Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Killing Eve: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie Review

Geez, talk about false advertising.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III September 1, 2022

BBC's spy thriller series Killing Eve was adored by fans for its potent mixture of black comedy, dramatic twists, and the fierce chemistry between its two lead characters, demure investigator Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and impulsive assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). During the last three seasons, it went through a revolving door of showrunners yet remained a consistently watchable series; highly unpredictable and entertaining, with some elements taken to cartoonish extremes that were best experienced in small doses. This fourth and final season should have been more of the same, sweetened with the promise of a satisfying, succinct send-off for its characters after a grand total of just 32 episodes.

Instead, it easily stands as the weakest run to date, a noticeable step down in overall quality further crippled by one of the least satisfying series finales in recent history. The relative strength of Killing Eve's potent mixture of black comedy and intrigue, which was regularly during its first and second season but traded in for an uneven but fitfully outstanding third year, is dialed back quite a bit as new showrunner Laura Neal (who also wrote or co-wrote half of this season's eight episodes, as well as a few from last year) has obvious trouble finding anything close to a confident groove early on. Season openers "Just Dunk Me" and "Don't Get Eaten" show that Eve and Villanelle have landed in much different places; the former plays a laughably unbelievable badass while the latter attends some kind of rural church retreat and masquerades as an starry-eyed born-again Christian. These two outings could have easily been combined into a single halfway-decent episode; while they admittedly do contain a few genuinely great moments (bearded Villanelle as Jesus is a hoot), they don't represent a confident direction for the entire first quarter of a show's final year.

Neither does the introduction of several new characters, whose sudden and continued appearances mostly just eat up time while the clock ticks away. At least tolerable is Yusuf (Robert Gilbert), Eve's burly co-worker at a private security firm; they establish a casual sexual relationship early on and it's just not believable in the least, nor is the prospect of a guy built like an MMA fighter tapping out to a 50 year-old woman with at least 25% body fat. But the worst -- or at least most unnecessary -- addition to our roster of characters is Pam (Anjana Vasan), an assassin-for-hire moonlighting at a funeral home; her appearances are, for the most part, each more distracting than the last. It's not unreasonable to think that, this late in the game, a show like Killing Eve should be narrowing its field of vision rather than adding new faces, since its biggest draw is the unconventional but understandable attraction between its two leads.

Sadly they don't meet face-to-face all that much during this fourth season and, though their eventual full-on reunion finally happens in series finale "Hello, Losers", it's squandered by awful pacing, a mountain of unresolved plot points, and a totally spoiler-filled sequence of events that collectively destroy any momentum built by Killing Eve's two primary plot points: a long-teased union between Eve and Villanelle, of course, and the wavering mystique surrounding "The Twelve", a mysterious and shadowy group whose balloon of intrigue is popped in record time. Needless to say, these are both handled extremely poorly and were the subject of a vocal fan backlash after the series finale aired, with some even outright begging long-departed series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge to write a better one.

Of course, lots of shows end on a sour note, but it takes a special kind of mishandling to botch one whose total running time barely exceeds a full season's worth of, say, The X-Files or Gilmore Girls, two of many series that likewise buckled after the departure of original creators during or before their last seasons. The obvious weaknesses of Killing Eve's final act may or may not be fatal enough to spoil the series as a whole, but luckily Season 3 ends on a decent enough note that at least those who choose to stop there can at least get something of an open-ended but still tolerable conclusion. But while it's not without a few high points (Jodie Comer's lead performance, obviously, as well as the reliable presence of Fiona Show as Carolyn Mertens, who is reportedly getting a spin-off series), this is inarguably a pretty disappointing stretch of episodes as a whole. AMC Studios' Blu-ray edition follows suit with a complete lack of bonus features, though it at least serves up a solid A/V presentation that meets or exceeds the bar set by earlier releases.

Killing Eve: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I've never been entirely sure of Killing Eve's technical specifics, but it's obvious that this batch of episodes follows the same visual workflow of Season 3, which may or may not have featured a few behind-the-scenes technical upgrades. This seres has always been very stylishly shot and chock full of terrific location footage which captures a wide range of colors, textures, and fine details that all work together to create a strong and memorable atmosphere. Yet the colors continue to look even more pronounced and contrast levels are very strongly defined now -- almost similar to the appearance of 4K with an HDR grade, though of course Blu-ray's limitations can't take full advantage of that -- which gives it a slightly richer and more visual appealing look overall. Skin tones are accurate, colors are evenly saturated with no bleeding, shadow detail is excellent, and the discs are encoded very well; aside from a few stray moments of banding on harsh gradients, there are no compression-related issues to be found. Overall, it's another strong effort that, despite the obvious dip in writing quality this time around, should at least please apologetic fans.

Killing Eve: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Although Killing Eve has always primarily been a dialogue-driven series, its subject matter and strong psychological undertones leave plenty of room for creative sound design such as isolated music cues and distorted effects. Sparse action sequences also sound great with strong channel separation and rear channel support, while low frequency effects are limited but kick in on occasion. Dialogue often balanced evenly with the traditional and diegetic music -- the former is definitely one of the show's strongest highlights, as its music cues establish a perfect tone without being too lyrically on-the-nose. No sync issues or other defects were heard along the way. It may not have the big-screen ambitions of like-minded TV shows, but Killing Eve offers a pleasing mix on Blu-ray that gets the job done just fine.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included; occasional burned-in subtitles also translate foreign dialogue.

Killing Eve: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Killing Eve: Season 4 arrives in a dual-hubbed keepcase with a promotional insert. Perhaps due to the studio's lack of faith in this disappointing season (or maybe just the distribution switch between RLJ Entertainment and AMC Studios), no slipcover is included and no extras are on board either. On almost all counts, a disappointing send-off.

Killing Eve: Season 4 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This fourth and final season of Killing Eve may not be the worst conclusion of a TV series in modern history (way too many to choose from there), but it's a clear step down from earlier years and will mostly likely disappoint those who've come this far. Though not without a few bright spots, it's clear that behind-the-scenes turbulence contributed to this dip in quality and, even ignoring an occasional misfire, its mishandled finale was rightly the subject of major backlash last April. AMC Studios' Blu-ray at least offers a high-quality A/V presentation, but the lack of extras and weakness of its content make Killing Eve: Season 4 worth ignoring for all but the series' most devoted, forgiving fans.