It doesn't look like that’s going to happen, according to creator and executive producer Michelle Lovretta, who has other projects on her plate (though in the interview below, she doesn’t rule out comics, novelizations and the like). So at this point, we must focus on what we did get: Yalena “Dutch” Yardeen (Hannah John-Kamen), Johnny Jaqobis (Aaron Ashmore) and D’avin Jaqobis (Luke Macfarlane) were a badass, quippy, wonderfully entertaining trio for the ages. The show’s core group of actors had the kind of rapport and chemistry that is all too rare, and Killjoys took what was so clear on the screen and ran with it for five whole seasons. Add in sly space villains, riotous prison ships, daring heists, messed-up families, unlikely romances and too many dangerous adventures to list, and, well, what more could a person want out of a TV show?Dutch, D’av and Johnny started out as unlikely buddies serving warrants in the Quad, a tough corner of space where bounty hunters — and just about everyone else — had to scramble to survive. But the show became a story about carving out a place to feel free and creating a patchwork family who would celebrate exactly who you were, even if they occasionally drove you nuts — or tried to murder you. (We’ve all been there, right?)
Each actor brought crisp, committed delivery as well as depth and nuance to their roles, and what could have been just another space adventure story, over time, grew to contain surprising poignance and emotional weight. Thanks to the game, intelligent energy the cast brought to their work, and to the writers, crew and directors who wove quips, distinctive world-building and action seamlessly into a witty yet earnest story about rebellion and the desire to overthrow all kinds of oppression, Killjoys didn’t take long to become must-see TV for me.
In its five highly entertaining seasons, the Syfy program stayed true to its irreverent, generous, sexy and propulsive heart. It introduced us to an array of lovable, complicated, often hilarious characters (Pree! Delle Seyah! Turin! Fancy! Gare-Bear! Lucy! Pip and Zeph!) while also providing a zippy and enticing array of adventures, outfits, murderous plots, parties, invasions, kisses and hilarious one-liners.And the finale — in which Team Awesome Force defeated the Lady and found love and celebration with each other — was the frosting on the intergalactic cake. It’s a tribute to the vividly entertaining work of everyone involved — including Lovretta and executive producer Adam Barken (who took over showrunner duties in seasons 4 and 5) — that I already miss this crew so damn much.
Earlier this week, I spoke to Lovretta about the ending of Killjoys, Dutch’s journey, the growth of Team Awesome Force, the way the series finale subverted TV tropes and what Lovretta might be doing next. What follows is an edited transcript of our chat — and, of course, spoilers ahoy!
IGN: You had two seasons to plan the ending [after season three, Killjoys was renewed for two final seasons]. Is that something you lobbied for?
ML: I don't think anybody ever gets to lobby for two seasons, to be honest. You don't get to lobby for much. There's never a guarantee. A lot of showrunners grapple with [not knowing if a show will be renewed] every season. I certainly grappled with it as well. But there's also something that is a bit liberating about that process, because every finale I've ever written, I've had to go into with the understanding that this could be the last episode. In a weird way, it's an interesting and fertile training ground for writing the real [series finale].
But when we did finally find out that we had the 20 [episodes to end Killjoys], it was sort of a terrifying grace. You are used to a certain metric, you're used to a certain rhythm. And 10 [episodes] always felt a little bit small for our show, because we were trying to incorporate episodic adventures and world-building and serialization. It was this really interesting melting pot of all these forms of story. So it's a lot to jam in, and 20 is certainly more ground than we're used to.
IGN: Did you have ideas about the ending for a long time, or was it something you came up with along the way?
ML: I always like to tell a story and find a story through the characters. And obviously, I think it's pretty evident that I have fallen pretty deeply in love with these characters from the very first frame and the very first page. So to me, it was always important that I had a direction of where they would personally end up. I always knew that Johnny was going to be departing on his own adventures. I always knew that Dutch and D'avin we're going to have to sort of renegotiate what they wanted out of their lives.
But the other part of storytelling is being open to change. So I saw that footprint and I saw the trajectory of getting us to that direction, but I didn't hold myself to it if it didn't feel like the appropriate payoff. I honestly didn't know until I was literally writing [the series finale]. I wrote maybe four different endings, just trying to sort of test them out with me and my team, to see what feels right. This was the one that felt the best.
If you're itching for another sci-fi series after Killjoys, here's our recommendations for 8 TV shows you can binge right now: IGN: The ending, to me, felt great. Everyone got a happy ending. There are more challenges, there are more missions, there's more work to be done, clearly. But no one died. And you even brought Zephyr’s beloved Pip back. Why that direction? Why did no one die?
ML: I’m a person who loves tropes and I love sort of spinning them and [there was a trope that I wanted] to spin on its ear. There's always a feeling that for a story to have a mythic power —for us to feel that it mattered and that the people mattered — well, then they have to die, because life and death is that important. But if death is all that is important, then I think you’re selling life pretty damn short, and I don't want to do that. Right now, given the state the world is in, I don't want to be part of that negativity.
