Eve is recruited by MI6 to track down the female assassin in this episode of Killing Eve, while Villanelle finds a way around Konstantin benching her and does something normal (well, normal for her, at least).
“I’ll Deal With Him Later” sees Eve recruit two former co-workers for her new team: Elena, who’s on board as soon as she hears that Carolyn’s involved, and Bill, who has to adjust to no longer being the boss but can also be a voice of reason to try to get Eve to consider theories other than her own.
Killing Eve Series Premiere Recap: Eve and Villanelle’s Game of Cat and Mouse Begins>>>
Unlucky with Eyewitnesses in Bulgaria
A woman on a bus looks up at a building just as a man, his hands bloody, begins banging on one of the windows, but she presumably doesn’t see him since she then calls her mother, not 911. This is Villanelle’s latest victim, whom she stalks as he begs for his life, bringing up his family and offering to pay her.
He even throws a phone at her; it hits her in the face, and he apologizes. “I have absolutely no idea,” she tells him when he asks why she’s doing this before she kills him.
The Inside of Eve’s Brain on a Wall in London
Eve meets Carolyn for breakfast (if gin and tonic can be considered breakfast, but given the topic of conversation, why not?). Her computer and hard drive were swept, and Carolyn knows about her fascination with female assassins.
Why did she gather the specific cases she did? Eve stumbles her way through an answer until Carolyn interrupts and tells her to just say it. She believes there’s a female assassin operating internationally, and while she doesn’t have a signature, she has a style and she’s not slowing down. “She is outsmarting the smartest of us, and for that, she deserves to do or kill whoever the hell she wants. I mean, if she’s not killing me, then, frankly, it’s not my job to care anymore,” Eve says.
That’s where she’s wrong, as Carolyn makes it her job to care by recruiting her for her unofficial unit that’s responsible for tracking down this assassin. Why Eve? Her research, intuition, crazy suggestions and the fact that she’s been fired. So no one caring about what she’s doing make her the right choice.
The unit (made up of Carolyn and Kenny, the computer guy who can find anything, for the moment, until Eve brings on two of her choosing) works out of a small office, and for Eve, it’s like walking into the inside of her brain when she sees their work up on the wall there.
Benched and Normalcy in Paris
After Bulgaria, Konstantin informs Villanelle that she’s getting assessed again. London was supposed to look like a suicide, but people don’t slit their own throats. “It happens,” she argues. After killing four other people? “Slip of the hand.” No more targets, he says, including the next one who has asthma (“I like the breathy ones,” she pouts), until she’s cleared.
And she’s not, not once Konstantin has the man ask if she still has dreams about Anna. “That’s not Anna,” she says of the photo he shows her. She should go home and do something normal, Konstantin suggests, but she distracts him with a hug and grabs the card out of his pocket.
She does do something “normal” — for regular people and for herself. She goes out with a man in her building, Sebastian, and tells him that she was taken off a job (in the perfume industry). He encourages her to show ambition. After minimal small talk, she invites herself back to his apartment, has sex with him and then heads off to her normal: mixing together a fatal perfume and going after a target.
Villanelle poses as a caterer at an event and waits until Carla’s alone in the bathroom. She pretends to have been inspired by her and shows her the perfume she says she made and named after her. She says all the right things, and Carla sprays it on her wrist. She can’t smell anything, she says, before the poison hits her and she collapses.
Villanelle watches her die, then picks up her hand and uses it to wave “bye-bye.”
Quiz: Which Scooby Gang Do You Belong To?>>>
Sulking and Drinking in London
With Bill and Elena, the MI6 unit is complete, and Eve recaps the kills she’s attributing to the female assassin. The only descriptions they have of her are from Kasia and the mafia boss’ wife and grandson. However, Kasia said she was a brunette, while the other two described a blonde woman. She used a disguise, Eve points out the obvious, but Bill wants her to be open to the possibility that this isn’t the work of the same woman.
When Eve steps into the bathroom and fixes her hair in the mirror, she remembers her encounter with the woman in the hospital bathroom and thinks she could be a witness. She has Kenny get the names and photo IDs of all the female nurses working there.
Bill admits that he’s adapting to not being the boss anymore, but he doesn’t see why she’s so focused on the assassin and not who’s running her. Those people are powerful and completely invisible, Eve explains. She is the only visible contact, and focusing on her can lead to them. They either trained her or found her. She scores high on the psychopathy scale and probably killed before she was paid to, Eve determines.
That leads to another search for Kenny — of any women in the world who were detained, hospitalized or whispered about displaying violent or psychopathic tendencies between the ages of 16 and 45. That’s … going to take time.
Eve has Elena trick Frank into meeting her for a drink (and, no, not to express sympathy for his dead wife, as he’d thought she would at some point) so she and Bill can grill him about the so-called CCTV footage from Vienna. It doesn’t exist, he confesses, but he was so sick of Eve’s conspiracy theories.
Truth and Discoveries
Eve doesn’t even last an episode before she tells Niko that she’s working for MI6 and she was right about the assassin. She’s sure she wants to do this, she tells him. The woman’s killing people. She doesn’t answer when he asks if that’s why she wants to do it.
Meanwhile, Konstantin’s angry that Villanelle disobeyed him and pins her to the wall by her throat. Sebastian stops by (and they pretend that Konstantin is her brother) and asks about her job and her perfume. Villanelle sends him on his way, but she doesn’t see him see the perfume bottle in her bag and pick it up on his way out.
She needs to deal with him, Konstantin tells her before revealing why he benched her: a woman in London is leading a department just to find her. It’s a closed operation, and they don’t know what they know yet. She needs to be subtle, he says. What’s the woman’s name? she asks. Eve Polastri, he tells her. They’re just about to enjoy some champagne when they hear the sound of a body drop. Just outside her apartment is Sebastian’s dead body, the perfume next to him. “Dealt with,” she says.
Villanelle then looks up Eve and, after finding a photo of her, recognizes her from the hospital bathroom.
Eve has a similar revelation about that encounter when she can’t find that woman in any of the photos of the hospital nurses. “I think I’ve met her,” she tells Bill.
What did you think of the second episode? Is Killing Eve already on your must-watch list? What do you think of Villanelle’s methods of murder so far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Killing Eve season 1 airs Sundays at 8/7c on BBC America. Want more news? Like BuddyTV’s Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of BBC America)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
If it’s on TV — especially if it’s a procedural or superhero show — chances are Meredith watches it. She has a love for all things fiction, starting from a young age with ER and The X-Files on the small screen and the Nancy Drew books. Arrow kicked off the Arrowverse and her true passion for all things heroes. She’s enjoyed getting into the minds of serial killers since Criminal Minds, so it should be no surprise that her latest obsession is Prodigal Son.
