Killjoys
Season 2, Episode 3: “Shaft”
Airdate: July 15, 2016
In this week’s episode of Killjoys the team heads into the Northern Badlands under Turin’s behest to find out what Khlyen was trying to hide.
The mystery of level 6, Khlyen, the scarbacks, and Arkyn deepen as Team Awesome Force goes in search of another RAC team that went missing after sending an evacuation request that had been cancelled by Khlyen. The original warrant was to retrieve a monk, go figure. When they first arrive in the area, the other group’s abandoned ship is discovered with strange moss covering the front entrance.
Soon they run into Tanya, one of the three killjoys who first came to this area to answer a level 2 warrant (monk retrieval). Dutch earns the other woman’s trust by confirming that they know her team sent the evac call a week ago but were betrayed and abandoned by the people they trusted. Tanya urgently explains that they have to help find her sister Dina who is down in the mines. This whole time, the trio was unaware of mines within vicinity because Lucy didn’t pick anything up in her scan.
But true enough the woman leads them down a deep shaft with Alvis joining the group since he used to be a miner himself and could navigate the tunnels with more ease. Once they are all inside, Tanya adds that her husband is also still around, but that something happened to him on their first night and he’s been trying to kill her and Dina ever since.
The mine itself is like a labyrinth with crystals and moss attached to the walls. Tanya acts increasingly paranoid, as she seems to keep seeing her husband appear out of thin air. Eventually Dutch makes the call that she’s a liability and Johnny should take her back to the ship. Before they can leave though, the other woman runs after her hubby again causing a tunnel collapse trapping her, Alvis, D’Av and the former assassin down there. Johnny goes back to Lucy to gather supplies to break through the stone while the rest try to track Tanya down.
Unfortunately the killjoy falls down a pit and gets attacked by centipedes using moss as camouflage. D’Av, Dutch, and Alvis are all super grossed out and want to get the hell out of dodge. When they go back the way they came though, the massive insects have covered their original path out (with Johnny on the other side working on making a big hole). They head back further in to look for another exit.
D’Av and Alvis explore two separate tunnels with Dutch back at the crossing on guard. Things get real interesting at this point. Johnny begins to dissect the centipede and discovers that when you slice it in half, both parts are still alive and wriggling. Johnny suggests why not step on it and when he does, he discovers that their blood is green. Sound familiar? He thinks so as well and believes this could be the stuff that they were pumping into him at Red 17. These little buggers were super resilient. D’Av surmises that this could be the reason why Khlyen cancelled the evac order because he didn’t want anyone to find this place. It could also be what brought the monks here since they go way back with Khlyen and the 6’s.
Meanwhile Alvis has been reading symbols all around the tunnels left by other scarbacks (they had even come across a tree shrine earlier). He takes off the glasses that allowed the team to see what he saw and follows the writings to the body of a mummified monk. There was a message that was left there with the body and it’s all very mysterious.
Back at the crossroads, Dutch suddenly sees Khlyen and she tells the team that she’s going after him. She falls down a hole to where the scarbacks shrine is and Khlyen is there too, asking her what she’s doing here. She confronts him and questions back whether he wanted to make her into an obedient mind drone when he laughs that she doesn’t seem to remember that it’s already happened. Then he slashes her gut and green liquid begins to pour out.
D’Av, Alvis, and Johnny find Dutch but it turns out that she’s been hallucinating this whole time. Khlyen wasn’t actually there and she had stabbed herself. The bug had bitten her and caused her to go paranoid and bring out her fears. The same thing had happened to Tanya and her husband and sister had already been long dead. It’s Alvis though who gets through to Dutch and they thankfully all get out of there alive all thanks to D’Av. The bugs seems to be repelled by him for some unknown reason and it must have something to do with how he was able to wake himself up from level 6 treatment two episodes ago. He’s the anti-bug whisperer.
