okay there is SO much to say about 2x07, but none of you want to read 10k words of analysis, so im going to pick one topic and stick to it (for now). in this post, im going to talk about how this episode is – I believe – a response to: a) villanelle’s season 1 claim that what she wants is, among other things, “someone to watch movies with”, b) eve’s question, “you really don’t feel anything?”, and c) martin’s assertion that to psychopaths, there are only “i / it” relationships.



i think aaron is a fantastic opposite/parallel to villanelle, because i believe that a great antagonist doesn’t just provide practical obstacles in the plot-path of the protagonist, but removes obstacles in their character-path. an example of what i meant by this is that in season 1, villanelle killed bill, killed frank, ruined evidence, impeded the investigation, and messed eve around (obstructing her plot-path). but she also drove eve to confront the (sociopathic) personality traits that she’d been repressing, and helped eve find her sense of purpose, confidence and power (smoothing her character-path). in season 2, however, villanelle has been shifted from an ~antagonist~ (ostensibly, as she doesn’t fully conform to this reductive role) to a protagonist, and aaron replaces her as the mysterious Other. just as we had with eve/villanelle, he is both Like and Not-Like villanelle. it’s the likeness that makes him an interesting (and dangerous) opponent for her, but it’s the not-likeness that’s so significant.

in 2x06, villanelle has her iconic “boredom” speech, and monologues about how nothing makes her feel anything. so at the start of 2x07, eve asks her if that’s all true – although it seemed authentic, it’s fair enough of eve to ask, considering how often and easily villanelle lies while playing her characters, and that villanelle prompts her (“you’ll feel better if you talk about it”). villanelle’s reply is that she doesn’t actually KNOW if she’s telling the truth or not. i don’t think she’s deflecting here; she appears subtly, but genuinely, torn. she DOESN’T know.

she wants to give eve a real answer, but she can’t. this is probably the result of a whole lot of mixed information: she’s obviously been told she’s a psychopath (by lawyers and therapists and fellow prisoners and konstantin, then eve), and she knows she enjoys killing people, controlling them, and she is often bored, too, like she said, but none of those things feels like enough. so she offers eve the most she can give: “i feel things when i’m with you.” and while she definitely means this – we could’ve guessed it, considering the lengths she’ll go to to even end up in the same country as eve – she’s still conflicted.

so then, in the last quarter of 2x07, we get this scene between villanelle and aaron:

he describes them as “voids”, and villanelle doesn’t hesitate before agreeing. she’s a psychopath, right? she must be a void. she’s not “nice and normal”. she doesn’t mind stabbing or suffocating or toying with other people. between her and aaron, there’s this heartbeat of dissonant kinship.



she’s already joked that they might be “soulmates”, so here, she’s just chatting with him. she’s certain they’re fundamentally the same, and there’s not much to be learned from this, so she’s mostly humouring him.



so she asks something out of mild interest, but she thinks she already knows the answer.

“do you ever get lonely?” villanelle does. she finds being cooped up by herself to be tedious, and uses the time to prepare her next interactions – elaborately faking her death for konstantin; planning new presents or tricks or reminders for eve. importantly, in defiance of the “incapable of ‘i / you’ relationships” idea, she is able to apply this notion of isolation to eve. in 2x06, she tells konstantin she’s texting eve “because [eve] might be lonely”. sure, villanelle primarily wants to know how much of an impact she had by killing someone right in front of eve, but she’s not really lying; she can follow and understand the emotional process of “niko left - today’s been a high-stakes day - eve is alone - eve might want somebody to decompress with”. and she feels compelled to offer eve that, to make things better for her.



but:

like i said, villanelle has been trying to reach out on the common ground she percieves them as having. she expects to relate to aaron in every way, because he’s a psychopath, too. except aaron goes on about how he knows so much about people, how he observes them. villanelle often does this as well – stalking eve in clothing stores back in season 1, googling her, watching through her windows, etc. but that’s not even near to enough of eve for villanelle, so her reaction is one of confusion. “you don’t want to talk to them? touch them? sleep with them?“

"god, no.” aaron’s inflection is almost one of disgust, and definitely one of superiority. it’s like she’s asked him if he’s interested in hanging out with rocks. he can’t imagine having any involvement behind mild amusement at the opportunity to manipulate people, like toys. “do you?” he asks.

“yeah! i do. all the time.” it’s an immediate knee-jerk response, and though it’s soft, it’s emphatic. villanelle doesn’t doubt her answer. as the shot pans out, she gives a slight gasp, and almost smiles (mirroring that slight smile through her sobs in amsterdam). aaron remains impassive.



i believe that this exchange is maybe the MOST important of the episode, second only to eve/villanelle’s semi-sex scene. i also believe that it’s this conversation with aaron that leads villanelle to breaching that last unspoken barrier between her and eve.



to be clear, i’m not trying to say villanelle isn’t a psychopath. one revelation does not fifty people un-kill. just a handful of hours before this moment, she murdered gemma with a plastic bag. so i’m not suggesting villanelle is just like any of us. she’s not, eve’s not, and we don’t want them to be.



my point is that this moment clarifies a lot for villanelle. she’s been trying to figure out her own capacity for emotion and connection. one thing that she’s considered a fact about herself since before the pilot is that she “wants someone to watch movies with”. she expresses this desire to eve and konstantin with no hesitation; she’s sure, and this becomes a tacit premise in a lot of her reasoning over the whole show. i suspect villanelle doesn’t have any long-term understanding of what that really means, but she wants it anyway. she also plans most of her life around being able to get closer to eve, whether by teasing her or helping her or steering those in eve’s life to create the required conditions for a confrontation.

