If you are not watching “Killing Eve,” you are seriously missing out. Also, if you are not watching “Killing Eve,” SPOILER ALERT. Watch the show first and then come immediately back to this page so we can spill some tea and gush about the characters.
Now that the non-believers are gone, OMG! There’s so much to love about this show. First of all, it has Sandra Oh, a fact that makes me break out in hives I’m so excited. Just me? Secondly, it’s gay as hell. And third, it’s all about catching a super skilled queer femme assassin. Villanelle, the assassin in question, is basically the girl of my dreams. (minus the whole murders-people-thing…). In fact, I believe she is the next great queer icon. That’s why I compiled this list of her qualifications so you can start loving her as much as I do.
She Dresses Like A Queer Princess
I mean, wouldn’t you want to be in the middle of Place Vendôme in Paris wearing an expensive bright pink tulle dress paired with beat-up combat boots?! That’s like the queer dream. She’s always running around in a couture or boutique lewk and, like any good ole’ gay, nothing but chapstick and light mascara on her gorgeous face. It’s always fun to see her get mildly annoyed when blood gets on her patently kooky outfit (that likely cost, like, a billion dollars).
Her looks have even inspired a slew of articles dedicated to dressing like Villanelle. She brings an air of beauty, grace, and style to everything she does. Even her kills have excess flair and creativity. She’s a total femme badass with Big Dyke Energy for your nerve. For fans of the Alice Piasecki/Uta Refson (lesbian vampire) relationship storyline on “The L Word,” Villanelle is your total package.
She’s Obsessed With Her Ex And Reenacting Their Psycho-Sexual Power Dynamic In Future Relationships
The great canonically lesbian poet Sappho once wrote (as translated by Anne Carson in “If Not, Winter – Fragments of Sappho”):
“eros shook my/
mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees/
you came and I was crazy for you/
and you cooled my mind that burned with longing”
I believe she was talking about Villanelle’s relationship to her ex and former French and English Teacher, Anna Aanmokoba. Of course, Sappho would have to have been clairvoyant or to have had time-traveling abilities in order for that to be true. But I stand by my belief anyway.
The important thing is: Villanelle is just like us. She has problems letting go and has parlayed those problems into a full-time life path. The big difference between her and us though is that she has a literal body count as well as a romantic one. She’s made a connection between love and murder that hopefully no one who is reading this has. She just can’t seem to resist the cyclical pull of romantic nostalgia– the memory of her first love follows her wherever she goes and is present in her heart no matter whom she’s like “dating” or killing. In that way, she kind of sounds like a villain out of DC Comics. But, in another way she’s just like any other queer. We’re all obsessed with our exes, lez be honest.
She’s Clearly A Leo Sun, Aquarius Moon, Libra Rising, Venus in Cancer, Mars in Leo, Mercury in Taurus, Neptune in Aries, Jupiter in Libra, Lilith in Capricorn, With A North Node In Sagittarius.
Queers love astrology, and Villanelle represents every sign of the whole damn zodiac. She’s all over the place and capable of virtually anything. You can’t pin her down. She’s got lots to do and people to see. She encapsulates so many different aspects of each sign. She’s like a mirage, a vapor, or the sexy steam that lingers over hot springs! HOW GAY IS THAT?! I mean, what more QUEER element can there be than AIR?! Villanelle is like a tall, slender mass of super-mega-hot fluid gay air. You can tell her I said that.
She Tells Girls To “Wear Their Hair Down” Before She Hooks Up With Them
So, I once had a very potent realization in a mirrored underground bar in New York. My ex’s ex was actually a bisexual drug-addict cougar version of Christian Grey from 50 Shades of Grey and that I had no reason to be jealous of her and, in fact, deserved so much better. This was prompted after a drunk 21-year-old showed me her sexts with a 40-year-old lesbian Tinder Match (which, of course, I immediately recognized as my ex’s ex and started forming a migraine. Are you still with me?). In the sexts, a vampy prospective paramour was asking her to “come over and wear [her] hair in a braid for [them].” Reading the sext, I remembered that Christian Grey had, in fact, said the very same thing to Anastasia Steele in 50 Shades of Grey just before he invited her over to his sex dungeon for the first time. The sext was therefore profoundly lame. I found myself cringing so far inward that I practically came out the other end. But, not without first turning to the 21-year-old, gripping both her hands and ominously advising her to “f*ck them and forget them.”
