The Hollywood Reporter speaks with the BBC America drama's cast and writers about bringing a climactic confrontation to life.

[This story contains spoilers for season three, episode three of BBC America's Killing Eve, "Meetings Have Biscuits."] What does power smell like? Ask Killing Eve leads Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), and you may get two very different answers. For Villanelle, the answer is oddly specific: Power smells "like a Roman centurion who is coming across an old foe who in battle once hurt him greatly, but since then...has become Emperor, and is now powerful beyond measure." For Eve, it's a bit more nebulous — but she at least has inhaled a big whiff of Villanelle's definition by the end of "Meetings Have Biscuits," the third installment of the BBC America drama's third season.

READ MORE In both previous seasons of Killing Eve, Eve and Villanelle's first big moments of contact come in the respective year's fifth episodes. For season three, the violent reunion comes two hours earlier than expected, smack dab in the middle of "Meetings Have Biscuits," as they collide on a bus ride in the middle of London. It's hardly a coincidental encounter, of course, as Villanelle is in town on business (business that directly involves Eve's business, in fact), but it's one that sideswipes Eve all the same, leading to the two women brawling in public. "I really wanted them to meet sooner [in the season]," showrunner Suzanne Heathcote tells The Hollywood Reporter about constructing the reunion between Eve and Villanelle. "It needs to catch us unawares in the same way it catches Eve unawares. It's not something we expect at that moment." When she first thought about the circumstances behind the reunion, Heathcote immediately saw it in her head: "I don't know why I saw it on a bus, but for some reason, I did. It's so complex, what they feel toward each other. There's so much anger. Both from Eve, how she feels out of control, all of the things she's done now in her life because of Villanelle. Then there's Villanelle not being in control of that relationship, Eve surviving somehow and defying her. When Villanelle shot Eve at the end of season two, I believe she's shooting her because she's been rejected, but she doesn't really want Eve dead. It's a conflicting action to Villanelle as well. I just felt you can't put all of it in dialogue. It's too big, the way they feel toward each other. It's too visceral. They both have gut-wrenching feelings toward each other: violence, attraction, the draw they have to each other. It felt very natural to me that it would be an almost entirely nonverbal exchange."