I believe in these characters. I love the journey they've been on. I've loved watching the villains become quasi-anti-heroes and the heroes be challenged. And I don't see why they have to die just because a lot of conventions within storytelling tell us that we need death to feel that there's weight. The weight on this show has always been about love, and it's always been about hope and family and those things shouldn't have to end.
IGN: Obviously I love a good death that makes me cry. But at the same time, sometimes the worst thing is to be left alive — to have to live with your choices. That's a complex, meaty situation, and one that you seem to be interested in.
ML: Yeah. Something that we overlook sometimes is that stories, particularly in a medium like television, aren't just tales we tell about people. They're tales we tell through [real] people. There are human beings, TV writers and showrunners, who get exhausted and who get emotionally attached to their fictional babies. Some of them, I think, at the end, want to make sure that their world ends, or a character disappears, in a way that might offer the sense of finality and closure [the creative team] needs. I needed the opposite. I needed to feel like I didn't have to say goodbye.
IGN: The ending is conclusive but clearly the world these people are in isn't ending. The characters will go on, and I can see the potential for comic books, spinoffs, movies or things like that in the future. Do you want the story to be over, or do you picture other mediums continuing the tales?
ML: I’d certainly be open to it. There's a lot of story road left for this type of world and these type of characters, and I think we've been really successful in every time we brought in a new character and a new actor and expanded the world. Everybody wanted to spend time with those secondary characters as well. If we got any notes from the audience, it was “We want more of this person. We want more of that person.” And there's only so much you can do with 10 episodes, so there's a lot of expansion that could happen. I'd love to do comic books or I might novelize it. I'm not sure, because at the end of the season you're still a little tired, but I think there's room. IGN: Clearly, the core of Killjoys is the three lead characters, but you now have a dozen characters around them that are memorable and are very different from each other. Was moving toward that kind of ensemble always the intent, or a spontaneous thing that arose because of what the actors and the writers found with the characters?
ML: It’s a combination. I don't think it's ever accidental. I do think there's this particular quirk to my personality, to my preferences and to my storytelling where I'm really interested in getting to know people. That's what I'm honestly in this for. I want to sit in a safe, confined space with a computer screen and just really get to know people I don't know in the real world. There's a lot of that adage, “Write what you know,” but I don't want to write just about what I know, and I don't want to write just about who I know. I want to explore how conventions and experiences I've had might be fielded by people who are stronger, weaker, smarter — what have you — than I am.
IGN: It’s not that there are no science-fiction shows on TV, but it’s pretty rare to find shows that are set on other planets and in which the characters are regularly on space ships. Why do you think that is?
ML: Usually part of the problem with selling those sorts of shows — it’s the same as saying you want to make a period costume series. The drain on production, the cost, and creating all those worlds in VFX — it just makes it a riskier prospect. So I understand that on the business end, there's always just a bit of hesitance. You have to work a little bit harder to sell that this is a world that will be loved. I think that it's a little bit easier always in television when you stay to the procedural [side of things]. I've never really been able to fully understand why. In a weird way, it's important for me to not understand, because I don't ever come up with a story with an idea that there's a market for it. I come up with these stories because I want to tell them to myself. If I delve too much into the analytics of what will sell and what won’t, well, I never would've said, how about a show about a succubus [“Lost Girl”] and how about a these people in a space ship?
IGN: Would you have gone for longer had that been an option? Do you think that the story got told, or do you wish you had more seasons?
ML: I loved having the last two seasons and I loved knowing [that was it]. A lot of times what happens when you have two seasons is, it makes sense for everybody to sort of compact them and [shoot] them together. So the pace increases. You go a bit faster. You do a little bit more with a little bit less, and that's just the norm. I think that we all would have wanted exactly what we got and five seasons was correct. If we'd had a little bit more time between seasons, that that would have just been a little less wear and tear and on our
brains and on our hearts. Honestly, in this day and age, you really can't complain. I'm very grateful and pretty damn thrilled that we could write, “Fade to black.” There's clarity and power to somebody letting you know that that's what's happening. IGN: Speaking of the end, I loved the imagery of the doll and the idea that Dutch was no longer being manipulated by anyone. Was that a cathartic thing for you to work toward — Dutch being finally free in her own mind and in reality?
ML: Yeah, it was an important moment to me. A lot of what I write ends up [being about] consent and agency. Those issues are really important to me and to my characters, so we would come at that from different vantage points throughout the season. But you have this one lead character that you're taking that journey with — Dutch.
It was a nice and, I think, necessary moment to show myself, to show Dutch, to show to the audience that she really had come full circle. She felt very empowered. She felt strong, she felt unafraid of the Lady and the situation that she's in now. And she didn't feel that she had to be forced to make the kind of moves that she would have made as an assassin. The Dutch that [we see at the end] is as close as we can get to who Dutch would have been if she hadn't been manipulated so much all her life. And it was a pleasure to meet that Dutch by the end.
