“Killing Eve” Season 4 Showrunner Laura Neal Breaks Down Villanelle And Eve’s Final Scene, And 28 More Moments From Filming

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"I've been such a fan of Phoebe's work, Emerald's work, and of Suzanne's. I think each season has its own distinct flavor. I just feel really privileged to be the last in the line," Laura said.

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"Phoebe's an executive producer on the show still and she's really involved. She made it really clear to me that she was on hand. So that was really nice," Laura began. "But in terms of having discussions with the previous writers about how this season would play out, I was given total freedom to do whatever I wanted with it, which was really nice. It was a huge responsibility, but just really exciting."

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"I wanted to, especially with Villanelle, I wanted to have accelerated her growth," Laura explained. "She says on the bridge, 'I want this all to stop' and that she wants to change. I wanted to accelerate the story into a place where she thinks she's found that and then, obviously, watch that disintegrate in front of our eyes. That felt fun for me to sort of see Villanelle in a new environment. Then, equally with Eve, accelerating her descent into the darkness, I suppose. I enjoyed the idea of hitting the ground running at the start of Season 4."

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"Watching those two actors on screen together and those two characters on screen together is when the show is at its most electric," Laura began. "They're the moments as a viewer that I live for. But also, it's such a balance because you have to earn those moments. If there's too much of it, it's almost like the balloon pops. We had to really weigh up, across the season, how much time we were spending with those two characters on screen together."

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Laura explained, "I think when we came to discuss Episode 8, and we knew this was going to be the final episode, and we knew this was the end of this relationship, it was almost like I just wanted to have my fill of Eve and Villanelle scenes. This was the last time we could ever see these characters interact, and we wanted to make sure that it felt joyful and playful as well. It wasn't just the tragedy of the ending. We had some time to enjoy the two of them together and have fun with them before that happened."

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"Kim and Jodie did so many takes of that. I actually didn't really write that goodbye because I knew that Jodie and Kim wanted to play around with it," Laura said. "I sort of wrote just an outline for that scene and then they just tried lots of different versions on the day. I think that one just works so brilliantly." 

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She explained, "When they eat the curly fries, that was a scene where they played around loads with that bit. I think they really enjoyed doing that and I was happy to let them experiment. I think probably Episode 8 has got quite a lot of just Jodie and Sandra playing and having fun together."

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Laura said, "Referencing that again felt really special to me because that scene at the end of Season 3, Episode 8 was one of my favorite ones too. So that was just a personal moment of taking Eve and Villanelle back to that location."

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"It was really emotional actually discussing that scene, writing it, and filming it. I think it was a one-take one and it was just so electric watching that scene be filmed. I think it was like, We don't need another one. That's the one," Laura said. "I think it felt really special to Sandra and Jodie on the day too, because it felt like such a long time coming. To finally have them come together, that just feels like such a huge moment in the history of the show."

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"We call it the 'piss kiss.' This kiss directly after the piss," Laura said. "I love how understated it is as well. I love that they're just on this grubby roadside and not in a grand moment. It feels kind of like the true spirit of the show."

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Laura recalled being on set, saying, "Their final scene that we shot in the whole show was also the final scene of the story, which I think hardly ever happens. So that felt really special. It was a night shoot and we were at the water tank doing it. It was both emotionally draining and physically draining for both of them. It felt really, really emotional. It was the end of a long shoot and everyone had worked so hard to get to that moment. There was such an energy on set that day and quite a lot of tears when it was all over. It was very surreal watching that underwater stuff get shot and knowing it was Jodie and Sandra's final moments together."

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"Jodie was involved in the conversations. We were talking about the ending, right from the very beginning of planning Season 4. She was involved all the way through. She's been across every single iteration of the ending. It was hard to decide to have Villanelle die at the end because I love Villanelle so much. She's such a joy and such an aspirational character, even though she shouldn't be."

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Laura continued, saying, "The one thing that we felt really sure about is that we wanted her death not to feel morbid, we wanted it to feel triumphant in some way. We liked the idea that in death, Villanelle achieves what she wanted at the start of the season, which was change. We see her rush Eve into the water and that act saves Eve. I think that's a huge moment of triumph for Villanelle and not something that we would ever have thought the Villanelle of Season 1 would've been able to achieve."

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"We discussed all iterations of an ending and there was definitely an ending where we were like, 'Should we give them a happy ending? What would that look like if they ran off into the sunset together?' We talked about if we wanted to end it with us seeing domestic Villanelle and Eve, like eating pizza together on the sofa. I think we decided that that happy ending just wouldn't last very long," Laura said. "In reality, you're there with a psychopath and somebody who's dipped her toe in that world during the last four seasons. It just felt like this was the kind of relationship that was always gonna burn brightly and then combust, rather than one that could settle into something more domestic. That was the decision behind that. I'd rather see them go out in kind of a 'blaze of glory' than do anything normal people would do."

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"That was a deliberate decision that came out of the discussion about the domestic life between Eve and Villanelle," Laura began. "There was a desire to play around with it a bit. So, those moments are a lot of, Look, guys, here's what it would be like to have Eve and Villanelle set up home together. The joy of them is they get to take us out of our domestic lives. We get to live out our darker fantasies through them. It felt like we had to continue that right to the end."

