This week’s episode of Killjoys, “O Mother, Where Art Thou?” (4×07), we finally get some missing pieces to Aneela’s (Hannah John-Kamen) past…which in turn connects to Dutch/Yalena Yardeen (Hannah John-Kamen) as she comes face to face with her namesake, Yalena Yardeen (Karen Glave)
With D’avin Jaqobis (Luke Macfarlane) and Jaq Kin Rit (Jaedan Noel) off Lucy (voiced by Tamsen McDonough) without a word, Johnny Jaqobis (Aaron Ashmore) is raging about being abandoned by him again while Dutch seems to be resigned with it and ready to just move forward with figuring out the clues in her memories. Johnny’s sticking by Dutch’s side and agrees to put in the coordinates of the pulsar to figure out the next step, once he’s out of the room Dutch has another one of her bloody nose incidents and vows to come for Aneela.
En route, Dutch and Johnny discuss about D’avin and she feels like it’s just because she’s so damaged that he doesn’t want her around his kid. Though she doesn’t seem happy about that, she seems to understand and accept it. They come upon the pulsar location, but it’s not there…but something else is there instead that they hadn’t expected. Lucy ends up being pulled in…which they realize is a black hole and they don’t have the power to pull themselves out of it. There’s this adorable and heartfelt moment where Johnny points out that he knew that they’d die together and dying in a black hole is “appropriately badass” before opening a comm to leave a message for D’av. Before Dutch can say anything to D’av hough, they realize that they’ve landed and that the black hole was a fake to hide the pulsar this whole time. Dutch goes down first and finds an ancient gun (which is the gun we see in the flashback that Yalena uses to shoot Khlyen with) moments before Dutch is ambushed by a whole circle of guardians with the symbol from her memory with pointy sticks that look a lot like mage staves…also, one’s on board threatening to poke Johnny. Dutch finally gives them some information about herself that she’s actually never spoke aloud until that moment in hopes it’ll get them somewhere. “I am Yalena Yardeen and I was sent here by Khlyen Kin Rit” and then proclaims herself as his daughter. That’s enough to get the guardians to stand down and take her with them.
In flashback land, we get to see Khlyen Kin Rit’s (Rob Stewart) relationship with his wife, Yalena Yardeen (whom we recognize as the person that Dutch thought was the assassin in her memories. This Yalena is definitely a queen of Qresh and seems to fly under the color gold for her guards and
such. We see her coming to Arkyn to find him and to see Aneela again, which leads her to a very damaged Aneela who’s covered in blood as she’s digging through bodies. The one thing that bothered me about this whole episode comes in this scene when Aneela hugs her mother in blood stained clothes and then it doesn’t transfer to the mother’s white and gold outfit. Khlyen explains that Aneela is hearing voices and that she calls it The Lady, that it’s a parasite that she was exposed to. Yalena makes it clear that she is in charge and will pull the whole weight of her fleet to get her way and from what it seems, the Yardeens were the tenth family at one point. It is clear that Yalena sees Khlyen more clearly than he believes, he’s trying to hide things from her but it only ends up causing more problems in the end. The story runs parallel with Dutch’s at this point as they arrive at the pulsar. Yalena realizes that there’s something wrong with Khlyen and ends up shooting him, but he doesn’t die.
Johnny is hoping that telling his guard that they’re Killjoys is going to give some kind of push, but it only makes things worse when the guard spots something of The Hunter’s (Shaun Benson) onboard and gets even more defensive since that was his friend. With his wife in danger, Lucy electrifies the floor in order to knock out the guard and save Johnny. This gives him the opportunity to look for the jammer. Elsewhere on the planet, Dutch is led down through some tunnels and is finally told that she needs to go alone and comes to a room with ancient Qreshi hangings with a cryopod in the middle of it. Johnny and Dutch have lost comms and though Dutch has been talking to Johnny the whole time, what comes next hits her with quite the surprise. The woman in the cryopod is the woman is the woman from her dreams and finds out that she’s actually Aneela’s mother, Yalena Yardeen. Yalena notes that she talks like Khlyen and I find it odd that she doesn’t demand why Dutch looks like Aneela. Though Yalena seems confused as to why Dutch wouldn’t know exactly why she’s there, there’s no push or immediate defensiveness about it.
