Killjoys - S2E7 - Heart-Shaped Box

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Previously on Killjoys, “I Love Lucy”

Killjoys S2E7: Heart Shaped Box | Director: April Mullen | Writers: Michelle Lovretta | Starring: Hannah John-Kamen, Aaron Ashmore, Luke Macfarlane

This episode of Killjoys is about learning lessons the hard way, with D’av being the only one processing their emotions in a healthy way. Still reeling form the aftershocks of watching Sabine’s possible death he rushes outside and calls to Johnny for help. After ascertaining that she is still alive the brothers smuggle her back onto Lucy to the surprise of Dutch. The crew find out that not only is Sabine a Level Six agent, but somehow having sex with D’av has triggered an anaphylactic allergic reaction rendering her unconscious.

Using an epinephrine injection, Johnny revives Sabine and we see Dutch’s loyalty for the brothers veer off into the extreme. Her fierce sense of protection when it comes to the J’acobi brothers has always been apparent, but with the realization that Sabine is an agent assigned by Khlyen, her hate and suspicion increases tenfold and her senses are already heightened by her waking nightmare of slitting Alvis’s throat. She refuses to be helpless in the face of coming uncertainty. Although they recover a list of Level Six agents through a neural link, they quickly realize the limitations in their arsenal and take Sabine to Turin in order to use the resources of the RAC.

Those resources include your standard state-of-the-art creepy torturer, who turns out to be a Level Six agent sent to eliminate Sabine. And for the third time in two episodes someone loses their head. Sabine shows just why she’s an agent of the Black Root, head in hand. This new revelation forces Turin to go dark (AGAIN) in an effort to clean the RAC of Level Six agents - something that seems nearly impossible. But before he leaves, he hands Dutch the weapon they recovered from the interrogator, the only weapon they have that can effectively kill a Level Six agent.

But the fixed point of the conflicting emotional reactions between Dutch and D’avin this episode is Sabine, who proves to be a worthy opponent to Dutch’s manipulations. But as they both emerged from the emotionally broken school of Khlyen, one can see how she would be able to push her buttons a bit more than your run-of-the-mill villain. One of those ways is calling Dutch out for her blood thirstiness, something that becomes apparent even to D’av when he asks that she reel it in. As someone who was experimented on by the army and the Black Root, he sees Dutch’s treatment of Sabine as crossing the line into extreme unethical behavior that he cannot condone having been a prisoner in much the same circumstances.

This continues to be concerning in regard to Dutch, coming off from her kill of Romwell last episode, who said her aggression was triggered by their psychic link. It also feels as if she’s not working on reining herself in either.

Sabine, now feeling human for the very first time in over eight decades, trades the information she has on Level Six agents and the Black Root organization as well. We also find out exactly what the green goo does: it removes all emotional attributes and connections, but she’s running on borrowed time as whatever D’av did will eventually wear off.

All the while, Johnny is playing spy for Pawter and keeping his teammates out of the loop, to the point that he takes out a warrant with Belle outside of his crew’s knowledge - a warrant that although leads him to one of the builders of the wall, also leads him straight into Jelco’s trap; as predicted by Belle when he bulldozed through her salient advice regarding the consequences of keeping secrets from his teammates.

These secrets end up with Johnny missing in action while Dutch and D’av head to Leith to find Sabine and the sphere he saw while connected via the neural link. They release her with a tracker to give her a fighting chance against the inevitability of Dutch killing her - a kill Dutch carries out with a shot to the head. But Sabine’s words have hit their mark highlighting the fact that she remains with the J’acobi brothers because the feeling of love and happiness they give off is intoxicating in contrast to the truth that she feels nothing independent of them.

This reminds me of the end of last week’s episode when Sabines says, with such joy and surprise, that she was happy at the moment of la petite mort, the truth of that evident in her words and reaction. She arrives at the location of the sphere, which Dutch is able to enter realizing it is a safehouse created by Khlyen specifically for her. She returns to Lucy, red box of death in hand with the name Aneela in it. Suspecting that whoever Aneela is, Khlyen wants her to kill her. (What if Aneela is the one who took the Black Root out from under Khlyen?)

Favorite Quotes

“I kind of hate that I like you. Don’t worry it’s not mutual.”

“I’m the one she sky banged and even I’m saying you’re taking this too personal.”

“Gotta respect an honest bitch.”

“You’re the walking dead only no one will let you die.”