• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 3, 2019

Who is the real star of “Killing Eve”? Is it Eve, played by Sandra Oh? Or is it the villainous Villanelle played by Jodie Comer?

Oh seems to have attracted the lion’s share of the attention in the chatter about this show, even though the show is essentially a two-character drama fairly evenly divided between these two foes. And certainly, in this battle of good vs. evil, Oh’s character of Eve definitely represents the former.

The praise for Sandra Oh’s performance as MI-6 investigator Eve Polastri is certainly well-earned. She’s a great character -- relentless, obsessive and insecure. Just this year, Oh won a SAG Award and a Golden Globe for the role.

But it is also arguable that the part of Villanelle is the juicier of the two roles. This Russian assassin is relentless too -- and also resourceful and ruthless in pursuit of her goals, which are usually deadly.

Naturally the two are on a collision course as Season Two gets underway this weekend on BBC America. As a matter of fact, Season Two starts literally 30 seconds after Season One ended, according to words splashed on screen at the outset of the Season Two premiere.

When Season One ended, Eve had just plunged a long knife up to the hilt in Villanelle’s midsection, and assumed the blow was fatal.

Luckily for Villanelle -- and for fans of “Killing Eve” -- this wound was not mortal. This does not necessarily represent a spoiler because this fact is revealed in about the first minute of the show.

As a critic, the survival of TV characters after attacks that in the real world would almost always prove fatal does sometimes become a tiresome trope of TV dramas. You see this often: A TV drama hero or heroine will dodge a hail of bullets from high-caliber automatic weaponry simply by running and leaping behind some kind of cover such as a couch, for example.

While the TV Blog has no personal experience in this endeavor, moving faster than the speed of bullets does not seem like an ability accessible to ordinary humans when under fire. The chances of surviving a knife plunged into one’s torso would also seem to be slim. 

On the other hand, learning how Villanelle survives and then proceeds to track Eve makes for a very strong foundation on which to build this new season. Which is to say: Villanelle’s survival makes for a better show than her death would have. 

As it happens, in Episode Two of Season Two, Eve and her cohorts discover the presence of another female assassin who plies her trade in quite a different way than Villanelle. So now there are two. Well, as the TV Blog is always fond of saying when it comes to TV assassins: The more the merrier.

“Killing Eve” is a very stylish thriller of a TV drama. May it gain even more fans in Season Two than it had in Season One. That way, we are far more likely to get a Season Three, and possibly more. And that would be just fine.

Season Two of “Killing Eve” starts Sunday (April 7) at 8 p.m. Eastern on BBC America.