In the aftermath of Yukio’s death, the school is placed on lockdown while Lin and Madam Gao determine who the guilty parties might be. But with the students somewhat randomly paired off in various locked rooms, this can only be a recipe for trouble.

Continuing its trend for using a basic template format lifted straight from the big book of high school drama clichés, this week Deadly Class opts for the ‘lockdown’ where groups of students are all left together in various locked rooms to stew while the principal investigates whatever big trouble has been caused. Of course, in this school, full of trained killers from various different ideological and racial factions, with the big trouble being a pair of students having recently been murdered, the stakes are a little different.

The main point of interest here is seeing the differing approaches of Gao and Lin to the issue, especially given their own relationship dynamic. Having discovered her brother’s secret last week, Gao’s reaction to it is not entirely what we might have expected, but like most things about the character, leaves much room for interpretation. All we ever really know about her is that she’s lethal, and always bound to be several steps ahead of everyone else, and that doesn’t change here.

Meanwhile, Lin has his own way of dealing with things, which is simultaneously every bit as brutal as Gao but also seems to have a certain additional layer of humanity beneath it. His confrontation here doesn’t tell us much (if anything) with regard to the subject of his interrogation, while revealing a lot about just what side of which lines Lin himself is determined to stand. I don’t think we can ever accuse him of being a nice man, perhaps not even a fair one, but he certainly seems to have his own version of a moral code by which he steers his life.

Of course the students themselves aren’t just content to follow the rules at this time any more than at any other. Both Saya and Maria are out for blood in their own ways, and I’m pleased to see that the show has avoided making the complex triangle formed by these two with Marcus into anything as predictable as it might have been. Maria’s mental health issues combined with the pressure of her predicament mean that oddly, Saya the Yakuza hitwoman is the more measured and rational of them both, but all that means is that she’s able to see how messed up Maria is, not that she’s at peace with it, or necessarily able to forgive the actions it causes.

And just to keep things from getting too serious, Petra finds herself locked in a room with Billy and Lex for the duration. What on earth could a young, sexually aggressive girl and the two guys who have respective crushes on her do with themselves in all that time locked away together? Well, the answer may appear obvious (and the conclusion certainly is) but the show has its fun getting us there.

Verdict: Taking its foot off the gas a little after the last episode, this still hits all its marks perfectly. 8/10

Greg D. Smith