Today, I want to answer the question: Is the TV show Killing Eve gay, or is it queerbaiting?
Now, if you’re worried about spoilers, this is going to be a mostly spoiler-free video.
I am going to show some clips like this one while I’m talking, but they won’t have
audio or context, and they won’t be from major scenes, so I find it hard to imagine
they could spoil anything for you. I will have one section that is full of spoilers,
but when we get to that point towards the end, I will give you plenty of warning, and
put some timestamps in the description if you want to skip that spoiler-y section.
With that out of the way, I want to explain what queerbaiting is for those who don’t
know. It’s essentially when TV shows or movies promote themselves as having a queer
character, or hint at having a queer character, but then in the actual final product, the
queer character either has such a small role that the audience barely even notices them,
or the character in fact turns out not to be queer at all. This allows the show or movie
to capitalize on getting a large queer audience, while not scaring away the homophobic viewers
who might stop watching if there were out queer characters in the show or movie. Queerbaiting
is something that many LGBTQ+ people are, unfortunately, pretty used to at this point,
and every time, it just becomes more and more frustrating. Because how many times do we
have to be lured in with hints or promises of queerness, only to have it yanked away
from us at the last second? All we’re asking for is the slightest bit of representation,
to see a part of ourselves in the media we consume, and we can barely ever get that.
So, before I get to the main point of this video -- asking whether Killing Eve is actually
queer, or just queerbaiting -- I want to do a little bit of explaining about why I’m
even asking this question in the first place.
I found out about Killing Eve through Twitter. As a queer woman, I follow a lot of other
queer women, and I saw some very excited tweets about a show featuring a complex relationship
between two women, called Killing Eve. I’m not normally into assassin stories given how
extremely squeamish I am when it comes to blood, but I figured I’d give it a try anyway
because it’s not often there’s such a major, popular show where the main characters
are two women with romantic/sexual feelings for each other. So, I got through the first
two seasons pretty quickly, and thankfully, got to the finale of season 2 just days after
it had aired. My experience watching Killing Eve was that it was extremely queer. Like
blatantly, unabashedly, queer. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a fun show, and it delivered
on all the queer hype. Queerbaiting never even crossed my mind. I’ll present some
evidence for this show’s queerness later in the video.
Fast forward about a week, and Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer, the actresses who play the two
main characters, have an interview in The Gay Times. When Oh was asked about the possibility
of a confirmed romance between the two, she said that was a not a “focus or a message”
of the show, and she said “You guys are tricky because you want to make it into something…
but it just isn’t.” In an interview with Radio Times, Comer was asked if the sexual
tension was explicitly referred to in the script or direction, and she said, “It is,
and it isn’t.” She goes on to talk about an episode where they’re lying in bed together,
and she says, “It was written as much closer between them than they were. We were rehearsing
it, and it was like, ‘This is too much, it’s wrong.’ So there was pull-back. The
audience might want it, but you can’t always give them what they want.” And then, Radio
Times did an interview with Mark Freestone, a psychiatrist who worked on Killing Eve to
help them depict Villanelle, who is often described in the show as a psychopath. Freestone
said, “People have kicked the idea around they were lesbian lovers, but that’s simply
another cliché that we all wanted to avoid.” And he goes on to say that Villanelle’s
obsession with Eve “will never end well. No psychopath forms a healthy obsession.”
Now, that’s a lot to take in all at once. And it’s the main reason for why I’m making
this video and asking this question, because I’ve seen so many discussions online about
Killing Eve and queerbaiting in the wake of these articles and interviews. And that makes
sense. After reading all of those articles, I felt like everything they were saying directly
contradicted everything that I -- and many other people -- had seen on screen while watching
Killing Eve. And that’s why I wanted to make this video, because I don’t think the
answer is very clear cut. We have the show telling us one thing, and we have people who
work on the show telling us another thing. So who gets to decide what Killing Eve really is?
