Painkiller Jane is based on the comic-book of the same name by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti.
Here is some background information about the comic-book character. Whether this will be true about the TV character remains to be seen.
Jane Vasko begins as an undercover police officer attempting to infiltrate the Fonti Mob. After gaining the trust of mob boss Joey Fonti, she is given the assignment of passing a message on to rival gang member Adam, not realizing that an explosive device has been planted on her. As she meets her target, the explosion causes significant injuries, but Adam is uninjured. Through mysterious means, he manages to revive Jane, giving her superhuman regenerative powers in the process. Leaving her life as a police officer behind, she becomes the vigilante Painkiller Jane.
Powers and Abilities
Jane Vasko is virtually indestructible, making her very hard to kill. With Jane’s exceptional recuperative abilities, minor injuries heal in seconds, and do not even slow her down; more major ones tend to take a few minutes. She has recovered from multiple gunshot wounds, explosions, axes buried in her spine, even a shotgun to the face (which simply knocked her off her feet for a bit). However, the healing power does not stop the injuries from hurting, which is where her new name came from. Given her new profession, Jane tends to get hurt a lot. On the offensive side, she has no real powers except being a tough woman to kill. Other than that, she is a skilled fighter and master of undefined martial arts, as well as a master marksman with her weapons of choice, a pair of handguns.
The series was picked up by SciFi after the made for tv movie was a relevant success. This also enabled the launch of a new comic-book, which has sold out.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
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Swedish American bombshell Kristanna Loken is back on the small tube, after a few movies. She is a DEA agent busting druggies.
She is confronted with a strange phenomenon when she does an undercover bust; somehow, a man is copying the appearance of another, right in front of her. She is warned that it’s an illusion and she shoots the right people.
After some digging, she gets into trouble and her investigation is suspended. She gets another meet with the mysterious man who wants her in his outfit, however she refuses and puts a tracer on him.
She follows him and gets trapped into the outfit. Her bosses tell her she has been reassigned, but she leaves anyway. She is informed that the DEA is filing drug possession charges against her. She makes her way back to the HQ.
They tell her that they hunt neuros, genetic aberrations that can influence other people. The one that she killed could induce hallucinations. The ones they capture are chipped and released. The chips shortcircuit the problem.
They suspect that the company Vonotek is behind the plot and that a neuron is heading it. In Vonotek, someone is taking the bad batches of prescription drugs and selling them on the black market. They tell Jane that Shannon Perry was a member of their team and after her first day, she steps in front of a moving truck.
Perry was following Vonotek’s head of security Randall Hyde.
The show feels a bit cheap. They probably don’t have a big budget to create their episodes.
Jane and her partner have infiltrated Vonotek once more. They loose Hyde when he takes the elevator somewhere. They find him again thanks to the hacker who works for their outfit.
Jane gets attacked by her partner Steve because he has been possessed by the neuro. He takes a run at him and they both fall out of the window and die. Or so it seems.
Somehow she wakes up again. She doesn’t have a scratch on her. She has a healing factor. Agent McBride recruits Maureen, her ex-partner from the DEA. Maureen Bauers gets hacked by the neuron through the communication headset.
They find out that the neuron is Hyde’s assistant. They corner her, and she makes a run for it. Connor was in prison.
Tyler figures out that Hyde went to floor 113. On floor 113, we see Hyde walking by people in storage.
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