Killing Eve (2018-2022) was a British spy thriller series that originally aired on BBC America and BBC Three. The hour-long show, which had a lot of black comedy elements as well as drama, enjoyed a four-season run. Originally executive produced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag (2016-2019), the show was based on the Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings. Killing Eve follows along as Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British agent, is tasked with tracking down Villanelle (Jodie Comer), a brilliant, beautiful, and stylish but also psychopathic assassin.
As the chase goes on and Villanelle becomes aware of Eve being in pursuit of her, the two women become obsessed with each other. Eve is usually seen in darker work clothes and wears her wonderful head of black hair long and with waves. Villanelle often wears an assortment of wigs for her jobs, but has long blonde hair and an impeccable, bold fashion style.
In the early seasons, Villanelle is first seen sending a man and a woman home after a ménage à trois. She also has brief encounters with other lovers throughout the series. However, her primary obsession is with Eve — both mentally, as she tracks her, plays mind games, and admires her appearance, particularly her hair, even sending her dresses. This fixation is noticed by her handler, Konstantin (Kim Bodnia), who also observes that Eve resembles a past lover and victim of Villanelle’s.
Eve also has a growing fascination with Villanelle, harboring a morbid fascination with the flair and style of Villanelle’s assassinations as well as seeming to fight off a strange, growing attraction to her, to the point of sometimes ignoring her husband. This comes into particularly sharp relief during a scene in the season two finale when Eve (now separated from Niko) has sex with a co-worker, the whole time secretly keeping an earbud in where she can hear Villanelle’s voice. Eve and Villanelle’s strange push-pull, cat-and-mouse dynamic ends up being the story engine of the series.
While not a main focus, Eve’s superior in the first season, Bill (David Haig), also reveals that while he has a wife and kids now, he also had male lovers while he was stationed in Germany. Unfortunately, in the same episode where he reveals this about himself, he ends up being killed by Villanelle.
All of these characters, while having various moral centers, harbor a variety of hopes, fears, wishes, and dreams, and their character outlines go far beyond their sexualities. As such, especially for the spy and thriller genre, they make for good in-depth forms of bi representation, if not always ethically sound ones.