Finishing my drink and cigarette (yes, you could SMOKE in this bar! It was amazing!), I realized something powerful: People that tell you to wear your hair in a certain way before they hook up with you are high-risk applicants and should be approached with extreme caution, if at all. No matter what, if a girl tells you to “wear your hair in a braid” or a “chignon” or a “beehive” before you get to her apartment, she’s a lot. She’s on the same level as girls who only date girls with hair colors that match their skateboard decals or guys who only hit on girls from LA who only speak in baby-talk. Even if she’s just like “I like your hair better up so, I can see your beautiful neck,” watch her. She has wild thoughts and she’s not afraid to think them.
She’s Kinky AF
Villanelle is kinky like a slinky. That’s for sure. I mean, listen. It can be said that on the road to love there are many, many pit stops. In fact, sometimes the road to love can be so filled with pit stops that the final destination becomes as unimportant as the speed limit seems to be. She’ll pin some wayward housewife to the wall, ravaging her in Prague one day and the next she’s onto greener pastures — waking up in bed with two gorgeous model types and bottles of champagne everywhere. Still, as much as she seems to love to “have fun” as she puts it, Villanelle clearly wants to be taken care of. She embodies a kind of mischievous teacher’s pet ethos that’s both disarming and alluring. Being that the character is supposed to be around 25, her most meaningful romances tend to be women significantly older than her. Within those relationships, she seems to enjoy a power and care dynamic that is essentially a mommy-babygirl kink. In a weird way, it’s reciprocated by the girls she’s with — that is, of course, until it isn’t. Being a psychopath, Villanelle inevitably seems to always take things just a step further than they should go and ends up killing someone– which is how most of her romantic relationships “end.”
She’s Dangerously Beautiful
My point is, if Villanelle were a drink, she would almost certainly be a poisoned Cosmopolitan. She’s so bright, pretty, and pink — like a princess — that you forget she’s potent as hell and quite lethal. It’s kind of amazing that we live in a time where someone so subversive could be queer and actually be a sympathetic character that we’re supposed to root for on a mainstream TV show. Of course, she’s a blonde white woman so that kind of factors in. The world’s not exactly quick to question the maleficent nature of whiteness, certainly not in Europe of all places. Anyway, Villanelle’s tastes are varied and adventurous but, always somehow quaint and familial. She is erotically drawn to her kills but always appear familiar to the people she assassinates. It’s as if she relishes in the act of hiding in plain sight and savors the perversity of it all, not just as a fetish, but as literal occupation. Her kills feel more like the beginnings of sex scenes than murders; just with alternate endings. That combined with the fact that she looks like she just stepped off an editorial spread in Marie Claire presents an enchanting mindf*ck.
She Literally Kills People For A Living But Ultimately She’s Just A Love Addict Like Every Other Lez
This is perhaps the gayest thing about her. She’s a certifiable contradiction; a femme fatale just looking for the simple life. Razor-sharp in all her affairs, her wit is literally deadly. But at her core, she’s a jellybean, a total sap, a complete romantic. Plus, being an actual sociopath, she’s shrewdly unapologetic. She’s not embarrassed whenever she falls in love at first sight with an older woman who reminds her of her Language teacher from reform school. She just flips her hair confidently and is like, Woah, that girl is so my type. I’m going to make weirdly intense-but-distant eye contact with her and then disappear enticingly to distract her from the fact that I’m actually stalking her.
Like a true hot gay, she has 0% boundaries while somehow managing to be 100% elusive. The f*ckgirl of our maddest fantasies, her love language is inertia. She’s intrigued therefore she is! She’s bored, therefore she isn’t!
You might be saying to yourself, God, I’m so over that kind of girl! I’m such a grown-up gay now! Who even has time for the Manic Pixie F*ckgirls of the world and all their bullsh*t these days? Well, as a fellow human gay who also has a therapist, I KNOW I DO! *Raises hand emphatically* ME, ME, ME! I HAVE TIME FOR THEIR BULLSHIT! I have all the time in the world and, to be honest, I’m willing to bet you do too. So, let’s just face it: Villanelle is our god now.
What Do You Think?