‘Killing Eve’ Showrunner Explains [SPOILER]’s Shocking Premiere Death: “No One is Safe”

The Killing Eve Season 3 premiere does something that we’ve hitherto only seen done in South Park. By that, I mean…

*SPOILER ALERT!!!*

OH MY GOD, THEY KILLED KENNY!

Yes, it’s true. Killing Eve killed off longtime fan favorite character Kenny (Sean Delaney) in the final moments of the Killing Eve Season 3 premiere. After retiring from MI-6, Kenny became a journalist working for an alternative publication called the Bitter Pill. There, he kept some of his old files on the Twelve, but he spent more time keeping tabs on a recovering Eve (Sandra Oh). In fact, it seemed that after the events of Killing Eve Season 2, Kenny was Eve’s only close friend.

Still bruised physically and emotionally from her last encounter with Villanelle (Jodie Comer), Eve has been laying low in London. She’s been happily working as a cook even as Carolyn (Fiona Shaw) has been attempting to lure her back to MI-6. When Eve eventually agrees to meet Kenny for drinks, she is shocked to arrive at the Bitter Pill offices to find no Kenny. That is when she realizes that he has been apparently thrown off the building’s roof by an assassin.

Kenny’s death is shocking and terrible in a way that evokes Villanelle’s sudden slaying of Eve’s former best friend and coworker Frank (Darren Boyd) in Season 1. It also carries serious ramifications for the rest of Killing Eve Season 3.

Last week, Decider spoke with Killing Eve Season 3 showrunner Suzanne Heathcote about the decision to kill Kenny this early on in the season. She explained that the death didn’t come without a lot of careful consideration.

“These decisions are never decisions you take lightly,” Heathcote said. “There’s always a lot of discussion that goes into them. And it’s tough because Sean’s a fantastic actor and Kenny’s a beloved character. The combination of those two things makes it a really hard decision to make.”

What it came down to, according to Heathcote, was twofold. Something big needed to happen to shake Eve up, and it had to happen to someone close to her.

“The reality was really, after everything that had happened to Eve the past two seasons — and it’s a short space of time that that happens to her in those two seasons — I really felt we had to honor the consequences of what happened to her and the acts that she’d taken,” Heathcote said. “We just knew it was going to take something enormous and very personal to bring her back in to investigate The Twelve and kind of focus on who The Twelve are. It couldn’t be a professional reason, it just wouldn’t be enough.”

“Because Kenny’s so beloved and because they have that special relationship, it really, we just knew that was something that really was going to be big enough to bring Eve back into that investigation,” Heathcote said, noting that Kenny’s popularity with fans meant that the blow would hit so much harder.

“It means less when you’re less attached to the characters,” Heathcote said. “So while it’s heartbreaking, it’s part of what makes the drama. That no one is safe.”

Okay, Kenny had to die. But why did poor Kenny need to die in the very first episode of Killing Eve Season 3? Heathcote told Decider that choice was made when they were working out the beats of this season’s storyline in the writers’ room.

“It was like, why don’t we just do it up top? Because you just wouldn’t expect that in the first episode of the season. It just felt like a very different thing to do,” Heathcote said.

Indeed, and Killing Eve fans may want to brace themselves. There’s a lot coming in Killing Eve Season 3 that you may not expect.

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