Sandra Oh reveals alternative ending originally planned for ‘Killing Eve’

May 6, 2022

Warning: This article contains “Killing Eve” Season 4 finale spoilers.

Sandra Oh revealed in a recent interview that she had originally pitched a very different ending for her spy thriller TV series “Killing Eve.”

The BBC America show follows the story of bored M15 security officer Eve Polastri, played by Oh. When Polastri is recruited by a special British investigation team and tasked with catching psychopathic assassin Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer, she is thrown into an all-consuming game of cat and mouse. Polastri not only becomes obsessed with catching Villanelle, but she also finds herself dazzled by the killer’s wit and ability to take on multiple personas.

Fans were left devastated last month after witnessing the unexpected death of Villanelle, the main antagonist and Eve Polastri’s love interest, in the show’s fourth and final season.

After completing a mission together, Villanelle and Polastri share a celebratory embrace. Villanelle is shot in the back by an unseen sniper, then grabs Polastri and jumps into the dark waters below. Bullets continue to whizz by, and Villanelle is hit with two fatal ones.

A confused and horrified Polastri watches everything unfold underwater before resurfacing and letting out a final resounding scream.

In an interview with Deadline’s chief film critic and awards columnist Pete Hammond for his video series “The Actor’s Side,” Oh revealed that this was not the intended ending.

“Honestly, it was going to be the other way around,” she said. “When I was talking to Lauren Neal, our head writer… we were chatting about how we were going to end this. I was like, you should kill my character. I thought that was going to be the strongest and most interesting [ending].”

“And not only that, I felt emotionally it was the right place of where I was at, cause at the end of Season 3, I just felt that Eve was getting into a kind of nihilistic place,” she added. “I was like, let’s just continue that line and go straight into it.”

However, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, and the show’s writers told Oh that Eve had to live.

“Eve is the way into this world, she’s our everywoman,” Oh explained. “So it’s kind of really super depressing if she dies. So we switched it around and Jodie [Comer] was very much on board with that.”

“Killing Eve” is an adaptation of author Luke Jenning’s novel series “Villanelle.” The storylines of Oh’s show and Jenning’s books diverged, but the author confirmed that he worked with the show’s creators so that “Killing Eve” would “still share common DNA” with the books.

Jennings wrote an article for The Guardian last month confessing that the show’s finale surprised him, calling it “a punishing of Villanelle and Eve for the bloody, erotically impelled chaos they have caused.” He assured readers, however, that Villanelle will return: “On the page, if not on the screen, she will be back.”

Feature Image via BBC

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