On last Friday’s episode of Killjoys, “It Takes a Pillage” (4×08), it picks up with Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen) and Johnny Jaqobis (Aaron Ashmore) arriving at Telen on Lucy (voiced by Tamsen McDonough) ahead of the Hullen Black Root ships in order to rescue/warn D’avin Jaqobis (Luke Macfarlane) and Jaq Kin Rit (Jaedan Noel) of the impending danger they’re in, but it’s more than Hullen that they face on Telen…it’s Marris Jaqobis (Ron Lea) and a massive (and deadly) silica sand storm.
Johnny wants nothing but to kick his brother’s ass, but Dutch is mainly focused on getting back to mission but also getting D’av and Jaq back safely. With a deadly silica storm incoming on the planet’s surface, Johnny makes a break for the one family spot that he’s certain that D’av will go for. Though Dutch is waiting on Lucy to pick her Jaqobis boys up at a moment’s notice, she’s also trying to keep working with what
D’avin and Jaq are shot at by Marris (D’avin’s father) before being taken to the family fallout cabin where Marris tries to explain how he’s a changed man. All we see from then on in is anything but that, even though he’s apparently sober and ‘changed’. Marris points out the incoming storm and gives D’avin a hard time when he finds out that he has a teenage grandson (assuming that some girl he got pregnant way back when just dropped Jaq off with him). This is the start of Marris’ twisted tellings of what happened when D’av and Johnny were teens as he tells Jaq stories that he feels will help him understand what it is to be a good man in the Jaqobis family. Meanwhile, D’av asks where Johnny’s card collection that had the 50,000 in Joy that his mom had saved away for him and Johnny and emergencies. It doesn’t go over well when his father explains that he spent it long ago because of his drinking problem. It’s clear that D’avin is trying to hold it together, to not get too out of control in response to his father and makes the bad decision to walk into another room leaving Jaq behind in the room with Marris. Instead of wanting to protect his new grandson, he sends him out to find a tool because he’s trying to get him to man up. Luckily Johnny finds Jaq before the Hullen do and get him back to the cabin safely.
Instead of Marris listening to his boys, he argues with them and questions everything they say. The Hullen cut power to the cabin and while Johnny is trying to get it back online, Marris is ranting about D’avin being AWOL from the army and how he has no idea what Johnny’s doing. Johnny flat out tells him the truth and his dad just doesn’t believe him. We find out exactly why D’avin went into the army…his father used to beat Johnny and D’avin would take it for him, but one night he beat his father though being the sheriff gave him the choice of jail or the army. Marris believes that he did good in all his decisions because he was toughening up his boys, especially D’avin.
With the Hullen trying to get to them, D’avin tells Jaq to go with Johnny who is going to get him off world and to safety. Jaq tells Johnny about how he can see/remember memories before they happen and tells him about how he’s going to be taken and there’s not going to be anyone to come and save him. Before Johnny can get out, an old but familiar face enters the cabin…an old girlfriend who happens to be sheriff now — Charlie Volford (Lara Jean Chorostecki). D’avin leaves with Marris to try to hold the Hullen off. They go up against the Hullen, but Marris ignores the strategy that D’avin puts out since he knows the Hullen. It ends up with D’avin back in the cabin with Johnny, Charlie, and Jaq but Marris has been taken by the Hullen. In order to get some information from the Hullen they managed to capture, D’avin starts to torture/interrogate him for information. He finds out that The Lady wants Jaq saying that he’s not a child and that “he is the beginning of everything and the end of you”.
Johnny and Charlie reminisce about the promises they made as children while she’s a single parent with two kids who’s struggling on Telen. The Hullen want to trade Marris for Jaq, but D’avin still says that they need to get Jaq to safety and they guess they should save their dad. Charlie volunteers to take Jaq to the eye of the storm to meet Dutch on Lucy and then come back for the Jaqobis brothers and they take that as their best option. With Johnny and D’av going to sort of reluctantly save their dad, they end up bringing up the day that D’av left. Johnny finally hears the truth of what happened and he’s pissed that he was never told the truth until that moment. They find the Hullen’s trap figuring that they’ll pop out as they’re saving their dad, but it’s more than that…it’s a double cross as it’s revealed that Charlie has made a deal with the Hullen to give them Jaq for money. The Jaqobis are locked up to die in a room filling with silica.
We get our first look at how Jaq’s powers work and it’s pretty neat as he sees himself attacking the guard watching him after freeing himself of his bonds. John uses a mini laser to get them out of their bonds and they are about to figure out how to get out of the room when Jaq opens the door going on about how he used the training Dutch taught him in order to do it…and he also brought guns. Johnny and D’av are definitely proud and even let him take a gun. Johnny takes Jaq and they start heading to safety while D’av stays behind with Marris. It’s made clear that Marris thinks he was a good dad and D’av lays it out that he wasn’t but that he will.