Back on the ship, Johnny treat’s Dutch’s stomach wound and thankfully the cut isn’t deep but she’d like to get examined by a real doctor nonetheless and suggests its time to get Pawter out of Spring Hill.
Speaking of the good doctor, she’s been very busy gathering intel within the Company biodome. She discovers that they plan on creating containment walls around every single town in Westerly for some nefarious reason yet to be known. Pawter though has a few obstacles in her way, first her father (Dr. Adler from 12 Monkeys!) claims that her mother can’t do anything really about the Old Town situation at the moment and that she’s better off where she is. Secondly Jelco has put a nasty ankle bracelet on her that will blow up if she strays tries to leave the compound.
The Company officer though we discover has a heart condition and wants Pawter to perform the monthly operation of draining the liquid from around his heart (apparently because of family inbreeding he’s developed this condition). The good doctor uses this situation to her advantage and puts him under a very heavy sedative and then accidentally pierces an artery while performing surgery. She then also drugs Jelco’s bodyguard. She uses his blood to access his drawer and finds a jump drive to download the information she needs.
When he comes out of sedation, he thinks all is fine and dandy and runs into Pawter and she is preparing to leave his domain. We hear the ankle bracelet going off but it’s no longer on the doctor because she’s attached it to Jelco’s heart. He now can’t leave Spring Hill of else it will explode. Brilliantly done. Unfortunately an unseen assailant clubs her outside before Johnny and the rest of the team can arrive to pick her up.
Back on the ship, Alvis goes into Dutch’s room and confesses that he found the mummified monk inside the mine and wonders if he was brought down there for a reason. He shows her the message with the body and explains that it had been made from the dead man’s own skin. Avlis further explains that the first part of the message is from an old scarback prayers that says 12 went to fight the devil in Arkyn and in the flesh trip it finishes with, “one came back.” He thinks this monk had survived the fight and plans to jump ship at Leith to go to a scarback monastery where some of their old scriptures live. Just as the two are about to share an intimate kiss, Lucy interrupts and tells Dutch that she’s finished analyzing the microwave radiation burst from Arkyn.
Next she pays Turin a visit and tells him that he didn’t tell them about the massive data transmission that came from Arkyn before the base was bombed and where it went. He claims that the piece he got was encrypted and unbreakable so there was no point and he didn’t know where that transmission was sent too. Dutch tells him to find out where it went and get her a warrant there because she needs to know what’s in that file. Turin gets snippy and she throws her dagger very narrowly missing his face. She’s fully accepted that she’s a weapon and will use those skills to get what she needs. Dutch explains to the senior agent that she’s tired of people dictating what she can and cannot do. That stops now.
This week’s episode of Killjoys led us deeper into the mystery surrounding level 6 and Arkyn, but we also saw an interesting rivalry between D’Av and Alvis. It was mostly the elder Jaqobis brother feeling threatened by the scarback’s relationship with Dutch since they seem to go way back. With the almost kiss between them, D’Avin’s got some competition for the former assassin’s attention.
Dutch and Alvis though seem to genuinely identify with the other at the moment, both of them not really knowing what to believe in. He even considers abandoning the scarbacks since he thinks faith almost had him kill all those people at Spring Hill. Dutch tells him that it was hate that made him almost do it. She even jokingly offers to hirer him and Alvis said he was considering joining their ranks after what he had gone through at Old Town. However finding the dead monk in the mine seems to have given him new purpose in helping Dutch solve the connection between the scarbacks, level 6, and Arkyn.
Lastly something is definitely brewing between Pawter and Johnny. Last season the doctor was involved with big brother but since she was rejected it’s intriguing that little brother is now paying so much attention. I look forward to seeing how this develops.
Killjoys continues to lure audiences in with rich narratives, action-packed sequences, and strong world building. We’ve seen new places, met new people, and discovered a new thing or two about our favorite characters.
Killjoys airs Fridays on Syfy at 9/8 central.
Images courtesy of Syfy.
