Julian’s House Of Horrors
After last week’s cliffhanger ending, we return to Killing Eve with Villanelle stepping foot in the UK. As the family she stowed away with go inside their house, Villanelle sneaks out the boot of the car and sleeps in a nearby laundrette for the night. Unfortunately, when she wakes up the medicine she stole has been stolen in a cruel sense of irony. In desperate need of medical attention, she seeks out her next victim in a supermarket. Several failed attempts later, she settles on a man named Julian who takes her back home. A funny joke about cake alleviates the tension here as we see Villanelle begin to weave her spell of flamboyant deception. Still reeling over the events in Paris, Eve returns to work at MI6. After a de-brief with her new team, made up of old and new faces, she does some investigating over what happened in Paris. She finds a story about the boy Villanelle killed last episode and phones through to France to have the crime scene photos sent over. They reveal the boy was holding a half eaten apple – a throwback to the Garden Of Eden and Eve. Sitting back in shocked realization, Eve pieces together what’s happening – Villanelle is calling her out. After a brief scare in the middle of the night with Julian’s mother, Villanelle pretends to be ill im order to coerce Julian to go to the pharmacy and collect medicine for her. Instead, he makes her tea and doubles down on the creepiness. When he leaves the room, Julian’s mum, who has dementia, comes round long enough to tell Villanelle she needs to watch out for him. Unfortunately, Julian locks her in the house while he goes out and, unable to find anything sharp to stab him with, calls an unknown number for help before phoning through and speaking to MI6. Requesting to speak to Eve Polaski, she receives a busy tone instead and hangs up. Eve does ges the message though midway through investigating a string of new murders from another killer code-named Ghost. En-route to the house, Villanelle makes her move and gets into a fight with Julian. After slitting his neck and letting his Mum go free, she wanders down the street while our Russian assassin staggers toward a nearby car waiting for her. Villanelle has a new handler and after bemoaning her sloppiness phoning from an unsecure line, forces her back to headquarters. As they drive away, Eve arrives in time to see Villanelle’s handiwork, narrowly missing her as she speeds away in a car. At this point, Carolyn decides Eve needs protection and she takes her to another house, where Constantin sits waiting for her to arrive and the episode closes out. Much like the first episode, Killing Eve continues to impress. The blend of comedy and drama is really well written here again but it’ll be interesting to see whether this can remain consistent throughout all the episodes. So far though, this second season gets off to a good start and the ending certainly leaves the door wide open for where this story may go.