In Review: The Outpost – We Only Kill to Survive

Synopsis: Talon faces the ghosts of her past, while Garret seeks Dred. Gwynn prepares the outpost for war, while ill tidings arrive with a messenger.

Review: The first season of ‘The Outpost’ never got reviewed on this site because at the time I wasn’t sure if it was a good fit for us and it really took a season of the show for me to become invested enough to get to grips with the characters. Which is understandable given how character-driven the first season was. The second season, which premiered last week in the US and last night here in the UK. Picks the story up from where the opening season left off. Gwynn has been revealed as the genuine Queen of the land and is looking to overthrow the oppressive Prime Order who wiped out the Black Bloods and took control of humanity and the land, but there is still a spy among her people.

The Story

Picking up from where last season left off. Talan had to leave Garret on his quest to find Dred in order to save the life of Janzo’s life. So Talon returned to the Outpost with Janzo while Garrett continued his mission.

The season two premiere opens up with Garrett and his men catching up with Dred but winding up on the losing side. We see Garret get impaled by one of Dred’s people, but it is left open-ended to whether he has died or not.

Back at The Outpost Talan is trying to use her powers as the last Black Blood to summon demons in the hopes that she can control them in the battles to come. But she can only get the name of one demon, which has been given to her by a mysterious little girl. We get a quick flashback to Talon’s childhood and see a scene in which her human family is all killed by another Black Blood, which Talon kills in retaliation. The Black Blood concerned was after the power that Talan processes. A power gifted to her by her dead mother. As we come back to the present day Talon summons the demon but finds that she has also summoned another Black Blood as well. This person is the sister of the one that Talan killed all those years ago when she was protecting herself.

In order to help her human friends, Talon needs to find and defeat this other Black Blood and her demon in order to get hold of a book with all the demon names so she can summon them.

While all of this is going on. Janzo is trying to find a cure for the plague, which has afflicted this world and is getting a steady supply of plague-infected bodies to study.

The Acting

There were a few good performances in this episode, but most of the narrative was dealing with Talon and her summoning of the other Black Blood and demon. Anand Desai-Barochia puts in a solid performance as the very likable and geeky Janzo who still has unrequited feelings for Talon. But I was most impressed with Andrew Howard who as Marshall Withers shares a really powerful scene with Talon where he talks her out of going after Garret. This scene is pretty strong given that the Marshall had a somewhat adversarial relationship with Talon for most of the first season.

Overall

This was a serviceable season 2 premiere, which is looking to set some pretty big things up for the series two arc, which will hopefully explore a bit more about Talon and her Black Blood origins. We get some interesting developments with Queen Gwynn looking to find allies in the war to come, which is a war to restore the monarchy. But the question we are all asking is will Garret have survived his ordeal at the hands of Dred’s friend.

Hopefully, the second episode will prove a little pacier than this opener.