“The thing about the show is that it walks such a delicate line between hilarious and beautiful and crazy, but also kind of honest,” says head writer Emerald Fennell, who has taken over the season 2 reins from her good friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “We were really conscious of the temptation to be like, ‘Let’s explode a ton of buildings!’ There are some amazing murders because everyone loves murdering people. But we’ve not gone over the top. We’re not going to see [Comer] on a high wire with a machine gun.”

Image zoom Parisa Taghizadeh/BBCAmerica

Instead, Villanelle and Sandra Oh’s MI6 agent Eve Polastri will continue to play out their elaborate dance: a mutual obsession between law enforcer and lawbreaker that has become the series’ irresistible centerpiece — and had its cliff-hanging culmination in Eve stabbing her nemesis-slash-crush in the final moments of season 1. (Spoiler: She survives.)