Killjoys: Dutch and the Real Girl Recap

Synopsis of 2×01: After failing to rescue D’avin, Dutch and Johnny head to Eulogy in the hopes of stealing a mysterious, high-tech shield.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Pour the Hock and praise the trees, Killjoys is officially back!

The premiere episode of the second season really starts to set up a few things for the season and hints at a change in the power structure of who the big bad is going to be. Also there’s a brand new opening credits sequence, complete with technicolor vectors of the characters accompanying the credits.

After being stuck on Arkan for the last five days, D’avin has been having some pretty weird dreams. In one sequence, he sees himself being rescued and having returned to Arkan with Johnny and Dutch. He and Dutch share a kiss in slow-motion where sparks literally fly behind them. This is all interrupted as the people holding him captive proceed to pump him full of that green goo we saw during the last scenes of “Escape Velocity”.

D’avin serves mainly as a storytelling character this episode, showing some exposition for the storyline that will unfolding this season. With the green goo inside of him, he begins to experience weirder dreams where he is on Arkan and witnesses a fight between a large group of people and Scarbacks. In the throng, he also sees Dutch. Before he can keep going he’s stopped as Khlyen suddenly appears.

The dream turns out to be a memory as he snaps awake in a tank of the green goo. Instead of absorbing it he basically telepathically rejects it, turning out to be immune to the effects. Khlyen, who assumes that his experiment hasn’t worked, is surprised when D’avin fights back and seems to be a unique case. Rather than subject him to more experiments, Khlyen shoots his lackeys and scientists, and proceeds to help D’avin escape.

It’s not really clear who’s side Khlyen is on, but he reveals that his plan was to turn D’avin into a Level Six and use him to protect and spy on Dutch. Yeah, can we say daddy issues? Regardless of how creepy Khlyen always seems to be, he helps out our boy by cleaning the database of D’avin’s records and shows him the way out. Although we’ve always assumed that Dutch’s eventual face off would be against Khlyen, it looks like there’s something else at play.

Khlyen tells D’avin to run since “Black Root” is after him and tells him to lie to Dutch so that she doesn’t come back to the base. The Black Root arrive and treat Khlyen with some respect before tasing him until he’s unconscious. Nice to know they’re polite at least?

Meanwhile, Dutch, Johnny, and Pree have been searching for a way to get onto Arkane. There is a thick barrier around the planet that prevents them from entering without killing themselves. The only way seems to be to get something that lets them slip past the shields. Johnny remembers a group called the Connaver Gang who are known to hide out on Arkan in order to escape the Company.

They get a warrant from Dutch’s broker, Bell, that sends them to Eulogy, a criminal infested barter town. Bell exhaustingly asks Dutch, “Why are you always chasing dragons?” To which Dutch shoots back with an apt response, “Because they’re the ones with all the gold.” You can’t exactly blame her reasoning.

The two things that are required for Eulogy is a criminal background and some stolen goods. They’ve got the latter, and surprisingly have the former as Pree seems to have some skeletons in his closet. Seriously, what kind of criminal has aliases like Big Daddy Scrimshaw and Paris O’Malley? If they don’t continue to reveal more of Pree’s dangerously adventurous past life, I riot.

They manage to get into Eulogy with Johnny posing as Pree’s side piece and Dutch hidden away under their weapons case, folded in like a piece of origami. Instead of finding a piece of tech that will help them past a shield, they find a person. Meet Clara, the hack-mod. She was bought by the Connavers, who modded her past the point of legal limits by putting the shield blocker in her and giving her an android gunarm in place of her real one so she could protect the tech.

Dutch immediately gets along with her and promises to help her escape Eulogy. Clara and Johnny flirt a little and it’s cute — as cute as it can be without Pawter (where is Pawter?!) — before Clara takes control of the ship and flies them through the shield. Every trip she makes kills her a little more since her body absorbs the radiation that would be killing the crew, but they manage to land safely on the planet.

This is around the same time they bust into Red 17 and free Fancy and meet up with D’avin. The trio have a great big group hug and D’avin inevitably lies to Dutch about Khlyen. It’s probably the worst told lie in the world since Dutch doesn’t seem to believe it for a second, but she decides not to chase after Khlyen and they run back to Lucy.

Before they take off though, D’avin shoots Fancy. Fancy heals from the gunshots and reveals he’s a Level Six and is shot off the ship. We see him later as Black Root take Khlyen away, he comes in and kills one of the guards before sitting down next to Khlyen’s cryo-frozen body.

With D’avin rescued, we turn our eyes towards Old Town. They need to find a way in and rescue Alvis and Pawter from Old Town. Clara is able to go even though there’s a warrant on the person who has the shield. Since she’s over 26% modded, by Quad standards she’s technically not even a person, and through some semantics they’re able to smuggle her out. She has some cute last words with Johnny and some more with Lucy before leaving. It seems like we’ll be seeing her again very soon, perhaps in another trip back to Arkan? She’s really their only viable way of entrance onto the planet.

D’avin confesses to his poorly constructed lie, but Dutch always knew. She left because they needed to but it doesn’t seem like she’s ready to relent on revenge. After being saved by Khlyen, D’avin seems to have a different opinion, saying that there is someone that Khlyen is scared of and that he might not be the biggest problem they’re going to have.

All in all, the season started with a blast. They were able to get D’avin out and back on the team, we meet a potential recurring guest star, we established some new plot arcs with Black Root and taking back Old Town, and the team is officially back together again. Ah, it’s good to be killjoying again.