Kate from Below Deck has the same issue.
Yes, she does. Everyone without a sense of smell is not a psychopath though. Lot’s of soccer goals lose it when they get their noses broken. Or at least that was their story back in the day… hmmm.
But Kate may have some other traits…
Thanks for recapping!! I don’t have cable anymore so this is my killing eve life line!!! I love the last line so much of why this show is so good
Stinking Hulu won’t air this season till December! What the fuckety fuck? I see you can stream first episode free from BBC America. Now I have to figure out how to do that on the teevee so i can catch up with you all. I am willing to pay for the privilege of watching.
Do you have cable at all? If you have AMC you might find the show on AMC on demand. AMC showed the entire marathon and the first episode of season two .
I quit cable last year. Sparing you the boring details, I spent a frustrating 30 mins finagling and was finally able to stream it through XBox. And no commercials!
Carolyn is the most intriguing and witty character, and always so well turned out. The costumer on this show is brilliant. Cannot wait for Villanelle to be back in the fashionista saddle again.
What’s happening with the rest of the crew? Don’t recall seeing them in the previews.
Nothing much to add that hasn’t been said, but thanks for recapping. I always pick up little bits that I missed from your recaps and the comments.
The hubs and I are now so obsessed with this show. Amazing!
I laughed at the scene with the crocs. That was hilarious! Villanelle will break your neck but can’t stick her foot in a croc.
Broke my heart when she broke his neck. Tragically necessary.
I have spent several hours in the middle of the night cleaning up my season one Killing Eve trying to make it land better in Google searches. I still have a couple more episodes to do. I’d love some more fans of the show here. So if you know anybody…. please send them this way. If you hit the FB and Twitter shares at the bottom of the posts that would help a lot. I need viewers to converse with here! Plus this is a show you don’t have to be embarrassed about watching. 🙂
Also, I am learning a few things rereading the recaps. I have forgotten a lot of things from the first season. Like Anna. Anna was a college professor in the first episode who had an affair with Villanelle while she was a student.
Anna looks a lot like Eve. Villanelle has a hair thing. She likes women with very thick dark hair. Remember, Villanelle fell in love with Eve in the bathroom of the hospital after she murdered five people. Villanelle also has a thing about bathrooms. There was a season one title that was exactly that. She also did the perfume murder in the bathroom and wanted to murder Frank in the bathroom but he convinced her to murder him in the bed instead (while dressed in Eve’s clothes).
She also has a thing for castration. She lobbed Frank’s nob. And she castrated Anna husband before killing him. I am pretty sure that fate awaits darling Niko at some future point.
In other important information, we have a different writer this season. I am a bit uncomfortable with that. I do not like change. But so far, so good.
We have a different writer?! Ha! I was so pleased that it seemed like the dialog in this first episode seemed to keep up with last season’s and was literally thinking, thank god they have the same writers! lol shows what I know.
Thanks TT for the careful attention to this show – I found out about it here, loved the first few recaps and then started watching. Very excited for season 2!
KILLING EVE IS EVERYTHING!!!!! I watch 3 x Housewives for blurghness and shows like Killing Eve for entertainment! I need to go back and binge watch season 1 because did that guy come back?!?!?!?! The one that was hiding at his mum’s?
I’m all for rewatching season one again. But you can save yourself some time, or simply add more information to the experience by clicking here https://tamaratattles.com/category/killing-eve-recaps/ and scrolling to the bottom and reading the posts from the bottom up.
Also, Frank, the guy who was hiding our at this mother’s was castrated and killed and has gone to the afterworld a dickless wonder.