The Case for Killjoys Season 4 and Beyond 

Here’s the thing. I’m an unabashed nerd for the shows that I love, and peak TV means balls to me if there’s nothing in those eleventyseven programming choices that I actually want to stop my real life long enough to enjoy. If y’all have been around here for a while (hi!) or are new to us (hi!), you know our mantra is that we write about the shows that make us happy (a lot), and now that a significant portion of current events is a dumpster fire, we need heroes and happy and heart and ass-kicking more than ever.

Killjoys ticks all of those boxes and some we haven’t even thought of yet. So, before the zombies and/or vampires rise during Monday’s Solar Eclipse, here’s why we need the show renewed already, preferably for more than one season. We’re two weeks out from the season finale and we’ve got crickets on the renewal front. That’s ridiculous. Pull up a chair, grab a bevvie. I’m going in.

It empowers women every day, all day

Hannah John-Kamen. Do you need more of an explanation than the force that she is every week? OK, then. We have women all over Killjoys–behind the scenes it starts with showrunner Michelle Lovretta and extends to every level of production.

We’ve had a balanced show staff that involves women writing (including new hires Shernold Edwards, Niko Troubetzkoy, and Julie Puckrin just this year) and directing (Ruba Nudda and April Mullen) all through the show’s three seasons, as well as women working in the crew from costuming (Trysha Bakker) to stunts (Alison Reid and Alicia Turner).

Onscreen, women are everywhere and there’s not a damsel in distress among them, from Dutch and Aneela as the very clear Alphas of their respective teams to Lucy as the voice of reason to master manipulator Delle Seyah to new nerd Zeph who’s more than holding her own to Clara and Niko in the Hackmods to Kataan as a terrifying cleansed Hullen to our favorite doctor, Pawter (RIP) to the misguided Banyon (RIP) to Borna, heading up the Mole people and hand-picking husbands, plural. The men in play alongside each of these women never call their sex into question. It has no place in the discussion on Killjoys.

Diversity, Diversity, Diversity

We all want a safe space these days, and I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to live in a peacefully coexisting (most days, for the most part) city in the United States that is a literal UN every time I leave my house. So, I’m all about shows that embrace that, too.

Killjoys is a jam-packed melting pot of people, sexes, preferences, ethnicities, cultures, and more. And they never bat an eye about it. I said earlier this season that all are welcome here, and that’s held. It has the most color/gender-blind casting crew out there. ANYTHING goes.

Comedy is hard

Killjoys is a show that can easily break you, put you back together, and then have you laughing through tears. Sometimes in the same 44 minutes. It’s a crazypants skill, y’all. One-liners and deadpan delivery rule across the board. They’re not afraid to just be goofy and silly, and when so many shows can’t nail it down, Killjoys is consistently one of the funniest shows on television, on top of everything else it’s doing.

This week alone, Hannah John-Kamen channeled Alyson Hannigan’s Dark Willow “Bored now” when Aneela tired of tortuting Gander and the Brothers Jaqobis (the delightful Aaron Ashmore and Luke Macfarlane) had a battlefield strategy talk veer into pretty raunchy sexual metaphors that even Ashmore was surprised made the network cut.

That’s not the only time they’ve thrown sex and humor in–remember a squirmy Dutch and D’av waiting in a sexer’s closet for an opportunity to interrupt and kidnap the customer? It’s a wicked and funny show, you guys.

Family first

Despite the fact that this season has been grounded (on the surface, anyway) in a war and hatred between two factions, it’s the heart within each of those factions that drives the story along. They may hate the other team, but they’re willing to put their lives on the line for the people on their side of the divide, every time.

And our core trio love each other, more than anyone else out there in the world. They’ll go to the ends of the earth and always back each other’s play. They’re sort of the epitome of our favorite 80s mottos–Terminator‘s, “I came across time for you,” and The Last of the Mohicans‘ “I will find you.” They might have to second-guess everyone else, but never each other. D’av even recognizes Dutch’s gunburst pattern. Come ON.

