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wearevillaneve · 2 years

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Chats with Content Creators: Handl of "Burying Villaneve."

One of the greatest parts of the Killing Eve fandom is there is a multitude of crazy creative content creators (say that five times fast) writing fics, creating videos and art, and just generally doing more to promote the show than the actual executives at Sid Gentle Films, AMC and BBC America are doing. In the aftermath of the terrible bad no good rotten horrible finale of Killing Eve, the fandom has responded with both outrage and indignation as well as artistry and imagination. One of the hottest of hot takes was Burying Villaneve, an illustrated essay on the end of Eve and Villanelle's torrid, but tumultuous relationship and the disturbing way it ended. Created by Hannah Lippard and Laura McLaren, Burying Villaneve is available on Substack and I urge all Killing Eve fans to read it. I sure wish Laura Neal had before she wrote, "Hello, Losers". The following is an interview conducted with Lippard and McLaren.

The Twelve (Questions That Is).

What were your immediate reactions to the Killing Eve finale after that “The End” title card dropped, Villanelle was dead, Eve was destroyed, and the show was over forever? Anger? Disgust? Despair? Frustration?

Laura: I found out about the ending via Twitter because #villanelledead was trending, and so I saw scenes and read tweets about the ending before watching the episode. I thought that would prepare me for how awful it would be, but actually… it was way worse. I personally felt angry, hurt, and also kind of humiliated by the finale. It felt almost comical how ridiculous and pointless the writing was. It felt like a joke was being played on us all. Like I was being laughed at, like we were all being laughed at, for believing in a happy ending.

Hannah: I found out via Laura, but I was still unprepared. I expected it to be horribly sad. And it was, but it was also insulting and mocking. I agree with everything Laura said, basically. I think I was kind of in shock at first, and then I got angrier

2. What is the Handl creative process? Do you come up with a script first and the artwork after or do you jointly collaborate through it all? Bouncing ideas off each other and working out the details as well as any disagreements?

Hannah: We’d never done an essay like this before. I think it started with how disconnected I felt the interviews were from reality. I wanted to write something to show that. Laura thought it was a good idea and she wanted to illustrate it. She also encouraged me to handwrite the text.

Basically, I collected a bunch of quotes from various interviews and then wrote a very rough version of the script. I had a few art ideas but most of them were from Laura when she read the script. I helped with the colours, but otherwise the art is all her. The script also changed based on the art.

3. Why did you choose the graphic essay to respond to Killing Eve’s conclusion?

Laura: We were both pretty pissed off and wanted to express that creatively.

Hannah: We already make comics together so something with both words and pictures was a good fit for us.

4. As we enter the post-KE-era, there have been some remarkable responses to the ugly and unloved end of the show. The “Bury Your Gays Trope at the Bottom of The Thames” billboard, the Killing Eve Open Letter Project, and Burying Villaneve are among some of the most memorable and heartfelt manifestations. What do you think is the best way for the KE fandom to push back against what Laura Neal and Sally Gentle left us with?

Laura: Murder?

Hannah: That would be the Villanelle way. I don’t think I can tell anyone what the correct way to react to this is. I’m glad there have been a variety of responses. I hope everyone continues to push back in the ways they can. The artists make art, the writers write, etc.

5. In the end was Killing Eve guilty or not guilty of queerbaiting and/or homophobia?

Hannah (after discussing with Laura): Homophobia, definitely. I’m not sure if queerbaiting is the right word just because Villanelle and Eve are canonically queer. The queerness of the characters, their relationship, and the show as a whole seemed obvious to me, especially early on.

But then we read the things LN and SWG said and it sounded like they were questioning, even denying Eve’s queerness and the nature of her relationship with Villanelle. So it feels like this is some bizarre new category. Queer denial.

Maybe it’s related to the different standards for cishet vs. queer romance? All straight people have to do is exist in the same room, and creators will talk like their relationship is canon. But a queer couple requires overwhelming evidence.

6. You make some mild criticisms of Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer describing the Eve and Villanelle relationship as “restrictive” and “difficult” respectively. As the faces of the show, do they bear any responsibility for how it ended?

Laura: In my opinion, they have a responsibility to their fans. I’ve seen people on Twitter defending them, like “well, contractually they aren't allowed to say anything” and “Sandra raised her eyebrow a fraction during this interview which CLEARLY implies she HATED the finale! GAY RIGHTS!” and honestly, I get it. Sandra and Jodie are amazingly talented and seem like genuinely nice people… but sadly they are straight. :( And look—if they wanted to speak out about it, they would. Sandra has even said she is happy with the ending. Part of the issue is that these cis straight women are playing queer characters and not fully understanding the responsibility to the LGBTQ community that that entails.

Hannah: Yeah, I agree. Sandra and Jodie did a beautiful job portraying their characters. But if you’re straight and your character is not, you need an awareness of major issues around the representation of your character’s identity. When they called the relationship “restrictive” and “difficult,” I don’t think they were being malicious—they probably hadn’t even heard of queerbaiting. When they said positive things about the finale (or when Sandra proposed Eve’s death) I doubt they knew about Bury Your Gays. But that’s the problem. If they’d researched these tropes, they might not have spoken that way.

Part of me also feels like… look, I know you have contracts and I know you have way less power over the story than someone like Laura Neal, but please, just say something. Jodie and Sandra’s silence reads as them not thinking the situation is important enough to risk speaking up about which… is probably because they’re straight.

