REVIEWED: SEASON 5 (EPISODE 1) | WHERE TO WATCH: NOWTV, SKY GO, APPLE, GOOGLE PLAY, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
Killjoys is a sci-fi action series that we as a publication have been shamefully lax in covering, and so, at the beginning of its fifth and final season, we finally get around to talking about it. The story follows Team Awesome Force, a group of interplanetary bounty hunters consisting of former assassin Dutch, mechanics and electronics whisperer Johnny, ex-soldier D’avin, and biotech genius Zeph, who operate in the far future in a planetary system governed by a rigidly stratified society where a class war continually threatens to break out.
Killjoys is best known for being a show about beautiful people being supremely badass, but this subdued restart is far more focused on character rather than action. Every sci-fi series sooner or later does a plot featuring some kind of mind games or reality warping that sees its characters recast in different roles and must somehow wake up from their delusion, and Killjoys has now joined the ranks of those before it. The first episode begins right as the last one left off, with the city of Old Town under a mass delusion controlled by the villainous Lady, a primordial entity who our heroes failed to prevent escaping from an elemental mindscape at Season 4’s climax, and is manipulating the entire population of the moon of Westerley for reasons yet to be made clear.
The viewer is aware it’s all a part of how the Lady is messing with them, so the mystery instead comes from how she is maintaining the delusion, since despite being calculating, manipulative and able to utilise a person’s worst fears against them, her capabilities fall short of actual mind control. However, while the alteration of people’s memories makes them believe in the false reality and keeps them shackled to new lives designed to keep them subdued, it crucially can’t affect the fundamental aspects of who they are as people, and this is where the villain’s plan slowly begins to come apart.
Zeph, being a crazy genius and with a proven record of seeing the cracks in the details of unrealities and refusal to accept something when she decides it that doesn’t add up, is the one first to realise something is wrong. Dutch, meanwhile, experiences flashes of her true life breaking through the mental firewall, leading to her suspicion something isn’t right with her world. This leads to the bulk of the developmental interaction being between the two women, resulting in a different and fun dynamic and also Zeph’s girl-crush being dialled up to 11.
Inevitably, there is also an appearance from ruthlessly ambitious aristocrat Delle Seyah with her typical condescending sneering, and even though she is a hateful sociopath uncaring of anyone beyond what she can use them for and who also murdered one of the show’s most sympathetic characters, she still remains someone the viewers are constantly pushed to emotionally invest in and be impressed by.
Run, Yala, Run is a slow beginning that pulls us back into the world of the Quad. Although everything is now different, the consistencies of the characters still remain, and it’s unlikely to be too long before everyone else remembers who they truly are, and the final battle against the Lady and her forces will begin.
