Killjoys - 'How to Kill Friends and Influence People'

"Who's queen?"

Our favourite team of Killjoys are in a bad place at the moment. Westerley is more or less back in Company hands, Jelco is in the wind and Delle Sayah is even more smug than usual having murdered Pawter and stepped into her place as Westerley's favourite posh bird. Johnny is pretty much inconsolable, and Khlyen is on his way for a denouement.

The Black Root ambush the team on board Lucy, which is just adding insult to injury, but Khlyen appears with his new anti-Six dart gun, having been waiting for this test opportunity. Fortunately it works and he lays out the plan: Locate the only pure source of Arkyn green not currently surrounded by Black Root gunships and kill it, and through the miracle of the plasma's limitless entanglement, all the other plasma in the Quad, thus averting an all-out invasion by his people, the original Sixes led by his daughter, Aneela.

Okay, so this is a bit fiddly, but as I understand it, Khlyen found the plasma - Holla, I think he calls it - while trying to make miracle grow for his peeps. Instead it turned them crazy; or killed them. Aneela was his daughter, and one of the craziest. When they found more green on Arkyn they made a deal with the Nine to tame and then hand over the Quad in exchange for immortality, and the deal is now due. Delle Sayah is spearheading the process of turning over a core of the strongest workers to be subjugated by overexposure to the plasma. Khlyen is working against them because he met Dutch, who is extraordinarily a double for his daughter, and wants to destroy the Arkyn plasma so that the Quad ceases to be interesting.

This episode is just thick with badassery.

With help from Alvis, Dutch determines that the scarbacks who went to Arkyn took a tree that had grown in Arkyn plasma. The Devil - Aneela - stole it back, and secured it in the Archive, a funky space bank for the super rich. Khlyen is all for ninjaing the place, but Dutch points out that this is a Killjoy mission: "Get in, get dirty, get out."

It's about now that Delle Sayah gets a call from Khlyen asking for a meet to hand over Team Dutch.

D'avin and Fancy Lee have a massive fight with security and John and Lucy dogfight with a couple of Black Root gunships despite being unarmed. Khlyen and Dutch have a punch up with more security before they get into Aneela's vault and find the tree. To kill the pure plasma, however, Khlyen has to sacrifice himself to activate the anti-plasma shot. He dies, but so does the tree, reverting all of the Sixes converted using that source (including Fancy.)

Dutch is conflicted, but Johnny assures her that you can miss someone without forgiving them, and love someone you hate. Later, he excuses himself from Pawter's wake and keeps the appointment he made with Delle Sayah using Khlyen's likeness, whereat he shoots her. Then he leaves, but not before Lucy has said her goodbyes and - having noticed him booking eight different flights out - sets him up with a travel buddy, and be still my beating heart it's Clara (and Alice the gun arm.) They nick Khlyen's super-swanky ship and head off into the black, where Aneela is still around and Dutch is gunning for her.

So, that was Killjoys season 2, and yeah; the strength of this offering is definitely part of why I was underwhelmed by season 2 of Dark Matter. They have a similar space-opera-with-grime feel, but this is markedly superior. The emotional hit of Khlyen's death was complex and powerful, and Johnny's shift towards the renegade side of things a real shakeup. Possibly my favourite scene was the shooting, not least because the actors sell that Johnny and Sayah are both legitimately surprised that he did it. I'm not convinced that Sayah is dead though; I figure that even without plasma the Nine still have a wicked health plan.

And it's been picked up for a third season, so woo!