However, due to their different outlooks on their personal missions, Eve and Villanelle begin to clash leading them off into their separate directions but both eventually aiming for the same goal, destroying The Twelve.

[10] Sally Woodward Gentle told Backstage that the production "didn't want Villanelle to be like Nikita or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo—that male fantasy version of what a woman who'd come for them might look like.

[13] More cast additions were revealed in November, including Gemma Whelan, Predrag Bjelac, Camille Cottin, Steve Pemberton, Raj Bajaj, Turlough Convery, and Evgenia Dodina.

The Viennese Cafe opening scenes were shot at Bar Garibaldi in Colle di Val d'Elsa, a small hilltop town north west of Siena, Tuscany.

[44] In The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino characterised both Polastri and Villanelle as "deeply strange" and possessed of a "wild, unlikely interior weirdness and flux", writing that it seemed equally possible that they "could team up, or try to kill each other, or fall into bed".

[45] Judy Berman wrote in The New York Times that Agent Polastri tracks assassin Villanelle not as hero and villain but as "two broken women whose flaws bind them together in a twisted pas de deux".

[50] Melanie McFarland wrote in Slate that they are "two of a kind" and "can trust in each other's constancy",[50] with Priscilla Frak writing in The Huffington Post that both women are "fueled by a volatile cocktail of ambition, curiosity and morbid adoration".

[45] Series writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge explained that Polastri has a "sense of self-consciousness and guilt" that cripples her – a perfect counterpoint to Villanelle, who, as Ashley Boucher noted in TheWrap, only does things that might bring joy.

[50] Angelica Jade Bastién wrote in Vulture that, after Villanelle manipulates Polastri into committing a brutal murder, the women are "finally stripped of their proxies, and the electric tension between them is laid bare".

[47][48] BBC America president Sarah Barnett commented that "there is a marvelous sea change happening where we are profoundly shifting away from an invisible, unconscious assumption that the big stories have men at the center, and anything else is a subset of that".

[61] Matt Zoller Seitz noted in Vulture that, even in contrast to films such as Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal in which one lead character is female, the conflict between Polastri and Villanelle is more equal despite the fact one entered as "an MI5 paper-pusher" and the other as an experienced assassin.

[48] Along similar lines, Melanie McFarland wrote in Salon that most feminist narratives are framed in terms of a male-female dynamic, but Polastri and Villanelle explore "patriarchy's impact on the already delicate complexities of female relationships": though sisterhood is powerful, "it's also complicated and devoid of guarantees" and "can be false and a trap".

"[46] Along these lines, Melanie McFarland wrote in Salon that the show's "careful awareness of the love languages of fashion, music and setting all play roles in strengthening (the audience's) affair" with the characters.

[63] Calling Killing Eve a "sexually charged female-buddy-comedy espionage nailbiter", Jenna Scherer wrote in Rolling Stone that the actresses "share a crackling chemistry, one that situates them in a gray realm between bitter enemies and would-be lovers".

[75] Luke Jennings, author of the book series on which the show is based, says that "Clothes reflect her status and independence[...] She doesn't have to conform or please anyone's gaze"; Charlotte Mitchell agrees that "She plays by her own rules".

[80] Jenna Scherer, writing in Rolling Stone, described Killing Eve as "hilarious, bloody, unclassifiable" and idiosyncratic, "a stylish story of obsession and psychopathy that's disarmingly warm and lived-in".

[58] Troy Patterson wrote in The New Yorker that the story discloses "a life independent of genre conventions" and that the triumph of the show's style is its "reconciliation of the outlandish and the intimate", adding that the "Jason Bourne-style escapism of the bare premise, inflected by the assertively odd tone, yields fresh depictions of fear and grief".

[87] In the context of Vulture's selection of Sandra Oh as the best actress on television (June 2018), Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that there was "no precedent" for the "wild extremes" of the show's "comedy and thriller elements".

[62] Hannah Giorgis wrote in The Atlantic that the show's greatest success is "how alluring it makes its villain: to both Eve ... and audiences", and that Villanelle's character subverts feminine stereotypes so as to "carve a jagged space into the serial-killer canon".

The website's critical consensus reads, "With the titillating cat-and-mouse game still rooted at its core, Killing Eve returns for an enthralling second season of considerably higher stakes, hilariously dark humor and a captivating dynamic between characters, solidifying its position as one of the best spy thrillers out.

[82] Chitra Ramaswamy wrote in The Guardian that the show "uproots the tired old sexist tropes of spy thrillers then repots them as feminist in-jokes, patriarchal piss-takes, tasteless murders and blooms of sapphic chemistry".

[88] Describing how Villanelle "does what she always does—exploit society's misogyny by imitating a victim of it"—Emily Nussbaum wrote in The New Yorker that the potent idea that undergirds the show is that "femininity is itself a sort of sociopathy, whose performance, if you truly nail it, might be the source of ultimate power".

[89] Angelica Jade Bastién wrote in Vulture that the second season, with new showrunner Emerald Fennell, "trades in the precise mordant wit of series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge for something more garish and horrifying", further describing the "wild consumption" of food and clothing "that builds into the closest thing the show has come to a genuine sex scene between" the two women.

The website's critical consensus reads, "If Killing Eve's third season doesn't cut quite as deep, it's still a fiendishly delightful showcase for Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh's killer chemistry.

[90][91] The finale was accused of perpetuating the "Bury Your Gays" trope; killing a queer main character moments after she achieved happiness, with no real contextual reason for the death.

[95][96] A series of comments made by Sally Woodward Gentle and showrunner Laura Neal in post-season interviews had referred to the controversial death scene as a sort of "rebirth" for the surviving main character, allowing her to return to a "normal life".

"[100] Prior to filming, and during the George Floyd protests and the resulting re-examining of race relations worldwide, series four generated an earlier backlash when Kayleigh Llewellyn tweeted a screenshot of a Zoom call with the other writers.

"[102] Review aggregator Metacritic reported in early December 2018 that more individual television critics included Killing Eve in their 2018 year-end Top Ten lists than any other show.

[107] The New York Times included Killing Eve in its "Best TV Shows of 2018" list, stating that the series was "infused ... with the brio of a dark comedy, though its hour length marked it as crime drama".

[112] New York magazine's pop culture website Vulture included the series as number seven on Jen Chaney's "10 Best TV Shows of 2018" list, remarking on its immediate and escalating "sense of propulsive daring" and its infusion of "feminine energy".