Killing Eve: Season 3 Premiere Review

There’s just something about this show, isn’t there? The visual decadence, the mysterious storytelling, its enigmatic leads and their delicious chemistry. Where other shows might zig, Killing Eve is well-equipped to zag, given its method of installing a new, female showrunner every season. And in its third outing, the show has given us something worth getting excited over — and a major kick-off episode in which to do it. If you were left wanting after Season 2, fear not: this installment of BBC America’s runaway hit show will leave you fairly satisfied. Picking up an unknown (but seemingly extended) amount of time after Season 2, Killing Eve intriguingly sets up its main questions, mysteries, and players for the forthcoming season fairly quickly. And it’s done with the flair and bombast we’ve come to expect from the series, now in the hands of its latest showrunner, Suzanne Heathcote, who previously worked on Fear the Walking Dead and See. Please note, from here on out, it will be impossible to not divulge spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the premiere yet, turn away now. Though we all know Eve Polastri is doing as well as could be after being shot by Villanelle at the end of Season 2, the murderous fashion slayer seems to be completely unaware that the object of her obsession is alive. In fact, she’s trying to start a new life for herself, before being pulled back into the land of murder-for-hire, only this time it seems the stakes are even higher. We’re introduced to a sort of maternal figure, Dasha, who seems to have made Villanelle in her image. The Russian gymnastics/assassin coach is desperate to get back to the motherland and away from Barcelona — a dream she might be granted if she can bring Villanelle back into the fold. But V wants more than to just be a killer — she wants to be a keeper, a role higher up the ladder than Dasha or even ol’ Konstantin. As each side seems to play the other for control in the situation, it’s clear they’re evenly matched for, at the very least, a lot of fun future-action. The mystery of The Twelve seems alive and well and deepening ever-further, as our heroes have been splintered apart, with deadly ramifications. MI6 has brought in a minder for Carolyn Martens after her and Eve’s unsanctioned runarounds in Rome, and her son Kenny has — like Eve — left the business, seemingly for good. Kenny’s new gig as a writer/reporter seems to hinge on his taking down of The Twelve in print, only by the end of the episode it’s revealed that won’t be happening, after he’s seemingly thrown to his death. This is just one of several twists that lie ahead in the episodes to come (that we will not spoil), as the show finds its rhythm this season as a more serialized procedural with escapist fanfare and a brief exploration of the darker sides of humanity. Though Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh are still as well-matched as ever, this season — and premiere episode — show that the star of Healthcote’s iteration of this story seems to be Comer. The series’ odd bent, its jangling parts, feel better here than they did in Season 2, but that signature, audacious Phoebe Waller-Bridge comedy from Season 1 still feels a bit lacking in the dialogue and details. Perhaps it is unfair to expect such a marker of hers to thread a series made to be baton-passed from season to season, but it is such a huge part of what has made Killing Eve so monumentally loved, especially in its first outing, that you can't help but feel the loss. Still, there’s much to love and delight in when it comes to Season 3, as the show’s deliciously singular style remains intact. Fans will have plenty to chew on when it comes to theories and GIFable moments, and the cat-and-mouse, spy-and-killer game between Oh and Comer may never get old, so long as they keep having this much fun with it. It’s sexy, it’s action-y, it gives us consistently excellent performances: it’s exactly the sort of fun we all need to watch right now.