Killing Eve, seasons one and two, are now both available for viewing on Hulu. If you have not already jumped into the award-winning show now is your chance. The spy thriller program follows Eve Polastri of the British intelligence service who is eventually hired by MI6 to help a group hunt down assassins across the world.
Characters come and go in this dangerous world or international cat and mouse. Sometimes it’s their own fault, sometimes there was literally nothing they could do, no matter how smart they were. But who is the brightest of the bunch? Below are the characters from Killing Eve, ranked by intelligence.
Hugo
Hugo, played by Edward Bluemel, was introduced in season two. He’s basically useless. He has lived off of his parent’s money and connections and that’s likely how he got his job in MI6 as well. He’s relatively suave, but also incredibly entitled.
The smartest move he ever made was being able to figure out that Eve did not sleep with him because she was actually interested in him in any way. It is not surprising that he finds himself in a great deal of trouble at the end of season two.
Niko Polastri
Poor Niko Polastri, the long-suffering husband of Eve Polastri. Portrayed by Owen McDonnell. Niko was once just your average Math teacher. He’s smart in terms of being able to interact and guide his students, but he has been a little oblivious to the goings-on with his wife.
It takes him into season two to really start asking his wife pointed questions about what she does for a living and why her personality seems to have changed so much in recent times. He makes the smart choice to move out, but he probably should have done more and much sooner.
Eve Polastri
Part of the fun with Sandra Oh’s, Eve Polastri, is her always being in just a little bit over her head.
She makes her jump to MI6 because of her obsessions and research into women in crime. She often gets through every situation by the skin of her teeth, or with a little help from her nemesis, Villanelle. She’s not the smartest person on the team, in part because of her lack of experience as a field agent, but that’s what makes her fun to watch. She still doesn’t quite understand who is in charge and pulling all the strings, but it’s exciting to watch her struggle to figure it out.
Bill Pargrave
Eve’s old boss, the head of security section MI5. He was wise enough to climb the ranks as well as intuned enough to see work as his hideout from his much more demanding home life. He knows how to handle the people around and under him in the organization, which takes its own type of intelligence.
He has all the skills, he’s just been out of practice for too long, which ultimately leads to his demise in season one, one of the few losses viewers actually feel.
Villanelle
Villanelle, played by Jodie Comer, is the best at what she does. She gets intelligence points because of her success and her ability to take on different personas, accents, and styles, believable in all sorts of situations.
Despite her success, she falls in the middle of our list due to her psychopathic tendencies. Sometimes her decisions and impulsivity take away from any of the intelligence her skills certainly display for the audience.
Elena Felton
Elena Felton, played by Kirby Howell-Baptiste, worked as Eve Polastri’s assistant in season one of Killing Eve. She wanted very much to work her way up to being a spy and field agent for British Intelligence. She knows how the agency works and knows what she wants when she follows Eve to MI6 to work with her own idle, Carolyn Martens.
She knows what she wants but, more importantly, knows what steps she needs to take to get there. She’s much more grounded than her boss and it shows.
Jess
Jess, played by Nina Sosanya, joins the cast in season two as an intelligence officer with quite some past experience in MI6. She knows enough to ignore the buzz of the boys who often surround her in any office. She is smart enough to balance her high powered intelligence job with her family life (she’s pregnant on the show).
She used to be a field agent and works closely with Eve when she goes out into the city and around the world to interrogate suspects and connections.
Konstantin
Konstantin, played by Kim Bodnia, is sometimes Villanelle’s handler, and sometimes a member of the shadowy organization “The Twelve”. He may lose some IQ points for working with Villanelle, to begin with, but being able to read her at all, and balance his contacts in MI6 as well as the underworld, definitely gets him some extra credit.
We are not sure exactly how he survived an assassination attempt, but he did, and it takes a little more than luck to make it back alive, into the UK, and regain control of your life.
Kenny
Kenny, played by Sean Delaney, was once a hacker, and it on Eve’s first-ever MI6 team. He’s a genius with computers but he’s also kind and quiet, which makes him, perhaps, the best listener on a show where everyone should be paying attention to the details.
He knows to be careful around everyone, never knowing who it is okay to trust. He knows more about the moving pieces than almost anyone except, perhaps, his mother.
Carolyn Martens
Carolyn Martens, played by the fabulous Fiona Shaw, is Kenny’s mother, and head of the Russia Section of MI6. She is the smartest person on the whole show. She always seems to hold all the cards as well as manipulate everyone around her (perhaps even better than Villanelle herself, because Carolyn knows more about what she wants).
Once a field agent she has contacts all over the world and is able to maintain those relationships. She can find people’s best and worst abilities and mold them to her needs.
