Dasha Duzran

Dasha is a veteran assassin from the old Soviet school, the woman who trained Villanelle years ago and never quite let go of the habit of shaping people. She reappears sharp-tongued and unbothered, full of dry wit and professional pride, treating murder as craft and mentorship as something owed rather than given.

Harriet Walter brings a theatrical relish to Dasha, all clipped consonants and amused disdain, so that decades of violence read as mere connoisseurship. The writing uses her to show where Villanelle came from without softening either woman, and Walter plays the charm and the menace as the same thing, never separating them.