This Again?!
I’m not going to say, “Stop killing your queer characters,” because if we want to be treated equally on screen, character deaths happen. They’re part of television, movies, books, etc. I get that. What I will say, though, is two-fold.
Stop pretending like it’s an original idea that you and only you just thought of.
Stop doing it after they have one actual moment of happiness in their story, like you’re doing us a favor.
This isn’t news at this point, but we’ve had yet another queer character death *checks calendar* … in 2022.
How many times have we said recently, “Didn’t we fight this battle before?” We’re repeatedly having to debate things that we shouldn’t have to or things we’ve already debated and decided on years ago. And now, we’re still here, making one simple request of TV writers: stop burying your gays, specifically, your WLW characters.
I’m not really sure why it’s so hard to keep someone like Villanelle alive at the end. Did anyone who watched the show for years expect a perfect cookie-cutter ending for these two? No. But death? Unnecessary. Write better. And I say this as a writer.
It’s not that hard. If you wrote yourself into a hole, get out of it; we’ve all been there. But you don’t have to kill off a character like this to do it. Would it have been all that bad to end the show with the two of them in a cabin somewhere alone and have a letter show up magically, years later, threatening their lives or saying, “I know what you did last summer,” and their happiness is interrupted while they go hunt down whoever sent it? No, it wouldn’t have.
Could you have sent them on another mission together in a few months? Yup. There are thousands of other options, and no, death wasn’t the right one. It’s not even about serving a community that has been a devoted one to your show. It’s just lazy writing. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that writer’s room. Did someone actually say, “Let’s have Villanelle and Eve kiss. That’ll give them something. Then, we’ll have them shot, and The End, with blood dripping on the screen?” Did they get a cookie after and a pat on the back for having such a “great” idea?
You’re not being inventive. The imagery you created didn’t land. It can’t because you did it wrong... again. When you give us that happy moment between characters we’ve been rooting for and waiting on for years, we’re still there. We’re still in that moment. We’re cheering and happy that it finally happened, and our characters get to be happy… gunshots. Angel wings in blood… we’re not paying attention to. We’re watching the character get shot trying to get to the woman she loves. We’re watching that woman scream for the other. We aren’t paying attention to how cool you