When it comes to television, this ethos translates into more women showrunners and directors than ever before, more inclusive casts, and stories that actually prioritize women’s experiences, instead of relegating us to love interests or limiting us to a pornified version of our actual lives, full of sexposition, the male gaze, and drinking wine in the bathtub. Killing Eve‘s co-protagonist assassin Villanelle plays into a certain ironic, misandrist delight. Her first kill that we see is a sex trafficker. The second, a married man, assumes she’s a sex worker and puts his hands on her. She castrates men on more than one occasion. Her initial choice not to kill the girlfriend of a target reads as some sort of feminism or solidarity, though we soon see that Villanelle is no feminist vigilante, no mascot for a cause. But she continues to mock the feminine fragility that others project onto her—whether it be her handler Konstantine, the therapist Konstantin forces her to see, or complete strangers in the course of her kills. When she and her neighbor Sebastien have sex, the roles are entirely reversed: he wants her to slow down, but the encounter is over for her as soon as she’s satisfied. There’s an overall sense of women’s tacit approval of violence toward men, exemplified by the woman who—in the second episode—looks out the window of the city bus and, upon seeing a man covered in blood and begging for help in the window of a nearby office building, simply calls her mother to see if she needs anything from the shop. Even Eve, at first, feels like Villanelle deserves to not be caught, given her sheer skill in the face of law enforcement that continually overlooks her, due to a mixture of incompetence, misogyny and (we eventually learn), treason. The show is also a testament to what can happen in a women-centric workplace that doesn’t ask the typical BS of women. Aside from a very intentional moment in the second episode with Bill, Eve’s longtime work husband and former supervisor, Eve and the women on her team don’t have to tiptoe around the egos of men. When Bill has trouble acclimating to the new power dynamic, Eve confronts him head on. She calls him out on his BS, and he owns up to it. The conversation pivots to a productive one about being as rigorous as possible in their work. During their time working together, we see Bill’s loyalty to Eve, a willingness to take direction from her, and continued mentoring, though from a position of deference. Carolyn’s complete disinterest in small talk or standing on circumstance is fantastic. Carolyn is matter-of-fact and dry in a way that women are so rarely allowed to be. She embodies what so many ambitious women wish they could do: dispense with the niceties and get on with their damn job already. Carolyn would see no need for the “emotional labor” chrome extension, which adds exclamation points to emails. But she also understands the need to play the game, as she does with her Russian counterparts in Episode 6. Carolyn is not a woman who would spend her time making other women feel bad for saying “like,” “um,” “just,” or “sorry” if that’s what it takes to get ahead in this world. Killing Eve feels like a distillation of our current sociopolitical moment as well as the natural next step for pop culture. It checks so many boxes: it’s darkly funny, is escapist yet still thoughtful, boasts much better representation than so much else in the industry, and prioritizes women’s stories told by and for women. Television is not only art that reflects who we are, it’s also an escape. There is so much to escape from right now, in a moment when all we want to do is take down the bad men, burn the system to the ground, and revel in female friendship. Killing Eve couldn’t possibly have come at a better time.