It’s clear that Charlie doesn’t want Johnny and D’avin to die, but it’s even more apparent that her life is a struggle and she’d give up everything (including her kids) to run away from Telen if she could. When Johnny calls her out for what she did, you can tell the moment that she’s willing to give up her kids and leave them behind that he knows that she’s nowhere near the same woman that he used to love. Johnny arrests her and tells her that she doesn’t have a heart as she takes a verbal stab at his (I was having serious Pawter/Johnny feels in that moment).
Back on Lucy, Zeph (Kelly McCormack) pops up excitedly as a hologram to explain to Dutch remotely that they have a door to Aneela (Hannah John-Kamen), the green plasma being drained from the Hullen on the RAC. Dutch sees it as a door for The Lady to get out as that’s clearly why the Hullen is collecting the plasma. She vaguely explains about Pippin Foster (Atticus Mitchell) that he isn’t a danger, but leaves out the part where he’s going to die. Dutch shows Zeph the spore that she was given that’s supposed to help them end The Lady, so they decide to science in order to save the spore before it can degrade. With Zeph back in The Quad, she has to explain to Dutch how to use the centrifuge to separate it.
With the silica storm at full rage, Dutch is unable to communicate with Johnny but she can see that there are more life signs (Hullen) down there with them. Zeph really tries to get Dutch to science with her and then they find out that the spore will not separate in the centrifuge because it’s healing so the only hope is to hurl the ship up against the sun for the g-force. Zeph starts to list off all the reasons why Dutch shouldn’t be taking this risk and then mutes the holographic scientist as well as going to full manual (which requires a vocal command to switch out of). Dutch takes the risk and ends up blacking out right before the spore is separated. With Zeph muted and Dutch unconscious, no one is able to give the vocal command to get Lucy to once again take control of the ship and bring Lucy and Dutch to safety. Zeph realizes she can augment her light levels as a hologram to trigger the fire control systems on Lucy in the cockpit, which wakes up Dutch and she’s able to verbally authorize Lucy to take over.
Zeph decides that it’s time so to be serious and really scolds Dutch and then it’s when Dutch realizes that there’s something more going on. Zeph tells her that she doesn’t want her friends to die before revealing that no matter what she does, Pip is going to die. Dutch tells Zeph that she’s going to “face the truth, we’ll kick its ass with science” while Zeph throws her some truth of her own that “no matter what dark shit you’ve been through, you can let in some light without setting everything on fire”. It’s not often that we get to see just Dutch and Zeph together and it’s clear that even though these badass ladies are different, they can both lay out the truth to each other. It’s amazingly refreshing and then there’s also a load of feels to pile on top of it.
With Lucy finally touching down on Hullen, the Jaqobis boys finally re-board. Jaq is super proud and immediately has to tell Dutch about how he put his training to use. There’s this great moment where Dutch asks about homecoming and Johnny tells her that he’ll tell her once they’re back on Westerley. Killjoys aren’t supposed to take sides or allegiances (besides to the RAC, of course) and we’ve had plenty of episodes in the past (especially seasons one and two) where they were asked to choose Westerley. Alvis Akari (Morgan Kelly) was perhaps the one who kept pushing that Westerley and Old Town was their home whether they accepted it or not throughout the beginning of the series. Johnny takes Jaq to show him the stars that he used to look up at from Telen when he was a boy while Dutch and D’av talk. Jaq asks why the Hullen want him, Johnny tells him the truth, but Jaq points out that they can’t do that with his father always protecting him. Jaq shows Johnny the pendant that Delle Seyah Kendry (Mayko Nguyen) left with him in case of emergency and believes that he could be safe there. Johnny tells Jaq that all D’avin would want would be for him to be safe.
While D’avin is telling her about how everything was the same on Telen and the toxic patterns there, she brings up that she was the reason he left…”you left because you didn’t think I could do better”. For those shippers out there, we find out that Dutch and D’avin are still very much a thing and the two of them agree that they’re not giving up on them. Finally, someone is present when Dutch has one of her Aneela/green space connected incidents. She falls to the floor telling him that something burns, when he unzips the back of her top, we see a brand being imprinted into her back.
With only two episodes left, it’s clear that we’re going to get closer to not only The Lady, but to see what exactly has been going on in the green space and how further it will affect Dutch in the outside world. Though tonight’s episode looks like it focuses more on the RAC and Team Awesome Force, what are you hoping we’ll see before the season finale next week? Tell us below!
Photo Credit: NBC Universal/Syfy
