On this week’s episode of Killjoys, Enemy Khylen, we finally get some of the show’s long-simmering questions answered - only to get even more questions added to the pile.
Spoilers for this week’s episode!
We opened this week with D’avin and a bit of humor. After all that’s transpired in the last couple of weeks, he’s on his own, collecting low-level warrants. His current one is a really tall guy with anger management issues and a really bit wrench. While they fight, they knock over a cart being pushed by Alvis and his monk friends: they’re transporting guns for their revolution. D’av grabs one of their grenades and pockets it for later.
He returns to his tiny apartment to find Dutch waiting for him: after all that he’s done, they’re still deeply attracted to one another, it seems, and she wants to make sure he’s okay, and to drop off his laundry - a peace offering. It’s an uncomfortable sort of breakup exchange between the two of them. She’s hoping that he’s going okay, and it’s made all the more awkward when the pair hear someone having sex in the next room over.
When Dutch gets back to Lucy, she and John get back up to speed with their own banter and some training. John tells her that he’s got a surprise: Carleen (from a couple of episodes ago) has fixed the neural link, and he tells her that they can find Khlyen immediately. She sets up a table with some equipment, and they stick Dutch on it: they’ll be able to track his brain waves and figure out where he’s located. Dutch goes into a state and she begins trying to find her former mentor. (Again, it’s pretty clear that the Killjoys people have been chatting with the Dark Matter folks)
Alvin finds D’av and they chat: he wants to make sure that he’s not going to tell anyone about the guns. D’av says that he’ll keep his mouth shut, especially if he’s bought another drink.
Meanwhile, Dutch is jumping from memory to memory, seeing a bunch of places that she doesn’t recognize as she looks for Khylen. There’s some really strange, advanced technology in the rooms that she ends up in, and back on Lucy, Carleen and they figure out that she’s being projected into deep space, but not far from the quad. She says that the place feels familiar, and soon, she catches sight of him, walking through a hallway like he owns the place. They pull her out, and she tells them that she recognizes where she was: the RAC. The logo was on one of the doors he went through.
This is completely unexpected: she has no idea how he was connected to the RAC, and didn’t recognize the floor that they were on. Dutch freaks out: she’s worried that she’s never been free from him: has her life been manipulated even after she thought she escaped him? They start to formulate a plan to infiltrate the RAC.
While they’re planning, D’av comes by and tells them that he can help - being a former soldier, he’s got the skillset to get them in. Dutch convinces John to let him in, and they fill him in. D’av goes to Alvin and tells him that he’s willing to help him if he gets some help in return.
While Dutch sleeps, she dreams of when she first met Khlyen - he met her as a child, and told her that she was special, and that he was going to train her. She has some deeply conflicting feelings about confronting her surrogate father. John and Dutch share a touching moment in Lucy - John tells her that he’s with her no matter where she goes.
They’re interrupted by D’av, who still has ship access. He tells them that he has a plan to get into the top of the RAC. They jet out to the massive starship, and go through security. They tell the tower operator that they’re looking to dissolve their team.
On RAC headquarters, they go through security and then they’re brought into a room where they go through the formal process to dissolve the team. (There’s a fun Battlestar Galactica reference dropped!) Turin shows up and interrogates them, probing into their intentions. D’av tells them that he attacked both of them.
As they walk out of the room, D’av drops an EMP, which shuts down the ship’s primary power. He’s bought them some more time to get up a couple of more floors. They split up: D’av stays behind while John and Dutch move on ahead. Cut to Khlyen, who starts getting ready for company. Turin figures out that they’re behind the power outage. Out of sight, John pulls down some fake skin and pulls out a syringe for Dutch. She runs up the stairs heading for Level 71 ahead of the power that’s being restored level by level.
John calls up D’av and tells him to make his way back to the ship. Turin comes in the room and zaps him. He questions him again, asking him who Dutch really is and what she has planned. He mentions that she’s had someone protecting her and pushing her along, and that she’s marked for Red 17 - a higher rank than D’av’s heard of. Turin tells him that he might be the only friend Dutch has on the ship. “You have nothing,” D’av tells him. “Yeah, but I’ve got a stick that goes ‘Zap’”, replies Turin. The power goes on.
