It’s hard to call anyone a hero in Killing Eve. As Season 4 begins, they’re all pretty shady characters who act selfishly. Eve endangered her husband Niko to pursue Villanelle, while letting romantic feelings for Villanelle cloud her judgement and get her fired from MI5, resulting in the chaos that was seen in the Season 4 trailer.
But it’s the parents in the show who have been on a whole other level of awful, as seen with Villanelle’s past in Russia. Bad parenting is why she left, shedding her Oksana identity to become an overpowered femme fatale even more unstoppable than Black Widow. However, Carolyn is no model parent either, so with the end growing near, let’s discuss which one of them has done the most damage to the people they were supposed to love.
Konstantin is manipulating assassins and global politics as an agent for The Twelve, but Killing Eve has shown that he has a human side to him, too. He did act as a father to Villanelle in the past, trying to work with Dasha to make Villanelle someone who could function properly in the field and to have more emotion. Of course, that led to Villanelle lashing out and kidnapping Konstantin’s real daughter Irina before shooting Konstantin to teach him a lesson. As sad as it was to see him suffer and think Irina was in danger, he deserved it — it was karma for damaging so many families in his career.
Even though it was funny how Irina bantered with and eventually punched Villanelle, the experience was still traumatic for her. What made it even worse was Konstantin’s treatment of Irina when he got her back. He dropped her with her mom and the woman’s annoying boyfriend, expecting Irina to keep their secret. He didn’t care if Villanelle would track her down to continue getting back at him or if Irina would spill the beans on his spy game — he just hoped the lie of them moving to greener pastures when the war was done would keep her quiet. That’s some terrible parenting.
Konstantin at least made some attempt at a safety net for his daughter; Carolyn just acted robotic, not even mourning when her MI5 agent got killed. Eve realized Carolyn was a worse mom than she was a boss when Kenny got thrown off a building. Carolyn seemed to accept he slipped and fell, ignoring that there were terrorists hunting their unit down or clues that Konstantin was potentially involved. She even let her past romance with Konstantin more or less scratch him off as a suspect, which left Eve understandably angered. Kenny came off like a sacrifice so Carolyn could get the glory, and not caring that her own son was a sacrifice in this sadistic chess game makes Carolyn the worse of two evils.
Carolyn’s been so cold that she even pushed her daughter Geraldine towards possibly liking Konstantin in one of Killing Eve‘s darker story arcs, simply because Geraldine wanted to tick Carolyn off. But Carolyn didn’t care that she was potentially losing a second child — even after Geraldine broke down — because all she wants is to use Eve and get Villanelle under her thumb to play puppet master and take the Twelve down herself. Killing Eve will likely have a tragic ending and the parental figures on the show will contribute to it one way or another — either through their own direct actions or the impressions they’ve left on everyone else.
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