Villanelle is one of the main characters of Killing Eve. Without her wild, threatening, and brutal personality, we wouldn’t have the show. She plays the assassin that Eve Polastri is trying to track down with her team at MI6.
However, Eve ends up motivating Villanelle to do many of the absolutely insane things she does. Eve provokes, inspires, and motivates Villanelle to be the no-holds-barred killer that we know her to be today.
It’s the not-so-traditional game of cat and mouse, and Villanelle is always looking to attack her prey in new and exciting ways. It’s tough to pick just ten of her craziest moments in the history of the show, but we’ll attempt to do just that in this definitive ranking of those moments.
When She Broke Into Eve’s House To Have Dinner With Her
In season 1 of Killing Eve, it is clear that Villanelle is developing a serious infatuation with Eve, the MI5 agent who is trying to track down the assassin. There are a lot of close calls where they almost meet until finally, Villanelle takes matters into her own hands.
She ends up breaking into Eve’s home, which, of course, completely throws Eve for a loop and sends her into survival mode. She was ready to fight for her life but then Villanelle made it known she had no intention of hurting her. In fact, she wanted to sit, talk, and eat with her.
It was such an outlandish way for Villanelle to try and get Eve’s attention and we wouldn’t have expected anything different from her, to be honest.
Snapping Gabriel’s Neck At The Hospital
After Eve stabbed Villanelle in Paris in the season one finale, we picked right back up to moments later in the season 2 premiere. Villanelle was struggling to get to the hospital and once she was there, she was attempting to hide her true identity from authorities.
While there, she made a friend with her roommate, Gabriel. He had been disfigured in an accident where he also lost his parents. Once he found out from Villanelle the severity of his disfigurement, he proclaimed he didn’t want to live. Eve consoled him briefly and then promptly snapped his neck to put him out of his misery.
In typical Villanelle fashion, she did so without a second thought.
Staging The Brawl In The Russian Jail
Near the end of the first season, Villanelle is purposefully put into a Russian prison where it just so happens her ex-lover she betrayed, Nadia, is also residing.
Villanelle is under the impression she is there on a mission, and is told to get in the hole by 9 p.m. and is even given Nadia’s cell number to find her. She ends up starting a brawl in the kitchen jail that gets way out of hand, way fast. All of this was to cause a distraction to make it easier for her to get to Nadia and end her life.
Eventually, she ends up in Nadia’s cell and slides out from under her bed, killing her in the next instant.
When She Killed Her New Handler, Anton
When she is being transported from the Russian prison in season one, the van ends up being taken over by The Twelve and she is taken to a building where her new handler, Anton, is waiting.
He is there with a laptop, a suitcase of new clothes, and a postcard from Moscow, showing Villanelle’s new target. He tells her she must complete this assassination by tomorrow and meet him back there, and then hands her a gun.
Villanelle’s reaction? To shoot him in the head, killing him on the spot. She calmly took the postcard and looked up her next target on the laptop as if nothing happened. The only thing crazier than her doing that had to be who her next target was: Konstantin.
Shooting Konstantin
When everything over the course of the first season was beginning to culminate into an action-packed finale, it began with an intense stand-off between Villanelle, Eve, and Konstantin.
Villanelle had kidnapped Konstantin’s daughter in hopes of exchanging her for her passport and money. With his daughter in tow, Villanelle was pointing the gun straight at Konstantin and Eve.
In the end, she got what she wanted and still shot her former handler and friend, Konstantin. She had to complete her job, after all. But it was a moment that had viewers shocked. We only hoped he would survive his wounds…
Kidnapping Eve’s Husband And His Work Friend
Niko Polastri is Eve’s husband, which automatically makes him a thorn in the side of Villanelle. She wants him out of the picture because she is absolutely obsessed with Eve and wants to be with her.
So in season 2, when things are already strained between Niko and Eve and he is moving things into a storage unit with his work friend, Gemma, Villanelle attacks them. After finally getting Niko’s famous shepherd’s pie recipe, she begins to ask if he loves Gemma, who clearly has a crush on him.
Niko says no, that he loves Eve, which does not please Villanelle whatsoever. After being knocked unconscious, Niko wakes up to see Gemma bound and suffocated, horrifyingly.
The Amsterdam Assassination
In an attempt to woo the woman she loves and is obsessed with – Eve – Villanelle staged one of the most theatrical murders ever shown on Killing Eve, which is seriously saying something.
While in Amsterdam’s red-light district, Villanelle dressed up in a sultry costume and donned a pig mask to lure a john into a room with floor-to-ceiling windows for the viewing pleasure of onlookers.
She suspended him upside down before he knew what was coming and gutted him in a showy fashion to get Eve’s attention drawn back to her immediately. It was rather…insane, to put it mildly.
The Killing Of Frank Haleton
Frank Haleton was the boss of Eve and Bill at MI5 before it was ultimately revealed that he was a mole for The Twelve, the same organization that employed Villanelle.
Frank ended up in a safe house that MI5 provided after an assassination attempt was made by The Twelve on his life. While there, Villanelle killed all of the guards and made a spectacle out of killing Frank, once and for all.
It was graphic in nature and it was made obvious by the crime scene that she wanted it to be a painfully brutal death. Mission accomplished, Villanelle.
Luring Bill To The Club To Murder Him
A field agent of MI5, Bill Pargrave is Eve’s partner when we first meet him in season one. They have worked together for over 10 years and have a great working relationship and friendship because of that. But when Eve and Bill started working in a secret assassin tracking unit for MI6 to try to track down Villanelle, things begin to unravel for poor Bill.
In Berlin, while they are investigating a probable crime perpetrated by the assassin, Bill has a sixth sense that he needs to follow a woman who – you guessed it – is Villanelle. Unfortunately for him, she is luring him to a nightclub where she planned to murder him, right there in the middle of the dance floor. It was not only shocking but heartbreaking to lose such a great character.
When She Shot Eve
You might say Eve had this one coming after she left Villanelle for dead in Paris after stabbing her in the season one finale. Villanelle and Eve may be enemies but the two also share a crackling chemistry that is bound to boil over at some point.
In this case, though, it boiled over and burned Eve in the end. While the two were escaping the crime scene they had left behind in Rome, Eve and Villanelle get in a heated discussion that ends with Eve intending to leave Villanelle behind and go back to her life.
Villanelle is not one to take no for an answer so instead, she shoots her. Clearly, if she can’t have Eve, no one will.
