Killing Eve has become the new Dexter

Pajiba

Season 3 sucked the joy of Eve and and Villanelle’s "once electrically-charged romance, which has not only grown stale, it’s barely even toxic," says Dustin Rowles. He says Killing Eve has begun resembling Dexter, which also had a lot of showrunners and exhausted its groundbreaking premise in two seasons. "Killing Eve is basically the new Dexter," says Rowles. "It is an intense, fantastic drama with an unsustainable premise and too many showrunners and it has been spinning its wheels since the first season finale. It’s a show heading into a fourth season that desperately needs an injection of John Lithgow or its equivalent. It needs to kill Eve or Villanelle and go out on a high note before it wears out its welcome more than it already has, because right now, Killing Eve is lousy. It pains me to say that because Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh, and Fiona Shaw are so very good, but watching these characters spin their wheels and refuse to advance the story enough even to kill off the completely useless Niko is enraging! He serves no purpose! The show is killing time, and while, in theory, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s original idea to swap out female showrunners every season sounds great, in practice it’s a mess. It’s almost as though the showrunners are being tasked with handing the show off to the next showrunner with a clean slate, which is exactly what happened at the end of each season, more or less. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has entrusted Killing Eve with a new showrunner each season on the condition that they return it back to her in the same shape."

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• Killing Eve let Eve circle the drain in Season 3: "What first made Eve and Villanelle’s cat and mouse game so magnetic was the fact that, despite its turbulence, the longing between them was always equal," says Caroline Framke. "For whatever “side” they were on, they shared a fascination with each other that no one else could rival or understand. If Killing Eve wants to keep itself afloat for another season (or more!), it needs to find that balance again — or at the very least, give Eve something more interesting to do than pine for it."
• Killing Eve is spending too much time trying to stretch out the series: "So much of what happens in the finale is about preserving characters and story for future seasons — prolonging the series rather than risk writing it into a corner," says Ben Travers. "That’s a slightly different show than the one audiences were first introduced to, but even (good) broadcast procedurals know they have to be honest to their characters. You can’t feed the audience silly reasons for delaying the inevitable and expect them to keep coming back for more. So just give everyone what they want, and let these two women kiss already."
• Villanelle has millennial burnout: "At first glance, Villanelle is a stereotypical millennial," says Scarlett Harris. "She’s a flighty, fluffy freelancer in an alternative industry with a personality that is not only psychopathic but also at odds with what it means to be an adult. She spends her days shopping and taking up residence in glamorous bachelorette pads across Europe, all bankrolled by The Twelve, the assassin organization she is contracted to. Her storyline this season consists of her striving to 'climb the corporate ladder,' or in her case, rise to the rank of Keeper in a physically demanding industry that sees her as nothing more than a cog in a machine. No wonder she’s burned out."
• Season 3 felt like a transitional season: "The stretch in between the initial version of what Eve and Villanelle are to each other and whatever they’re becoming next"