Words Wednesday is a column where I share whatever quote I’m most in love with this week in the hopes that it will make both of us better writers. Whether it be from a book, a movie, or a TV show that’s gotten worse every season and yet I’m still watching, these words rocked me emotionally and I want them to inspire you too.

If you haven’t watched Killing Eve yet, well, honestly you should not. The show was incredible for its first season and watchable in the second, and since then it’s devolved and now here I am writing about the fourth season! I opted not to do recaps for the blog but I do plan on writing a longer review once the season is over because why not. There won’t be any spoilers for the 4th in this post, just in case.

“I think reinvention is a form of avoidance”

Killing Eve

Killing Eve season 4 opens with Eve and Villanelle both living out their own forms of midlife crisis in their own very distinct ways. What both of these ways have in common? An extreme emphasis on reinvention. They both believe themselves to be completely different people than they were when season 3 ended, and they’re both intent on proving that to the other.

The thing is, reinvention isn’t real.

As our good friend the murderer-therapist points out, reinvention is just another form of avoidance. These women are trying to reinvent themselves, but in actuality they’re just avoiding the beast inside of them that they despise.

I think we can all relate to the idea of reinvention being something that we do just to avoid something. If there’s a part of ourselves that we don’t like, we try to “reinvent” ourselves so that we can ignore that piece. It’s so much easier to just become a completely new person than to address our problems head on. We can acknowledge that we have a problem, and even then it can be too difficult to address the source of the problem and find a solution.

But to change completely, to shift ourselves into a new person where that new person is not burdened with the struggles of our past self, that is possible.

It’s even more possible for a person like Villanelle, or like Eve, these people who are adept at avoidance, adept at changing, adept at casting their emotions to the side for the sake of a new project.

The way this line was thrown into the show, it was clearly intentional. We were meant to turn this line over in our brains and relate it to each character on the show. It has been the theme of these first few episodes, and I’m excited to see where it will go.

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