The answer to that is annoyingly subjective, and unfortunately, to explain it, I’m gonna
have to bore you with some talk about literary theory really quickly, but hang in there,
because I promise it’s worth it. So, if you were an English major in college or just
took a Literary Theory class, you probably ran up against a discussion of an author’s
intent vs the reader’s interpretation. If a reader interprets some sort of meaning from
the book that the author didn’t intend, is that meaning still real? Or is it nothing
because the author didn’t intend it? If the author intends for the reader to take
away one message but instead the reader takes away a totally different message, what’s
the “real” message of the book? Like with most things, there are many schools of thought
on this, and they’ve been fighting about this for a while. All the way back in 1946,
W K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley wrote an essay called “The Intentional Fallacy”
where they discuss why they believe the author’s intent means nothing. In 1967, Roland Barthes
wrote an essay called “The Death of the Author” in which he argued that the author
is irrelevant, and their work can be interpreted entirely without them. And in 1992, Sean Burke
wrote an entire book called “The Death and Return of the Author” in which he argued
against Barthes, saying that the author is inherently tied to their work. And in 2012,
Crash Course published a video here on YouTube where John Green had this to say about authorial
intent: “Whether an author intended a symbolic resonance to exist in her book is irrelevant.
All that matters is whether it’s there because the book does not exist for the benefit of
the author. The book exists for the benefit of you.”
And that’s basically the camp that I fall into. At the end of the day, I think that
the author and their perspective can be very relevant in trying to understand and interpret
the work in its context, but what that author intends with that work doesn’t really matter,
because if they wanted it to be clearer, they should’ve made it clearer in the text. When
you read a book, the author isn’t sitting over your shoulder explaining things to you.
What meaning you derive from that book comes from the words on the page. And the author
can try to explain that away later, but that’s separate from the work. That’s the author’s
interpretation of the work, but the reader’s interpretation can be different. Basically,
if it’s not in the book, it’s not a part of the book. So unless the author’s explicit
explanations for the meaning are right there on the pages, whatever interviews they do
after the fact don’t change the words on the page. That’s part of the reason that
so many people were upset with JK Rowling saying that Dumbledore was gay after the fact
instead of actually putting it in the books, because if it’s not in the books, it’s
hard to argue that it is actually in the books, even if that’s what the author says she intended.
And all this literary theory stuff can be applied to other kinds of creative works as
well, like TV shows and movies. All story-telling mediums eventually run into the question of
the creator’s intent vs. the audience’s interpretation, and that’s exactly what
we’re running into here with Killing Eve. Myself and many other people originally interpreted
Killing Eve as very very queer, but some of the people who work on that show have since
come out and said, actually, that wasn’t their intent. So which is it? Who is right?
Is it gay, or is it queerbaiting?
Well, it depends on where you stand on the debate of intent vs. interpretation. If you
believe the creator’s intent is the most important thing, then it follows that you
would listen to Oh, Comer, and Freestone, who have all said in interviews afterwards,
in one way or another, that the queerness wasn’t really there. But if you believe
that the audience’s interpretation is the most important thing, then it follows that
you can interpret Killing Eve however you want. And if you saw it as queer, then it
is queer. I sit firmly on the side of the audience’s interpretation, and I still believe
that Killing Eve is extremely queer. But given what some of the people who work on the show
have said, I understand why people would want to listen to their intent, especially given
that Killing Eve has been renewed for a third season and anything could change. This is
a story that isn’t finished yet. But what could potentially make this queerbaiting isn’t
just the fact that some of the people who work on the show have said that it isn’t
really queer while many of us have interpreted it that way, it’s that the show itself has
been marketed by heavily implying that it’s queer.
Let’s go through some of the official billboards for marketing Killing Eve. This one literally
says, “Has anyone seen my girlfriend?” and has Eve responding on the bottom by saying,
“Okay, Villanelle, you got my attention. Let’s talk.” She literally says girlfriend
-- how is that not queer? "I thought you were special." A totally platonic
thing to say to your platonic gal pal. And this one: "I’m going to make you sorry, baby."
Again, “baby” being, apparently, a thing that friends just call each other with no
romantic implication at all? And how about: “Have you told your husband us, Eve?”
