okay round fucking 2 because tumblr deleted my first ginormous dissertation: this ending was perfect actually for Villanelle and Eve because, and hear me out…they weren’t ready to run away together yet. because power dynamics.

Basically, my entire premise is this: Villanelle knows she’s dark and more importantly, she knows she’s in love (or her idea of love) with Eve. Eve, in contrast, knows jack shit. This puts them on unequal footing as partners and lovers.

Let’s start with our fav dumbass Eve Polastri, who despite stabbing herself in the thigh, despite having an intricate plot on how to kill her husband, despite chasing an assassin across the globe, thinks of herself still as maybe not morally good, but definitely not bad. Look at, for example, the way her “morning-after” with Villanelle is lit.

This is some romantic lighting folks. Eve is still in this fantasy-land of what her experiences are with Villanelle. She doesn’t think this is real yet. She doesn’t know how dark she is–her leaving Hugo was an act of instinct, and even when she watched Niko leave it still didn’t seem real. She was even a poor killer and her first strike at Raymond was a hatchet job (pun intended).

Even when she watches Niko leave, her instinct is to say “don’t leave me alone.” This hot mess is scared of her own thoughts and her own mind–as she should be, but that’s another topic. She is less reliant on Niko as a person and more of a grounding tool, but also he keeps her from thinking too much about how dark she is and finally understanding it.

I’d even further argue that Eve is a shitty-ass narrator. We, as an audience, have had a more objective view of her descent into darkness, and we know it’s happening (partially because of our third person POV, where we see the clear parallels to Villanelle’s arc, but also partially because, as above, Eve is an unreliable narrator). Eve’s stroking of her lip after Villanelle’s lipstick cuts her? Its unreal babes. It’s unreal for us, because we see the parallel to Villanelle sad crying, but also unreal because Eve doesn’t take any fucking time to process what she’s feeling.

I mean look at this shit. Eve is using Villanelle as a fucking gauge for her actions. She don’t know anymore. She’s so unsure of what is appropriate, what is morally good, that she uses Villanelle as a gauge, and this leads to my second point: Villanelle has spent the entire time manipulating Eve.

Let’s start with Villanelle’s actions: she kills Gemma, pushes Niko away from Eve by forcing him to confront Eve’s darkness (which like, Eve, you dumbass, even your husband knows how dark you are), and spends the entire arc of the episode pushing Eve into killing a man. We as an audience knew that Eve was gonna get there, but our fav dumbass Polastri sure as hell did not. Villanelle does all of the manipulating here, and that’s not fair. I want to see an equally dark!manipulative relationship, one where they both know how intense the other one is and leans into it.

Let’s also go into Villanelle’s emotions. This dumb gay has spent the entire season fulfilling her character arc of falling the fuck in love with Eve (or her definition of falling in love). She sends Eve flowers, she writes her “darling Eve,” she tells Eve that she loves her. Villanelle knows how much she feels for Eve while Eve is still doing that dumb Plato in the cave allegory of staring at shadows on the wall instead of the real fucking thing.

Even before this season, in season 1, we see Villanelle’s awareness of her own darkness. She’s killing and murdering people, for goodness sakes, and loves it. She knows she’s on the psychopathy scale somewhere. She knows she’s not good and she’s okay with it. Meanwhile Eve is still basking in this giant hot air balloon of delusion that she’s normal. Villanelle, at least, knows better.

I want more. I want Eve to fully realize her darkness, to be as manipulative and as terrifying, if not more so, than Villanelle. I want them to bask in each other’s shadows and go tap tap tap on windows at night. Right now, their dynamics are off, and if they had run off together, my vag would be happy but my brain sad because they aren’t there yet. Villanelle would have, as she said, had to take care of Eve, and that’s not right or fair. They should be equals in this relationship, and I want them to get there before we get our happy Alaskan ending.





tl;dr: give me my 100k word slow burn fic played out in excruciating detail WE ARE HERE TO STAY