‘Killing Eve’ Season 2 Finale ‘You’re Mine’ Recap: Pawns and Compromise

While the season one finale was a slight slap to the face, the season two finale of Killing Eve is a punch in the gut. All the tensions of season two have been building up to this moment, and Killing Eve delivered magnificently. Though the series has come face to face with hiccups of predictability, “You’re Mine” did an excellent job of turning all that around. After this episode, you’ll just want to sit down, breathe, and try to wrap your head around everything. With this, it seems like we’re finally getting closer to the big guns and veering away from the little crimes that have previously dominated the show.

In this week’s episode of Killing Eve, Eve (Sandra Oh) finds the mission compromised after Villanelle (Jodie Comer) does what she wasn’t supposed to do. This leads to Eve trying to salvage her operation only to find that with the failure of her mission comes the success of another. It was all a setup. Eve and Villanelle were all pawns in a game they didn’t know they were playing.

Mission Compromised

The morning after Eve, Hugo (Edward Bluemel), and Villanelle’s indirect threesome, Villanelle snoops around Aaron’s (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) Palazzo. She enters his room to find the videos he keeps from his hidden cameras, including a library of his own murders. Even to Villanelle, it was quite appalling. Meanwhile, Hugo proves to be intolerable to Eve so, she sends him out of their hotel room. As Eve gets back to work, she hears Villanelle utter their safe word. She stands to call Hugo but hears a loud thud outside. In a panic, she hides under the bed.

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A man with a gun enters the room. And after a bit of quick snooping, he leaves. Eve comes out to find Hugo bleeding on the ground. But, she leaves him there, pleading for her to stay, as she goes down to find help then go to Villanelle. Unfortunately, one of the gunman’s buddies comes striding back into the lobby. To save her skin, Eve poses as the front desk woman. She manages to get through it with no hitches and even scores a date with the guy.

After the guy leaves, Eve picks up a maids uniform from the staff cupboard and heads to Peel’s palazzo as a laundry lady. But, she quickly finds out that it was all a ruse. As Aaron welcomes a confused Eve, Villanelle reveals her real accent. She also brings up Aaron’s murder clips. To her surprise, instead of hanging her for it, Aaron offers Villanelle a job. As she seems to consider it, Aaron points to Eve as her first job. Villanelle picks up the steak knife, and to Eve’s great surprise, the assassin slices Aaron’s throat instead. Then, she makes him watch his own death in his mirror. As the life drains out of him, a smile creeps up to his lips.

Little Pawns

In light of Villanelle’s decision, Eve starts panicking. So, Villanelle gives Eve a nice good slap to get her back to her senses. Once she’s thinking straight, Eve tells Villanelle that they have to grab the recordings back from the hotel. Villanelle thinks otherwise but, in the end, she agrees to find them a ride and wait for Eve.

Gareth Gatrell/BBC America

Arriving at the hotel, Eve finds the floor cleaned up as well as their room. Just as she starts to break down, someone knocks on the door. And Eve opens it to find Carolyn (Fiona Shaw). Eve immediately spills everything. But, she’s surprised to find Carolyn relieved of Aaron’s death despite her specific instructions not to kill him. She’s also surprised to find that it was MI6 that did the cleanup. That’s when she realized that that was the whole plan all along, to prompt Villanelle to kill Aaron, then to use her as the scapegoat. Eve was just the pawn used to get Villanelle there. After all, the operation was her whole idea. Because of this, Eve indirectly quits the job. Eve also threatens to tell Kenny the truth but, Carolyn doesn’t have anything to fear. Kenny already knows. He’s even part of the cleanup operation.

Meanwhile, Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) also has his own goodbyes to say. While Villanelle’s out scavenging a ride, he offers her one to her surprise. Then, he prompts her to leave Eve for her own safety. As Konstantin explains, Villanelle starts putting two and two together to realize that she and Eve were set up. As she processes the information, she also realizes that Konstantin betrayed her in exchange for his family. No matter what Konstantin says, Villanelle insists that she and Eve are the same. And after one last threat from Villanelle, the two part ways.

One and the Same

Impatient for Eve, Villanelle enters the hotel taking a small handgun from the car’s dashboard with her. Once she gets there, she finds Raymond, her old handler, waiting for her on Eve’s floor with an ax in his hands. He makes it perfectly clear he’s intent on killing her. But, before that, he takes the stakes up higher. If Villanelle correctly guesses which room Eve’s in, she could have Eve. If she doesn’t, Eve goes down with her.

Villanelle wastes no time guessing, however, and throws the first punch. Surprisingly, Raymond matches up to the assassin’s skills. Blow by blow, they struggle until Raymond gets his hands around Villanelle’s throat. As he continues to choke the life out of her. Villanelle spots Eve picking up the ax Raymond put aside. Instead of going through with it, Eve holds it up in the air and screams for Raymond to stop. Just when it looks like Eve isn’t going to go through with it, she nails the ax on the handlers back. As he falls to the ground, Villanelle instructs her to pull the ax out. Then, she holds up Raymond for Eve to finish the job. It didn’t take too long for Eve to start chopping down.

Killing Eve

Happy with what Eve has come down to, Villanelle quickly comforts the shaken agent. She easily guides her down to the hotel lobby, down the streets, and into an underground passage. Once they reach the end of it, they find the passage blocked with wood. But with Eve’s rage, she easily breaks it all off.

Gareth Gatrell/BBC America

The pair come out to one of Rome’s stadium ruins. And Villanelle immediately starts talking about dinner like she didn’t just come from a gory murder. She even suggests flying abroad for a vacation to which Eve easily agrees. When a group of birds startles the two, Villanelle instinctively brings out her handgun. Once Eve spots it, she comes to her senses again and realizes just how much she has been manipulated.

She rejects Villanelles cajoling. And she proves how she’s not afraid of Villanelle anymore. This time, she can hunt as much as she was preyed on admitting that she’s like Villanelle now. She tries to put the blame on Villanelle but, Villanelle turns the tables insisting that it was Eve’s desire anyway. In desperation, Villanelle declares her love for Eve going so far as to say that she owns Eve. But, Eve harshly rejects her. As Eve turns to go, Villanelle raises her arm, points her gun, and shoots without hesitation leaving Eve bleeding in the desolate ruins.

‘Killing Eve’ Season 2 Overall Verdict

Season 2 of Killing Eve embraces a bigger future than that of Season 1. While the first season of Killing Eve dealt with Eve and Villanelle’s attraction to each other, season 2 explored the consequences of this attraction. And when you have a psychopath and a probable candidate for psychopathy put together, things are bound to get interesting. Killing Eve also never fails to add highly interesting characters into the mix. In fact, it was a delight to see the background of some of them including Villanelle and Aaron Peel. It’s quite a shame the Ghost storyline wasn’t explored a little bit more though.

Aside from that, the writing always keeps you guessing and on the edge of your seat. You never know what game or team someone’s playing for. But, the twists and turns remain anchored on Killing Eve’s two main characters. This factor has given quite the addictive flavor to the show. And it’s what makes season 2 a little tighter, a little tenser, and a lot more thrilling. The finale of Killing Eve might not be as high energy as any other show but, it gives a strange satisfaction that gradually buds into the excitement for the next season. Like always, Killing Eve has given something unpredictable and we’re only waiting for the next surprise.