'Killing Eve' Season 4, Episode 3 Recap: "A Rainbow in Beige Boots"
A long time ago — three seasons to be exact — seeing Villanelle walking down the hall pushing a hotel cart was the beginning of the thrill of the hunt, another creative killing by the world's silliest assassin. But Killing Eve is tired, exhausted in fact, as is our killer, a once-fashionista who now grabs a laundry bag of clothes off a door in desperation. There is nothing sexy or forbidden about her break-in to Eve's room, only the limp collapse of someone who thinks they have found sanctuary. But it is an illusion; Eve arrives to see Villanelle's bloody clothes on the floor and sighs, having been here one too many times. She changes clothes and heads out the door, telling Villanelle to take whatever she wants, just get gone.
Eve: You know you can just book a therapist; you don't have to take one hostage.
Let us stop again with the nonsense of the plot details to appreciate the smaller specificities, which the series never fails to knock out of the park. This week, I would like to highlight the soundtrack of this final season, from the show's original songs like "Unloved Heart" and "Strange Effect" to Wargirl's "Sass Girl," which blasts over Pam's body preservation scene. The story may be going round in lazy circles, but it chooses some great earworms. I'm only sorry that there isn't a soundtrack assigned to each in the massive jump around to cover such disparate character threads from Carolyn in Russia to Martin in London.
The series also has figured out it should tell us who these new last-season addition characters are, doing so in large, cheery letters: Pam, Elliot, Yusuf, and Fernanda (Monica Lopera). We already met Pam and Elliot, and their story isn't essential, since Elliott will be dead in ten minutes, and Pam moving on to be Hélène's latest prodigy. But the latter of this group is Eve's new mark, Hélène's ex-girlfriend, who she takes out drinking, and they bond over their respective murderess lovers. She realizes Fernanda was married to a member of the Twelve, so she grabs a photo of her ID to track the man down, along with a newspaper with Villanelle's latest slaughter on the front page before jetting.
Yusuf has his uses other than Eve's eye-candy boy and tracks down Fernanda's ex-husband's identity, one Lars Meier of Havana, Cuba. But, as Carolyn and Hélène have learned, there's already been a Cuban attack on a Russian agent. Unfortunately, though sadistically tortured and left for dead, he survived and is now under the care of the FSB. Carolyn, living something that doesn't begin to come near her best life in Russia, has got another lead — a fourth victim, murdered on a farm, whose death has many of the same hallmarks as Hélène's other victims. But with the victim in Cuba still capable of speech, tho not travel, Carolyn about-faces and tells Vlad to send her to Havana.
Speaking of Martin, a character so unimportant I had no idea what his name was when he first turned up last week, Villanelle has decided to pay him a call. Martin answers the door, expecting Eve. Since Christianity didn't work, she'll try a new religion: therapy. (Sadly, this does not seem to mean we get Jodie Comer in Freud-drag.) Martin gamely attempts a therapy session while under a hostage situation and introduces Villanelle to the concept of the Lunchable. But though Villanelle seems rather incapable of introspection, Martin does manage one profound question for our killer: Why hasn't she killed Eve yet?
How do white men always fail upward? It's the question that must have inspired Konstantin's new position as Mayor of a small Russian town. But even though he's living the high life, with his office managers bringing him homemade sausages, giving him scalp massages, and parading about in mid-priced off the rack suiting, he's not far from Hélène's thoughts. Stuck with Pam, who has now murdered her brother and could rapidly turn into a liability, Hélène calls up Konstantin to take the girl on as his new protege, giving her the position Villanelle was in when this whole thing began.
As for Eve, she gets back to her hotel room, relieved to see Villanelle has gone, despite leaving her bloody clothes behind. That is until she sees that our assassin took her at her "take whatever you want" word, took Eve's iPad, and made the appointment with Martin. Whether it's the pretending to be Eve, the bloody clothes, or all the talk of getting over exes while drinking wine, Eve has an epiphany. Enough is enough. She storms over there as Villanelle has a breakthrough over her feelings for Eve, causing the assassin to go full hostage-taker on Martin, accidentally knocking him out and then dropping him.
As she and Villanelle sit on the couch, with Villanelle insisting the Twelve made her and can unmake her, Eve sighs and reminds everyone of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. She then tells Villanelle she should have done this a long time ago when they first met, as a police SWAT team raids Martin's house. Villanelle is dragged away as Eve smiles grimly. She heads home and calls Hélène to reschedule that dessert. Villanelle may be in prison, but Eve's love affair with dangerous women is still roaming free.