On Level 71, Dutch is surprised by Khlyen with a stick. John gets to his own part of the plan and attaches a voice box. Dutch and Khlyen fight with staves: he’s clearly judging her training, but soon has her on the floor, before offering her tea. Dutch tells him that she hates him, and that she figured out his weakness. The needle that she has isn’t for him: it’s for her: she points it at her neck and threatened to stick herself.
“Let’s make this real,” Dutch tells him, then sticks herself.
Meanwhile, John has gotten into the room that Dutch saw: there’s some really advanced technology in the room: a liquid computer. He touches it and has information streamed right into his brain. It’s an advanced computer, and he begins to download data to his tablet. He’s found some interesting things, and grabs a vial of the computer. As he does so, alarms go off.
Back up top, Khlyen tells Dutch that he got on her trail when she claimed a Level 5 warrant - the original warrant that picked up D’avin. He says that he thought that she was ready. Khlyen is distracted when a RAC guard comes in - he shoots him in the head. When he turns back, Dutch is on her feet, gun in hand: the poison wasn’t poison. He’s impressed that she convinced him. She tells him to answer her question and she tells him that she’s not going to kill him with a gun, before she runs off.
D’av and John reunite and head for Lucy, only to find that she’s locked down. Dutch tells them that she’ll take down the override, and that they need to take off. She’s on the wrong side of the wall, and she tells them to run. Lucy flies off when Dutch orders her off. The two brothers are out of danger. Turning, she confronts Turin, who shoots her in the leg.
Turin tells her that he’s sure that she’s not on the same side, before he’s killed by Khlyen . Wounded, he carries Dutch off into an escape pod. She asks him why he keeps protecting her, and he tells her to remember the story that he told her when he first met her, and that she needs to live. “What are you?” She asks: “I’m level six”.
Dutch is blasted off into space as he walks away.
Down on Westerly, the Company is cracking down on dissidents, and Alvin is arrested. He’s attacked in custody, before a crowd of people. John and D’av are stuck on Lucy, trying to figure out what happened. Dutch appears, still wounded. John gets Pawder, and while he’s gone, she tells D’av that he’s level six. D’av tells her that he’ll repay him for everything, and she tells him that she doesn’t need him to fight his battles.
As the episode closes out, Khlyen finds that there’s something wrong with his computer, and returns down to Turin, who’s dying on the floor. Turin tells him that he knows what he does up there, before he’s dragged off.
This felt like an episode where the answers are starting to come out, and it’s about time. Unfortunately, with those answers, there’s more questions. Khlyen is connected to the RAC, it seems, a high-level official who even the regular rank and file officers have no idea about. It seems that there’s some strange things going on with the organization.
Khlyen and Dutch certainly have something weird going on - part of the episode made me wonder if Dutch is doing some sort of deep undercover sort of thing, or if she was just losing a lot of blood. Clearly, Khlyen has tried to mold her into some sort of weapon, and she’s shifted her into the best possible position to learn all along the way - her escape seems to have been orchestrated so that she can get some real-world experience. It’ll be interesting to see what we learn from that.
The B-Story for this week also advances the plot quite a bit when it comes to the common folks against the Company. With Alvin captured in a public, brutal way, it looks like we’re about to see a spark of rebellion started up, and it’ll be interesting to see how D’av’s plan to help out Alvin will pull the Killjoys in on the action.
So, we learn that Khlyen is a RAC agent, and that his pursuit of Dutch came with a very specific thing: that she appeared ready to kill again, something she was avoiding. We also learned when she first met the man, and now have a solid idea for what he intended for her. Now, we just need to learn more about the why.
Overall, this was a solid episode, with some humor thrown in. It’s nice to see that the writing team hasn’t gone super, 100% serious as the mysteries deepen. It’s not exactly what I’d call a light and fluffy show, but it’s got it’s moments.