IGN: Obviously there were a bunch of Team Awesome Force adventures in the finale, but there was so much love, including Dutch finally telling D’avin she loved him.
ML: Yep. I've told this story before, but when we were ending season three — there's always that burnout when you're at the end of the season, when you're running on fumes. I found that [originally], at the end of that season, I was leaving everybody in these really dire cliffhangers where it kind of looked like everybody was going die. I had this really great chat with my network exec, who was basically like, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Because nobody ever knows at that stage if you're coming back, and it just didn't feel — I don't know how to say it — but it didn't feel like it had a kindness to it.
What was so great about rewriting those last beats of season three, so that they had some comedy and a little bit of my lightness to them (which had been missing) — I was remembering that as I wrote this very last episode. I gave myself that same conversation, and I was like, "You want to leave these people where you're happy and it's okay that they're happy, even if that's potentially unconventional.” So, I wrote to make myself feel a little bit of joy. and if nothing else, that probably comes through.
IGN: Completely. Do you want to talk a little bit about Hannah John-Kamen, as well as the chemistry of her, Luke Macfarlane and Aaron Ashmore? Because I just feel like there's so much of the show that doesn't work without all of that.
ML: It’s been this amazing synergy between an amazing casting agent plus luck and timing. We found Hannah when she was still quite young, and also, I really pay attention to casting. This is going to sound dorky, but I have a very clear picture of the energy of a particular character, and energy is something that you pick up from people. But the thing that you can't predict is personalities. And so you can get an actress and actors that absolutely embody these characters, but that doesn't mean they're going to actually like each other.
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The unvarnished truth is those three kind of fell in love within that first season. They became really good friends and they loved coming to work. And that's not the case on every show. It is really not the case [laughs]. And it makes for a such a shift on screen, which factors back into the crew and the energy on set. That is really just up to the luck of finding those three people and how well they fit each other.
It was really wonderful that they ended up being so fabulous to work with and [liked] working with each other. Like, Luke is so damn funny. And we didn't know that at first. But he just kept nailing the random occasional [comic] line we gave him. That was such a blessing, because we thought, "Oh, here's a new insight into what makes D’avin so lovable." He's self-aware. He's just the tiniest bit goofy, especially for a big, handsome man. He's really loving, and kind of soft. He's a bit vulnerable in ways that Dutch can see — in a good way. That’s my favorite part about writing television versus writing a movie or writing a novel — you have time to extract from these actors all these things that they can do.
IGN: And you put a really powerful, complicated woman in the center of your adventure story.
ML: It's probably my goal always going forward. I think it serves me as much as it serves the audience. It’s something that I always wanted more of when I was younger, and to be a part of rectifying that and putting more of these nuanced characters on screen — characters we haven’t always seen at the center — has been important to me.
IGN: But Dutch wasn’t alone out there in the Quad. I was thinking about the characters who have the most power and the ability to wield power — it's Dutch, Aneela, Delle Seyah, the Lady and even Lucy. This is a show with not just with “the woman” — one woman who was allowed to have some interesting things going on. There's a lot of different women and they argue and they're not always on the same page, but they're all using their power and taking more autonomy for themselves over time.
ML: Yeah. And it was an interesting and very intentional journey on my part. I am a woman who loves women, who had sisters, who is very close to my mom. I'm very comfortable within that world. And what appealed to me was that Dutch wasn’t — for her own very well-earned, organic childhood reason. She didn't have the female friends that I've always had my entire life. That was a sign of her being wounded. It wasn't a sign of power that she was so close to the boys. It was important to me to take her down the path — and I'm glad we had the time to do the whole path — of healing, where she got past that and when you're seeing her have hugs with D'av, when you're seeing her have these bonds with Aneela. That's me showing the end of her internal journey. It’s been kind of lovely for me to be a part of making that story happen.
IGN: She was kind of a loner, to some degree, at the start, and at the end, you see that giant party with her found family on the prison ship.
ML: Yeah. That was great, but we had to fight to get that damn party into the production schedule [laughs]. Everyone was like, "We're going to make it happen because we have to, but holy shit, we don't know how.” By the way, the very last frame that you see — [the trio going on one last mission] — was the very last thing we shot, which was a wonderful way to end it on the production end. Everybody was celebrating, everybody was so grateful that we landed the ship, so to speak. It was a really moving experience for everybody that was there, as it should be.
IGN: What are you working on now? What’s next?
ML: I had originally planned on taking a year to recharge. I have the kind of brain that, when things are quiet, it gets really noisy with imaginary people and new worlds, and it's kind of been doing that lately. [When that settles down,] I’ll decide what it is that I really want to do next.
