'The Killing' Season 3 Finale Review (No Spoilers)

The third season finale of The Killing finally paid off like this show should, and that's with the resolution of the murder case detectives Linden (Mireille Enos) and Holder (The ever popular Joel Kinnaman) were investigating.

Mireille Enos in the season finale of THE KILLING, a review

Though the season presented some great story telling, well defined characters, and a lot of great potential suspects for viewers to pin the murder on, was the payout a rip off?

To some degree, who turned out to be our murderous unsub seemed to have been pulled a bit out of the blue.  I never saw that coming.

Did you?

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Peter Sarsgaard in THE KILLING


Throughout the entire third season of The Killing, we had focused on Peter Sarsgaard's character, Ray Seward, a death row inmate.  One whom we thought at first was guilty, then maybe not, who then turned out to be really guilty.

But his and every other early character suspect story kept Linden and the viewers distracted.

Joel Kinnaman in THE KILLING

I like the writing of The Killing.  The stories are gripping and dark.  And sure as s**t, we are introduced to the killer early on.  But with so very little to go on, we have no clue.  And the various red herrings that go off during the season pull us completely off the real killer.

Or at least, I completely missed it if there was some clue there in the early episodes.

There probably was, but extremely subtle.

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Elias Koteas in THE KILLING

Be it as it may, I was pretty entertained throughout the season with the different stories as we keep getting new suspects to peer evily at.  But some panned out fast for me, others lasted long enough to keep me guessing.

From dickhead lazy partners, to ex-lovers and new relationships, there was lots to absorb.

And it was GOOD TO SEE JEWEL STAITE in a solid and serious role for once on TV. Kudos to her for landing it.

Jewel Staite and Joel Kinnaman in THE KILLING

But as the last two episodes started clearing out the cobwebs, and we caught wind of who the killer was, that came out of the blue and seemed, we never had a chance to include this unsub as one of the TV viewers guesses.

And then, that final moment with Linden and our unsub, well, holy sh**!

That's all I'm going to say here.

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The Killing delivered a great season of story, a seemingly weak move to give us the murderer, and still managed to surprise the crap out of us with the ending.

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Footnote, as a fan:  It was great to see Elias Koteas.  He's come a very, very long way from that golf club slinging side-kick in the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.

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