Vagrant Queen Review: Yippie Ki Yay (Season 1 Episode 2)
Elida, Issac, and Amae bond through some life and death karaoke and viewers get a whole lot of backstory on Vagrant Queen Season 1 Episode 2, “Yippie Ki Yay.”
Leading up to the premiere of Vagrant Queen and even through its first episode, Vagrant Queen Season 1 Episode 1, “A Royal Ass-Kicking,” I thought of the show as a space adventure with lots of comedy, but that’s not quite right.
No, after a climactic karaoke battle where the team has to sing Heart to Heart to avoid being dinner, it’s pretty clear that Vagrant Queen is a space comedy with lots of action.
Maybe that seems like semantics or an unimportant distinction, but it changes expectations going into each episode. It makes the show’s irreverence the point and makes all its manic ridiculousness more fun.
There are still moments in “Yippie Ki Yay” where the comedy gets a little too broad and makes scenes feel clumsy, but just compared to “A Royal Ass-Kicking,” everything about this episode feels more organic and flows better.
You can see the actors starting to settle into their character’s voices, and it shows in their comedic timing and more natural rapport with each other.
In between watching the Winnepeg crew run for their lives and belt out 1980s pop songs, viewers get a lot of backstory about Issac and Elida on “Yippie Ki Yay.” They fill in more of their backstory than I thought they would so soon and, even more surprisingly, resolve a significant amount of the trust issues between the two.
Vagrant Queen does a good job telling the backstory of these two characters and helping the audience to understand their relationship in a limited number of scenes. The show also manages to reframe their relationship in some important ways that change what we can expect to see the rest of the season.
At the conclusion of “A Royal Ass-Kicking,” it feels like Issac and Elida had their falling out years ago instead of weeks ago. It also feels like Issac did something a lot worse than try to convince Elida to use her past to make money.
It’s absolutely believable that Elida would overreact or be too quick to believe Issac’s response to learning about her royal roots is confirmation of everything her mother told her, just as it’s believable she wouldn’t have told him about being a queen.
While it is surprising to learn that she trusted Issac even as much as she did during the two years they worked together, it wouldn’t have been believable for her to completely let her guard down.
But as a viewer seeing what actually happened, it casts their relationship in a new light. Issac didn’t really betray Elida, he may have disappointed her, but he didn’t do anything that warranted her stealing his ship and stranding him on that planet.
Their falling out isn’t so much about Issac’s selfishness (although he does rightly apologize for his mistakes), it’s squarely about Elida’s trust issues.
This is a pretty significant change from the comics but one that makes Elida’s arc potentially more interesting and adds more layers for the show to explore the rest of the season and in possible future seasons.
We also get a few tidbits about Amae’s past. As expected, like Elida, Amae has her own tragic childhood.
We’ll likely learn more about just what Amae went through in future episodes but even getting some confirmation that there is childhood trauma there, and that in a lot of ways it mirrors what Elida went through, hints at where their bond is going to go and how their relationship will evolve.
Both of them saw violence, suffered loss, and were left adrift because of forces beyond their control. They were both robbed of their childhoods, even if Amae had her brother looking out for her, and both responded differently.
It’s not exactly fair to call Elida a cynic, but compared to Amae’s idealism and optimism, their diverging responses to their past tragedies offer some interesting layers to their relationship and the impact they’ll have on each other beyond their budding romantic feelings.
Elida’s response to her past is to pull away and live a life without responsibility as much as she can. She still has compassion and empathy despite herself some times, like when she saves Issac, but she certainly isn’t looking to be a hero or take on causes that aren’t her own.
All of which makes perfect sense since she was a queen before she even hit puberty and had the weight of an entire kingdom on her shoulders, not to mention that being responsible for the world has been the cause of the tragedy in her life.
Amae, on the other hand, leans into the world, and whether it’s because of her past or just who she is, she believes in fighting for others even if it means putting herself at risk. They sum up Amae’s perspective eloquently and succinctly in an exchange with Elida after Amae tells her she wants to stay and help her find her mother:
Elida: Yeah, but it’s not your fight.
Amae: Imagine if everyone thought that. It would be a pretty schlucky universe”
It’s easy sometimes to write off the idealists as naive or unrealistic, but that misses the point. Amae knows the evils of the world and has seen what people are capable at their worst. Yet, she keeps standing up for people because it’s the right thing to do and because that’s the world she wants to live in.
That’s not only admirable, but it’s also powerful. I’m excited to watch her influence and inspire both Issac and Elida to be their best selves as their adventure continues.
Another lovely thing about Elida and Amae’s relationship is the sweetness of it. It’s rare to see the lead of a sci-fi show get a love story like that, especially for queer characters. So often there’s a hard edge to the love stories for lead characters. One that is borne out of tragedy or conflict.
There is some element of shared trauma and play in the dynamic developing between Amae and Elida, but more than that, there is a softness to their interactions so far that feels different from relationships on similar shows. It’s something that will hopefully continue and grow to become a defining feature of their relationship.
Stray thoughts
- How does everyone in this far off galaxy know so much about Earth? If Issac is a rare human who can’t find his way home how did everyone find out about Earth kittens and pop music?
- I love how much the Winnipeg evokes the feeling of a Volkswagon bus. It feels exactly right for this crew of misfits and the tone of the show.
- Will we see Gladys the mercenary again? They spend a lot of time on her and her interest in Elida for her to be a one and done character.
What did you think of this episode of Vagrant Queen? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Vagrant Queen airs Fridays at 10/9c on Syfy.
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Sarah Fields
Sarah is an obsessive geek who likes to get into the weeds and over think things. She is passionate about Sci-Fi and comics and is a giant classic film nerd. Sarah cares deeply about media representation and the power of telling diverse stories. When she's not writing or watching her favorite shows she spends her days working in the non-profit world trying to make life a little better for those that need some extra help.