My issue is that both the female leads are reactive, and not proactive, and that’s the death of drama. In S1 both leads had a clear Objective, and were extremely proactive in chasing their respective objectives, and lots of conflict and drama came from that.
This season, I don’t know what any of the characters want or what’s driving them. Villanelle wants to be something called a “Keeper” but she doesn’t seem especially motivated to pursue it, and it’s a very dry and boring objective since the audience doesn’t know or care about the difference between the various management job titles that apparently exists within the international assassin world. And the show breaks the cardinal rule “show don’t tell”. Villanelle keeps telling us, over and over, “I want to be Keeper”, but we aren’t shown it. What does she want other than that? What’s motivating her? Eve? Apart from that one moment in London she’s ignoring Eve. Finding her family? That was her passively reacting to Konstantin, not something she was driving. It’s all so vague and passive.
Eve’s situation is even worse. What’s her objective? To solve Kenny’s murder, to fix her marriage, to move on with her life, to hide away from the world eating Korean food?? The character is just drifting aimlessly, reacting to circumstances without any clear path.
And yeah all that is realistic, but good drama is not based on realism. S3 is ignoring all the cardinal rules of storytelling and that’s why it’s falling so flat.