How The Ghost On 'Killing Eve' Could Change Eve & Villanelle's Relationship

Spoilers ahead for Killing Eve Season 2, Episode 3. The Ghost on Killing Eve is Villanelle's polar opposite. Whereas her killing style is flashy, irreverent, and almost comedic, the Ghost kills her targets simply, quietly, and carefully. And though at first Villanelle seems unbothered by her new rival, she starts to get jealous when she realizes The Ghost is taking up Eve's attention.

As fans will recall, The Ghost's first victim (that MI6 knows of, at least) was Alistair Peel, a self-made billionaire who was killed a few months back. As Eve explained in Episode 2, "Villanelle is an attention-seeker. She wants people to know when she's killed someone." The Ghost, on the other hand, lives up to her name. Just look at Alistair's death, which his children believed was caused by a heart attack. This is a route the Russian assassin would never take — after all, what's the point of killing someone if people (read: Eve) don't know she did it? Villanelle is a psychopathic narcissist who takes pleasure in killing, and if she weren't employed by The Twelve, she would still murder people all the same.

Since The Ghost gets in and out without drawing attention, Eve infers that she "has to be someone who can go about their business without anyone noticing because what they do is seemingly uninteresting. They're not important. They're invisible. It's the kind of woman who people look at every day and never see."

We also saw a flashback to three months ago, in which a cleaning woman — likely Villanelle's new competition — switched out a business man's coffee cup, only for him to drink from it and seize up moments later. The MI6 team has no idea how long The Ghost has been operating (her kills are discreet, after all) or who she works for, but Eve did deduce that their new suspect is a "late-to-middle age" woman of color.

We don't learn much else about The Ghost, and there aren't any clues to be gleaned from the books the show is based on, but her introduction will undoubtedly change Eve and Villanelle's dynamic. "Eve has a particular sense for women and female assassins," co-executive producer Emerald Fennell told Bustle ahead of Killing Eve's Season 2 premiere. "What is really interesting is saying, 'What do we do when somebody else comes along? Do we find Eve is a female assassin expert or is she a Villanelle expert? And what does that mean for her?' We know she's brilliant and she knows Villanelle inside out, and suddenly there's someone between them for the first time."

So far, it seems like Eve is a female assassin expert, not just a Villanelle expert. She pieces together a lead for The Ghost pretty quickly, considering what limited information they have about her. And while she and Villanelle have forged a strange, intimate bond, Eve's obsession seems, at least in part, fueled by the thrill of the chase. So it's possible that the deeper MI6 gets into tracking The Ghost, the more interested Eve will become in her.

Regardless, The Ghost's introduction will definitely heighten things for Villanelle. As fans already know, the Russian assassin is fiercely protective of the people she cares about (although she has a bizarre way of showing it). When she reunites with Konstantin in the April 21 episode, she lunges at him, knife in hand. It's not until she slams into him with a forceful hug that we realize she's happy to see him alive, not trying to kill him (again). Similarly, her and Eve's mutual obsession didn't stop when the agent stabbed her in the stomach — if anything, it only intensified their connection. If just knowing Eve is investigating The Ghost caused Villanelle to stalk her and Niko at his school and get close enough to slip a lipstick shank in her purse, her actions are likely to get even more dangerous and wild.

So while it's too soon to tell who The Ghost is or whether she'll get poached by The Twelve, it's clear that Villanelle is becoming frustrated by the competition. The new girl doesn't seem to have Villanelle's exorbitant ego, so for now, the rivalry is one-sided, but we'll likely know soon enough who she is and what she wants. In the meantime, The Ghost should probably watch her back, because as Konstantin tells Eve, Villanelle is a hungry caterpillar, and she won't stop until she gets what she wants.