which is why aaron telling her he has NO need for human contact is such a big deal. because villanelle obviously DOES. she needs it, she wants it, she always has. anna, eve; villanelle develops romances that run deep – even though she’s no longer obsessed with anna by season 1, she still clearly feels a connection to her, and i don’t think she’d have killed her if anna hadn’t killed herself. then there’s konstantin, and she’s a little shit to him, but she definitely missed him, if the way she ran into his arms in 2x03 after being forced to put up with raymond for ten minutes is any indication. villanelle and konstantin have a rapport, and they trust each other (in that they both know each other well enough to guess when they might betray each other, and can account for it accordingly).



essentially, until now, villanelle has been running with the equation “aaron = psychopath; me = psychopath; thus, aaron = me”. she’d assumed that part of psychopathy was just the level of human interest she has – which is why she doesn’t have an issue telling eve “like us, you mean”, even though eve has a long-term relationship and friends: that amount of involvement is still realistic for them, right? but aaron doesn’t have this need for people. so now, “aaron =/= me” for villanelle.

crucially, this interaction gives villanelle CONTEXT. rather than dealing in absolutes, she now has a spectrum of psychopathy: “aaron –> me –> eve –> carolyn –> konstantin –> etc.” aaron has inadvertently told her that what she feels is real. maybe she’d almost believed that, seeing as psychopaths can’t feel anything, can only have the “i / it”, that what she experienced was an infatuation or illusion (although this was shaken by eve stabbing her and by crying in amsterdam); but here’s aaron confirming that the idea of fascination with/caring for people has never even occurred to him. and it does NOTHING BUT occur to villanelle. eve runs circles around her head.

let’s look at that in practice. aaron’s most significant relationship is with his sister, who he treats like crap. he’s got her babysat, won’t listen to her opinions (“the grownups are talking, amber”), disrespects a friend she likes, calls her a “thickie”. then villanelle, the closest thing he has to a friend – he watches her without her consent, plays dress-up and stay-still like she’s a doll, tells her what she’s going to do (“spit it out”) and instructs her on how she should feel (“you’ll be bored”). but villanelle? her most important relationship is with eve. and sure, she makes really fucked up choices, but she also makes an effort to consider how eve might feel, what eve might want, what might appeal to her. AND, she’s IMPROVED at that. for example, in 1x03, she kills bill to get eve’s attention, but it’s at the price of hurting her. by 2x07, though, villanelle won’t kill niko. it’s mostly selfish – she doesn’t want eve to be mad at her – but if it were aaron, he’d try and force eve to be un-mad somehow, with money or threats, etc. (not that aaron would bother; he wouldn’t mind if she hated him) villanelle, though, she wants eve to ACTUALLY love her, not to HAVE to love her. villanelle is manipulative, obviously (e.g. telling niko that eve stabbed her to cause a rift between them), but she sees these indirect manipulations as a way to arrange things how she wants (it doesn’t really occur that there might be an alternative), and attempts to course-correct when eve sometimes gets upset.



this is huge for villanelle. aaron gives her something NOBODY else can, by being like her, but less like her than she’d believed. the distinction between them might seem minute to viewers who have the full range of emotions/empathy, but for villanelle, that small difference means the world. it means her and eve are REAL, or real enough.



martin said, “don’t add, take away”. but aaron proves that that can be true by degrees; villanelle is dotted with minuses, but fewer minuses than aaron.



this is set up throughout the episode, kicked off thematically by eve’s question, but compounded by aaron’s consistent use of villanelle like a thing. THIS is an “i / it” dynamic. “stay there, exactly like that”. “wear this”. “these are your clothes now”. “we’re leaving”. “you’ll get ice-cream, and i’ll watch you eat it”. to him, villanelle is a totally disposable puppet. but over and over and over we’ve been shown that this ISN’T how villanelle perceives eve, and that’s definitely cemented in amsterdam, when villanelle breaks down over eve “forgetting” her.

aaron, like villanelle, has up until this point mistaken them for exactly alike, but they’ve been miscommunicating all along. at lunch, villanelle said, “i dont like rich men” – meaning, i like women, specifically eve, and i have my own resources. aaron counters, “but you like money”. he’s misinterpreted, and thinks villanelle means, like him, that she never wants to have sex or talk with other humans. instead, he concludes that she likes the material object of money, and the subsequent ability to aquire items which might spark some kind of response – and this lines up with villanelle’s later remark about liking to buy and own things, which aaron recognises in himself. they’re replying to each other, but really, they’re having slightly different conversations.



so what does this mean, overall? we’ve known forever that villanelle wants eve to be the person she “watches movies with”, but this conversation tells villanelle she could maybe be that person to eve, too. villanelle can “love” in her own unique way, can be present. and because eve’s stepping off the ledge and meeting her in the middle, neither of them will have to be anything other than who they actually are. and they can be who they actually are, together.



this analysis got a lot more muddled than i wanted it to, because im a lil wine drunk after haning out with some friends, but i had Thoughts. i have many more Thoughts about the villaneve hookup, hugo, gemma’s death, why aaron is such a creepy villain, carolyn’s plans, etc. but i’ll leave it here for now. i hope this made some sense lmfao.