Yalena shows Dutch the plasma pool just to find it solidified like the rest of the green, but explains that it isn’t dead. In order to convince Yalena to give her the poison that Khlyen had for the plasma, Dutch must tell her that Khlyen has died (only alive in the green space) but there’s still time and opportunity to save Aneela and end The Lady. Unfortunately, Dutch is knocked out by Yalena who intends to end everything, not seeing any point in it with Khlyen dead. Comms are finally re-established and Johnny’s managed to give them a small window to get out of there and is already heading back to Lucy and trying to get the information to Dutch, who eventually makes it out of the pod.
We find out in that moment that Khlyen had intended on making things right 200 years before, which would have killed him, Aneela, and would have meant that Dutch would have never been created in the first place. That Yalena wanted to find another way that didn’t mean killing her family and losing them again. She decides that when she knows the battle is lost is when she’ll use the poison and kill The Lady herself. There’s obviously this intense love between them and even though Khlyen is Hullen, he still has feelings that he describes as echoes.
“What is Aneela to you?” Yalena asks and Dutch gives probably the most basic and vague response saying that she’s family, just like Yalena is. Dutch asks her not to give up on her, which seems to be enough before Yalena asks her for a promise…that if she can’t save Aneela that she’ll end her. That really has been something that Dutch has been ready to do before she even knew exactly who Aneela was and who she was to her. She’s been ready to die with Aneela for over a season now, now they just have the poison to end it all if they need to. Dutch makes it back to Lucy and John before they’re able to leave and within the window. As they escape, we see that Dutch tucked Yalena back into the cryopod and that she seemed to give the woman some solace about Aneela and there’s this sudden shift in concern for Dutch and her happiness…this was touching, but I am still confused as to why Yalena wouldn’t push for why Dutch looks exactly like her daughter.
Pree (Thom Allison) arrives just in time to save his Gared (Gavin Fox) from a beating in a cell and we get to see a very vicious version of the bartender/warlord. Turin (Patrick Garrow) and Weej (Ish Morris) are watching what’s going on on the Hullen occupied RAC via Pree’s contacts. Whatever’s been going on with Gared, he doesn’t remember the entire time of his time on the RAC but rather feels like he just got there. Pree and Gared work their way through the RAC, following Turin’s directions in order to get control of the systems once again remotely. Turin, meanwhile, tries to explain to Weej that Pree and Gared aren’t just two to be replaced that they’re his guys so that Weej will troubleshoot in the areas they’re hitting walls. With the systems able to be used by Turin remotely on the Armada, they also see all the security cams and Gared doesn’t want to leave without the kids. Not knowing what they’re doing to the kids and on the RAC outnumbered by Hullen, Pree convinces him that they’ll come back with an army to free the kids. Knowing that the alarms have gone off on the RAC, Turin decides he’s going to go in and save Pree and Gavin but Weej knocks him out and goes in his stead. With Pree and Gared back safely on the Armada, we also end up having Zeph (Kelly McCormack) and Pippin Foster (Atticus Mitchell) who arrive just as they find out that they’re bleeding Hullen on the RAC in order to make their own green pool for The Lady.
As Johnny and Dutch are heading back, they find out that their message was received by Black Root ships en route to Telen rather than D’avin. There’s this sudden realization that the Hullen are after Jaq (and D’av) and that’s where they need to go in order to protect their family.
One of my questions, which maybe we’ll get more of a concrete answer on this later, is why Aneela carries the surname Kin Rit instead of Yardeen. We’ve seen with the Simms that the royal Qreshi name is carried down through the family no matter if the carrier is female or male, so why Kin Rit for Aneela when it clearly appears that Yardeen was the tenth family on Qresh? Perhaps it’s what Aneela chose when the family was split? Hopefully this will be something addressed in the future.
What are your thoughts with this episode? Were you glad to finally know who Dutch was named after? Are you raring to go for next week’s episode? Hoping to find out more of what’s going on within the green space? Let us know below!
Photo Credit: NBC Universal/SYFY
