On Queerbaiting, Betrayal, and the Quest for Better Representation (Spoiler for Killing Eve)

[Behind the Aegis]

This article contains spoilers for the end of Killing Eve.

Queerbaiting in a pop culture landscape that also believes in heavily utilizing the “Bury Your Gays” trope gives queer fans some serious trust issues.

Take the controversial ending of serial killer drama Killing Eve. After the “bridge scene” in season three, Eve and Villanelle share several kisses in the fourth season… before Villanelle is killed by an unknown assassin at the end of the episode. Technically, Killing Eve isn’t traditional queerbaiting in its finale. Eve and Villanelle kiss, and that’s more than many shippers get even if they’re not shipping a queer pairing. However, what follows – Villanelle’s death and the lack of resolution for the relationship – reads as a betrayal of queer fans who were hoping that they’d see the duo get a happy ending.

“The series finale has left me in an absolute state of shock and it’s still difficult to process my feelings. I didn’t have time to process them,” pop culture writer Sara Clements writes for Them. “The way in which the show just killed off Villanelle so suddenly, with no moment of pause before it faded to black – not to mention that it happened under the bridge that signified just how much Villanelle and Eve’s relationship meant to us and them — felt like a slap in the face.”

Clements’ sentiment gets to the heart of what is so wrong and upsetting about “queerbaiting,” a phrase that has been used for years to describe a perceived or actual betrayal of queer fans who tuned in excited for a queer narrative or representation, but were served something far less satisfying. In the opening to “Queerbaiting: The ‘playful’ possibilities of homoeroticism,” Professor Joseph Brennan defines queerbaiting as “a fan-conceived term that describes a tactic whereby media producers suggest homoerotic subtext between characters in popular television that is never intended to be actualised on screen.” Queerbaiting is a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” that never follows through beyond semi-touchable subtext or unsatisfying interactions, and rarely do you see anyone in fandom or media talk positively about it.

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