There’s no straight way to interpret that! And lastly, this massive billboard of Eve
holding Villanelle with the words, “Sorry, baby” written across them. I can’t think
of a straight explanation for that. That is exactly how two people in a romantic/sexual
relationship are portrayed in advertisements. So it’s not just that we saw queerness in
the show, but that the show’s marketing heavily, heavily implied that it is queer.
And I want to be clear that the queerness in the show was far more than hinted at. Here’s
a montage of just some of the queer moments that I found by quickly skimming back through
the two seasons. And by the way, this is the spoiler-filled section, so if you want to
skip some major spoilers for the first two seasons of Killing Eve, you can use the timestamps
in the description to skip this part. But this part has lots of great gayness, so I
recommend watching it if you’re okay with spoilers.
So, first off, here’s Villanelle staring at Eve for a few seconds and then telling
her to wear her hair down. Here’s Villanelle hooking up with a woman and telling her that
she’s going to call her Eve. Here’s Villanelle wearing Eve’s scarf and having the woman
she hooked up with the night before wear Eve’s clothes. Here’s Villanelle watching Eve
try on dresses. Here’s Eve opening a present from Villanelle that includes a bunch of expensive
clothes that are her size, a perfume, and a note that says “Sorry, baby.” Here’s
Villanelle letting Eve live even though Eve is preventing her from killing her target,
and Villanelle usually does whatever it takes to get her target. Here’s Eve wearing the
perfume, dress, and shoes that Villanelle sent her, and wearing her hair down like Villanelle
likes. Here’s Eve and Villanelle having shepherd's pie together before Villanelle
pins Eve against the fridge and smells the perfume on her neck. Here’s Eve visiting
a woman who Villanelle used to have a thing with, and that woman telling Eve to be careful
because she’s Villanelle’s type. Here’s Eve telling Villanelle that she thinks about
her constantly, specifically about her eyes and mouth, and Villanelle responds by saying
this. “I mean, I masturbate about you a lot.” “Okay, that’s--” “Too much?”
“No, that’s just -- I wasn’t expecting that.” There is absolutely no heterosexual
explanation for that. Here’s Eve and Villanelle lying in bed together, and Eve says she’s
never done anything like this. Here’s Villanelle telling someone in the hospital that she needs
to get back to her girlfriend in London. I mean, she says “mon amie” which just means
friend in French, girlfriend would be “copine” or “petite amie”, but hey, in the translation
that’s built-in to the show, they wrote girlfriend. And there’s three other times
where they’re referred to in English as girlfriends. “Are you going to London now?”
“Yeah.” “To see your girlfriend?” “Mhm.” “We need to respect--” “No,
we need to ask her what the hell she was getting out of my girlfriend.” “I’ll let you
get back to your girlfriend.” Here’s Villanelle convincing another woman to pursue Eve’s
husband so that she can break them up. Here’s Villanelle being disappointed when Eve doesn’t
show up. Here’s Villanelle refusing to kill Eve, even though we’ve never seen her refuse
to kill any of her targets before. Here’s Villanelle holding Eve close and saying, “Will
you give me everything I want?” “Yes.” Here’s Villanelle talking to Eve’s husband
to try and break them up. Here’s Eve’s husband leaving her, and when she says she’s
going to be alone, he says she’s not actually alone, implying that Eve has Villanelle instead
of him. Here’s a woman coming out of Villanelle’s bedroom and thanking her for the sex, so Villanelle
tells Eve not to be jealous. Here’s Eve having sex with someone while listening to
Villanelle masturbating in her earpiece. Here’s Eve leaving her friend to die because Villanelle
might be in trouble. Here’s Villanelle refusing to kill Eve, even when she’s offered everything
she’s ever wanted just to kill her. Here’s Eve axing a man to death just to save Villanelle.
Here’s Eve and Villanelle escaping from everyone, planning to live a normal life in
Alaska together. And here’s Villanelle shouting telling Eve that she loves her. “I love
you!” “No.” “I do.” “You don’t understand what that is.” “I do.” “You’re
mine.” “No.” “You are. You’re mine!” And then shooting her when she refuses to
come with her. Look, I never said it’s a healthy relationship, but it’s definitely
not just platonic. The show makes it very clear that Eve and Villanelle have romantic
and sexual feelings for each other, as you can see from all of those clips. Nobody could
possibly look at all of that and think, “Yup, just two straight women being platonic pals.
