Killing Eve returns for season three, having missed a trick not putting out a Christmas Eve special.
Everything you need to know about the new season
WITH ITS acclaimed first series, famously exec produced and beautifully written by Phoebe Waller-bridge, Killing Eve was the ultimate cat-and-mouse spy thriller, pitting the entirely relatable intelligence agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) against playful yet psychopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). As soon as series one aired, BBC America, who commissioned the show, ordered a second, then as soon as that slightly less consistently great run arrived, a third got the green light, and the producers established a unique system whereby each season gets a new showrunner. This time it’s Suzanne Heathcote who takes the writer/execproducer role, following on from Emerald Fennell. Here’s everything we know about Heathcote and what to expect in the new series…
THE NEW SHOWRUNNER
Like Waller-bridge, Suzanne Heathcote has a London stage background, and the two met when Heathcote worked for Waller-bridge’s theatre company. She went on to write plays before moving into TV, working on Fear The Walking Dead as Exec Story Editor. Her most recent TV job was writing for the Appletv+ series See,
created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) . For season three of Killing Eve,
Heathcote promises to “take the characters places that no one has seen before”.
THE NEW EVE
Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen season two’s finale, but the mere fact that Sandra Oh appears in these pictures is a spoiler in itself. After a season in which their lives entwined even more closely, Eve is still alive, even though Villanelle thought she shot her dead at the climax of the last series. Eve was also removed from her job at MI6 by her boss Carolyn (Fiona Shaw), so she faces major life decisions. Heathcote says their “estrangement is very real, and Eve’s anger towards Carolyn is significant”. One of the images from season three, which picks up the action six months on from season
two, shows Eve working in a restaurant kitchen, so at least she’s found herself some gainful employment. “She’s very, very good at making dumplings,” says producer Sally Woodward Gentle.
WHERE’S VILLANELLE?
Villanelle is alive and well and now living in Barcelona, dressing as a clown, like you do, and seems to have a new friend, Felix (Stefan Iancu). And he’ll probably get slaughtered by Villanelle, obviously. Jodie Comer says Villanelle, like Eve, thinks she’s starting life afresh. “A big theme for Villanelle is her trying to gauge some sense of control,” the actress explains. “She is a very free spirit, and she always seems to be under the thumb of this higher entity, whoever that may be. She’s really trying to shake that off.” And according to Heathcote, we also see “elements of her character that we’ve never seen before and begin to understand who she is as a person”. She also gets a typically vivid new wardrobe to match what Comer refers to as “her new playground”.
NEW CHARACTERS
Along with the mysterious Felix, there’s a whole bunch of new cast members, led by Dame Harriet Walter, most recently seen in Sky’s amazing The End, plus Gemma Whelan from Game Of Thrones, Inside No. 9’s Steve Pemberton and Danny Sapani (The Crown). The characters they’re playing are being kept under wraps for now, but they’ll all somehow fit into what Woodward Gentle describes as a season “about identity, self-determination and chaos”. A mouthwatering prospect.