They’re not superheroes

Pretty much every episode of Killjoys has our core trio on the delivering or receiving end of an ass-kicking, and they’re generally not injury-free as a result. Sometimes those wounds even linger to the episodes that follow. So while they’re capable and resourceful, they’re still human, and sometimes the wounds they get aren’t just physical.

It’s refreshing to see them acquit themselves of some seriously sticky situations and then still have to take a moment to regroup and get their heads back on. They bleed–which has been an important distinction from the Hullen this season. When they’re defeated, they come back stronger and smarter.

The truth will out

So many shows out there get all secrets and lies about everything, and Killjoys has always been very good about not sitting on its secrets for long. Dutch and Johnny cleared the air fairly immediately about their lingering hurt feelings after Johnny bailed for his walkabout.

We found out why D’av could control the black ships, and got the reveal about Aneela, before the end of the season, and not in a cliffhanger. Dutch didn’t have to carry her origin story by herself. She trusted Zeph and D’av with it. Hopefully, Johnny soon, too.

It’s just sex

When the show pulled the trigger on a Dutch and D’av hookup in the middle of Season 1 and then had it go very, very wrong, I was admittedly very “WTF??” about it all. And then the team managed to put itself back together around it. Aside from a misread cue a few weeks ago, that romantic angle hasn’t resurfaced. If it does again, these characters are in very different places emotionally for that to happen and it won’t just be a hookup anymore.

That said, hookups are A-OK on Killjoys. Dutch happily tips a sex worker for doing “all the work” when they need to kidnap her john. The sexers work above The Royale, it’s just no big thing. When Dutch spent some time FWBing with Alvis, it didn’t contort their working relationship.

Pree has no shortage of man candy and happily settles accounts with Lachlan (ahem) before he’s allowed to go back home with Dutch and Johnny. Aneela and Delle Seyah may have started as a hookup but it’s evolving. They’re healthy adults who are sometimes horny, and sometimes it’s more than just sex and that’s OK, too. Nobody gives a damn who you sleep with, only that everybody involved is on board. As Pree deliciously said Friday, “Front or back is always a pre-game discussion, sweet cheeks.”

Fluid mortality

Viewers who cut their teeth on sci-fi TV have a looser grip on character finality because resets and time jumps and alternate timelines are pretty common–we’re usually going to get them back. Not always, but most of the time. Killjoys has fun with this–we’ve seen quite a bit of Khlyen this season even though he’s dead. Delle Seyah looked pretty dead at the end of Season 2 but wasn’t.

We weren’t sure what happened with Clara but we got her back, in a different body, with a hell of a back story. So, while we may clutch our pearls in the moment, it’s always in the back of our mind that we’ll probably see them again.

The ratings

Fridays are often a ratings quagmire for the networks, but old school Sci-Fi made that work with Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Haven, and 12 Monkeys. Now the current trifecta of Killjoys, Dark Matter, and Wynonna Earp is holding its own. Only Wynonna has been renewed so far. Killjoys and Dark Matter are still waiting.

Three seasons in, Killjoys is pulling roughly 640,000+ viewers each week in the US and is the highest-rated Syfy show this summer. That’s just first-run. We can assume it’s ticking up from there with DVR and online watching. It’s gaining viewers, despite an earlier timeslot and no Netflix distribution of the earlier seasons.

The people

If you spend any time on the Twitter and hashtagging Killjoys, you’re bound to get the attention of someone in the cast or crew because they engage everyone. They talk to everyone. They love the show as much as we do, and they’re happy to invite us into the party. I’ve been very fortunate to speak to a bunch of them and visit the set and they’re all very good eggs. Let’s keep them all employed, shall we?

Killjoys airs Fridays at 8/7c on Syfy in the US and Space in Canada. Come live Tweet and start tagging those Tweets with #RenewKilljoys and #RenewDarkMatter for our pals over there! Click here if you’ve missed any of our exclusive interviews this season.