Nothing to see here.”
And so, with all of that in mind, the queerness of the show itself and the marketing heavily
implying that the show is queer, I think you can see why the comments that Oh, Comer, and
Freestone made in their interviews were so hurtful to large parts of their audience.
With Oh’s comment especially, when she said, “You guys are tricky because you want to
make it into something… but it just isn’t,” she was saying that we, the queer people in
her audience, wanted there to be something between Eve and Villanelle when there just
wasn’t. But, I think you can see that we had every reason to believe there was something
between Eve and Villanelle. Mainly, all of the marketing and the content of the actual
show. So it feels almost like gaslighting to be told, “No, all that queer stuff you
thought you saw, it’s not actually queer. You’re just making it up because it’s
what you want to see.” Even though we know that the content of the show really is objectively
queer, and the show was marketed towards us as queer. So why are we being told we had
it wrong all along? And with Comer’s comment about how the script had Eve and Villanelle
being closer on the bed, but Oh and Comer decided to pull back -- that only goes to
show that the show was written as queer and that Oh and Comer themselves decided to tone
it down. So it doesn’t seem like the problem is the audience thinking the show is queer;
it seems like the problem is the two main actresses thinking that it’s not. And with
Freestone’s comments about how they wanted to avoid the “cliche of lesbian lovers”,
I would just like to say, what the fuck? Where is this mythical cliche lesbian assassin who
falls in love with the woman trying to track her down? A cliche means it’s overused and
overdone but I’ve never seen a story like this in my life. I’m starting to think that
when it comes to two women being in a relationship, a “cliche” is just an excuse for writers
to avoid queerness. And his comments about Villanelle’s obsession with Eve not ending
well are just bad for the story. Part of the tension in the story is, “Does Villanelle
love Eve or is her obsession something else? And could she eventually learn to love Eve
in a healthy way?” and he just comes out and gives away what he thinks is the answer.
Why kill one of the major sources of tension there? My only hope there is that the consulting
psychiatrist doesn’t actually control the direction of the show, and I want to trust
that the writers and the other people working on the show take Killing Eve in a good direction.
So that’s why these interviews have struck such a cord in the community. This isn’t
your normal queerbaiting situation at all. This is, in my opinion, a very queer show
that needs to stop letting its cast do interviews. Seriously, just please don’t let Oh, Comer,
and Freestone do another round of these crappy interviews when season 3 comes out. The only
reason they should be talking publicly about the show is maybe to apologize to their queer
fans. Because even though I’m a firm believer that a creator’s intent doesn’t matter,
it still sucks for people to see the cast deny the very real queerness that is present
in Killing Eve.
I’m going to stick around for season 3 because I loved the content of Killing Eve. I didn’t
love the after-the-fact commentary, but I’m choosing to ignore it, because it’s not
in the show. Who knows, maybe I’ll come to regret that decision after season 3, but
for now, I’m hopeful that season 3 can do good things, and I’m hopeful that there
are people working on this show who really do want to do good things for the queer community
-- they’re just not the ones giving interviews.
So to answer my question from the beginning, I think Killing Eve is gay, not queerbaiting,
despite the fact that it has many of the telltale signs of queerbaiting. The difference here,
I think, lies in the content of the show. Queerbaiting requires the teasing of queerness
through marketing or subtext, without any real substantial confirmation. Killing Eve,
however, has so much confirmation of queerness in its story. What’s happening here is different.
To oversimplify it: queerbaiting has queer marketing, queer interviews, but non-queer
content. Killing Eve has queer marketing, queer content, but very non-queer interviews.
So I can’t say that it’s queerbaiting -- it’s just a different, separate thing
that still doesn’t feel great.
Anyway, that’s all I had for you today. If you would like to help me continue making
videos like this, I would love your support over on Patreon. You can also subscribe to
this channel and gives this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Thanks so much for watching,
and I’ll see you next time.