“I Love You. You’re Mine.”

“I love you. You’re mine.”

When this episode started, from the moment Villanelle said “gentleman” and Eve panicked, and immediately shot to the door, to get to her, to help her, I knew that this final piece of the puzzle would all be driven forward by two things and two things only ; misconstruction and feelings.

Misconstruction. Misunderstanding. Miscommunication.

It’s the biggest, most important part of Eve’s and Villanelle’s relationship, always there, underlying their every interaction, fueled by denial (from Eve) and struggle (from Villanelle). This has been true for a while. I’ve always thought of Eve and Villanelle as two parallel lines. They may be moving towards the same direction, they may be similar, they may be close - but they rarely join at a point. When they try to, something happens, something goes off or something’s missing.

But they do clash, eventually.

This has happened only two times in this show : in the first season finale, when they meet at a point - quite literally, the pointy end of Villanelle’s knife as it’s plunged straight into her gut by Eve herself, and now, in the second season finale, as Villanelle’s emotion drains from her eyes and she pulls the trigger coldly, Eve falling to her demise.

And to get there, to Villanelle shooting the only thing she truly seems like she ever cared for, we are driven by a series of misunderstandings. The epitome of two characters not being on the same page.

From the start, Eve runs to Villanelle to save her, but Villanelle never really intended to be rescued. Eve thinks Villanelle could kill her, but Villanelle was never planning that even when she asked her. Eve is worried, she wants to run to get help, to save the mission but Villanelle has moved on, she’s ready to leave it all behind already, grab Eve and just go. And then Eve stops, and she shouts at Villanelle, and Villanelle realizes that they’re very much not on the same page, so she also stops. She makes an effort, she wants to join Eve, clash into one. But Eve then moves forward, literally leaving Villanelle behind, to meet later.

Later. They see each other again. Villanelle is being choked to death, and Eve has to make a choice, a terrible choice, and Villanelle manipulates her into finishing the job. When Eve does it, we realize that she’s never looked more like Villanelle, she’s never felt more like Villanelle, and Villanelle feels the same, gets excited. In so many ways, they’re so much closer now than they have ever been, and yet, without realizing it, Villanelle has literally never been further from Eve. Moving too fast, moving on already (“slow down” Eve said), because again, there’s a massive misconstruction there : Villanelle thought that Eve was ready to feel a life lose its light underneath her, but Eve is lost, afloat, blank. Her world is crumbling underneath her feet and Villanelle, though tedious in her efforts to anchor Eve to reality, to meet her at one point, to finally leave the parallels and just be, fails, (notice how Villanelle tried to touch Eve several times, leaned in, smiled, and Eve rejected her) because the distance between them, inadvertently, is too big now.

Later. Villanelle is moving, and so is Eve. Villanelle thinks that Eve is moving with her, that they’re together, that they’ve met at that point when she offers dinner and Eve answers, simply, “spagghetti”. And though she realizes that not everything is okay, she believes that everything will be okay.

But Eve doesn’t. Eve is going through the motions; in reality she’s not even there with Villanelle, but mechanically, she’s moving.

And then. Boy… oh boy.

What leads to the showdown between her and Villanelle is one more, one last, goddamn misunderstanding. This time, we know this misconstruction, we’re familiar with it. It has been there since day one. The whole show is built on it.

“I love you. You love me. You’re mine.”

Villanelle does love Eve. Villanelle thinks Eve loves Villanelle. She’s drawn connections. She’s perceived their relationship as one thing, she’s calculated every interaction the only way she knows, she shows her care the only way she knows, she thinks she did Eve a favour. She doesn’t understand why Eve is angry. She doesn’t understand why Eve rejects her. She doesn’t understand.

She thought it would be okay.

But Eve knows it won’t. Eve doesn’t see what Villanelle feels as love. Eve doesn’t feel good about killing the man. Eve does not know what she feels for Villanelle. Eve was not ready, and she’s not ready to run away with Villanelle either (denial) while Villanelle is clearly rushing to catch up, to find Eve, to get to that single, mutual point, before she loses Eve. You can see the clogs turn in her mind (struggle).

She screams, she shouts at Eve, she’s trying to figure it out, she’s trying to find the glitch in the plan, the miscalculation. She’s trying.

But they’re too far away now. Once more, Eve, in her own attempts to interpret the situation, to understand it, misconstrues. She tells Villanelle she got what she wanted, that they’re same now. But Villanelle hasn’t got what she wanted. Sure she thinks they were the same and she loves that, but what she really wants, is Eve.

And when Eve walks away, unresponsive to Villanelle, telling her that she doesn’t understand what love is, crying, ignoring Villanelle’s plea, for the first time in so LONG they are finally on the same page.

It’s not going to be okay. They are parallel lines, they are too far away, they can see the burning bridge between them now.

And when Villanelle realizes, when Villanelle finally catches up, she feels it, and she does what she does best. She shoots. Her eyes follows Eve’s body as it crashes to the floor. And in that moment, in that one single most painful moment I’ve had to experience from a TV show in AGES, the two of them clash, they finally meet in one point, ironically, a point we, as viewers never wanted them to reach and even more ironically, a point they’ve met at before, a season ago.

True to her character till the end, Villanelle walks away (again), and the lines brutally separate (again).

We are left behind to pick the shattered pieces of our own hearts and wait a year for those lines to ever have the sliver of a chance to get back to each other again.

…Good luck lads.