But also, KE has a responsibility to the actors. By not having a single Asian writer and sidelining Eve in the later seasons, I think they really failed and disrespected Sandra Oh. Sandra has spoken about how white the set was. So I don’t want to oversimplify the issue of responsibility.

7. Some critics have said Killing Eve is proof that straight writers have no business writing queer-coded characters. Do you agree in the future that iconic queer characters like Villanelle and Eve should be written only by gay writers or predominantly gay writers’ rooms?

Laura: I think anyone can write queer characters. Whether they should is a very different thing. If you want queer characters to be written well then obviously queer writers will be best equipped for that, having understood the history, experienced the tropes first hand, etc. I think straight people can of course write queer characters—they will just need to do a hell of a lot more research and put in more effort to do a good job. It feels kind of like writing a TV show about like… interstellar travel and never even consulting a scientist.

8. We know that Kayleigh Llewellyn was going to be the head writer for KE’s fifth season which would have made her the first open lesbian in the role. What difference do you think that would have made to Villaneve and the show?

Hannah: I think that would have made a massive difference. I find it hard to imagine a lesbian writer framing a lesbian character’s death as “transcendent.” At the same time, I think Kayleigh Llewellyn is the person who shared the photo of the all-white writers’ room, right? Season 4 could’ve been so incredible with a queer Asian woman as head writer!

Laura: Yes yes yes.

9. There was a comment from “Hello, Losers” director Stella Corradi, “The quality of a show cannot always be judged by audience reaction.” In the wake of the overwhelmingly negative reception of the fans and critics to “Hello, Losers” we’ve had nothing but silence from Neal, Gentle, AMC and BBC America. Since the finale Oh hasn’t said much beyond one post-season interview and Comer has been totally silent. Do you think they are all aware of the controversy and are just trying to wait for all of this to blow over?

Laura: I think it would be virtually impossible for them not to have heard any of the criticisms, and they’re choosing to stay silent which just comes across as cowardly, in my opinion. Imagine believing that the quality of your TV show can’t be determined by its audience. Who are you writing the show for, if not the people watching it??

Hannah: Yeah, I can’t imagine how they could be unaware of the controversy at this point. The Killing Eve social media accounts have even been turning off comments on their posts. I expect they’re just staying out of it and hoping it goes away. Which sucks.

10. The essay quotes Neal when she said, “They are destined for different things. Eve is about seeking life. Villanelle is about seeking destruction.” That’s an odd way to look at a show called ‘Killing Eve’ which is about a woman destroying who she was to be who she is, and you respond to Neal as follows: “Is it so terrible to desire destruction anyway? Sometimes destroying one thing makes it possible for something else to live.” Could you expand and explain that quote, as it seems to describe Villanelle, but how it also fits for Eve who also desired destruction as she embraced the true nature that Villanelle showed her she always had?

Hannah: I was thinking of both Eve and Villanelle when I wrote that. Villanelle is more obviously destructive, maybe, but she’s also just looking for someone to watch movies with. Eve has her own destructive impulses from season one, from pressing a knife into her leg to describing how she’d murder her husband to shattering a bus stop window to walking toward the person shooting at her. Surface-level Eve fits into society better than Villanelle and surface-level Villanelle is more chaotic than Eve but on a deeper level, they are very alike.

I grew up in a white Christian community in the southern US. Destruction, violence, conflict, rage, breaking any law—those things were pretty much the worst you could do. They were “bad.” But those things are the main ways people create change on a political level. Similarly, changing how you see and present yourself is a destructive process, even if it’s about embracing your life—Eve couldn’t have become her whole self if she stayed in her marriage with Niko, for example.

So given the way I was raised and the things I’ve learned about myself and the world as an adult, the messages of Killing Eve were really meaningful to me, and the reversal of those messages was horrible.

11. Who was your favorite Killing Eve head writer, which season was the best, and what’s your favorite episode?

Laura: PWB for sure. I think season 1 is by far the best season and one of the greatest seasons of TV we’ve ever had. My favourite episode is episode 5 (“I Have a Thing About Bathrooms”) because of the bathroom/kitchen scene, duh!

Hannah: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, season 1. My favourite episode is 1x02 (“I’ll Deal with Him Later”) because of Villanelle’s pink dress and the scenes at the end of the episode where Eve and Villanelle realize they’ve met each other!

12. What will be the legacy of Killing Eve and has the ending tarnished it?

Hannah: I think the legacy will be that Killing Eve created a magnificent relationship between two queer women, and then they destroyed it (and not the good kind of destruction). They told a story that people could see themselves in, and then told all those people they were wrong—they didn’t deserve happy endings after all.

Laura: I don’t think I could rewatch KE now without thinking about the end. It’s like it cast a shadow over everything. On the bright side, there is a lot of fanfiction that tries to fix the ending (or just ignores it). But it feels a bit like we always have to write our own happy endings instead of getting to watch them on TV, and that’s pretty sad.

Hannah: Thank you for asking us these questions!

Laura: Yes, thank you!

Hannah Lippard and Laura McLaren are Handl and their work can be found on their Substack page.

#killing eve #killing eve analysis #killing eve art #substack #burying villaneve #critical thinking #this is on point #support the creator #the devil works hard but the ke fandom works harder #eve x villanelle #villaneve #villaneve forever

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