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Speaking about why this moment was cut from the very end, Laura said, "I think you kind of get that feeling in the way the moment is shot. It felt extraneous at the end, but a little bit of me mourns the loss of that scene. We never even filmed it."

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"It felt like the start of that rebirth had to happen slightly before the moment when she comes out of the water, and I think it actually happens when she's dancing," Laura said. "There was a sort of moment where Eve ends up choosing life, even before she's come up from beneath the water. That just feels really poignant to me."

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Laura remembered the conversations with Sandra and the decision to leave Eve out of the massacre, saying, "We had a lot of conversations with Sandra about it, actually, and the change came from those conversations. We were talking about whether Eve could really, really, really truly conduct a kind of massacre. Even though she knows these people are bad people and whether that was true to her nature deep down, and it just felt like a stretch. It felt like something we wanted to see because it's cool, but it wasn't emotionally truthful."

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"That was footage we had from Season 1. So they all didn't come back onto set. I mean, I would've LOVED that, but it would have been hard in COVID times," Laura explained. "We were really lucky we had that footage and it was really clever editing. Stella [Corradi] did a really good job directing that scene and it was just a coming together of various footage to make that moment."

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"We were always obsessed with Bill. I loved that character so much and then also, Bill's death is one of my all-time favorite deaths on Killing Eve. I think it's such a good murder from Villanelle and then I reference it again in Episode 8," Laura said. "It was amazing to be able to see him again. I think it feels appropriate for Eve to kind of weigh up what she's lost on this journey during that moment. Obviously, Bill was the start of it. He was the first thing she lost and then of all the many losses at Villanelle's hands that have come afterwards. It just felt really appropriate to see him there."

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"It was such a joy to work with Fiona. I am, like, Fiona's number one fan," Laura said. "She's always really up for having discussions about Carolyn. She's a joy to collaborate with as well. Carolyn didn't start as a major protagonist, but I think she's really grown into that over the course of four seasons. I feel as invested in her journey as I do with Eve and Villanelle's. It felt really right to have her entwined in the finale."

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"I think it was Jodie and Fiona being like, 'We want to do more stuff together,' and then us as writers wanting to see it too," Laura said. "There's a thread that really links them. I think of all the characters that are similar, Villanelle and Carolyn probably have the most similarities of everybody. It was really exciting for us to put those two characters, whose moral compasses are so skewed, together and see them interact and see them have fun. I could watch all of their scenes together over and over again."

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Laura explained Carolyn's final scenes, saying, "What I love about Carolyn is that just when you think you know her, you're surprised. Just when you think you've got a grip on her, something shifts, and you realize that she's been 10 steps ahead the whole time. We really wanted to make sure that she was unknowable and unpredictable to the end. It gave the illusion that she might retire and settle down now and give this game up, and then you realize that she wants to say 'I've won' at the end of it and that's what's the most important thing for her. Loyalty really doesn't matter to her in that sense." 

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"Carolyn and Villanelle have this really chummy moment in the pub, and Carolyn says to Villanelle, 'I owe you a dare.' It made you think there was a tie between the two of them, like an unbreakable bond, then of course, Carolyn breaks it," Laura said. "It's a real betrayal at the end, but then that's Carolyn." 

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Laura said, "We were so conflicted because, as a writer, I love writing Konstantin and we love Kim [Bodnia] as an actor. He's always such a joy to work with, so even in the writers room, we were like, 'Can we kill him? Do we really want to?' As a character, we always talked about him as being like a cockroach, like he always manages to sort of survive everything that's thrown at him. He's such a self-serving character that he always acts in his best interest and then he ends up wriggling out of things. We really wanted him to have his moment where he can't wriggle out and we see him cornered and a situation that he can't get out of."

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"We spoke about all different versions of his ending and his demise. We wanted to make it feel emotional and we loved this relationship that he's developed with Pam and the fact that she's the one to do it," Laura said. "We spoke about should it be Villanelle? Should it be Carolyn? We spoke about various different iterations of who would be the one to kill him. I think it felt really lovely — in a dark, evil way — that it was Pam because Pam has been so instrumental in Konstantin's emotional growth in Season 4. He started her journey as an assassin, so to then have her come back and punish him for that by killing him felt very appropriate."

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"We didn't want people to watch Season 4 and go, 'Oh, that was the season that was filmed during COVID.' I'm really delighted that it feels congruent with the other seasons. I mean, it was tricky," Laura said. "The truth is that we really couldn't go abroad like we normally do. We had to find creative solutions. All of the crew, the heads of departments, and the production team were incredible at solving some of these things for us. We created locations in Margate, for example. Lots of it is filmed within the M25 [greater London area], but you would never know it. It was really impressive to watch people problem solve in that really difficult period of times where everyone was shooting during COVID."

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"I love when Villanelle says, 'Don't shove the sun,' that was probably my favorite line to write in that episode," Laura said. "I just think that Jodie delivers that so perfectly. Also, Villanelle's tap on the shoulder when Eve gets the death card. It's just a perfect, subtle, Jodie Comer comedic moment. That scene is so fun between Villanelle and Eve. I loved writing that scene and I think they perform it so brilliantly."