40 Years Ago: The Real Ghostbusters "Killerwatt"

AJ QuickSupporting Member

·September 19, 2026· 4 min read

40 Years Ago: The Real Ghostbusters "Killerwatt"

On September 20, 1986, ABC aired the second episode of The Real Ghostbusters, a season one installment called "Killerwatt." But here is the detail that makes this anniversary genuinely interesting: although viewers saw "Ghosts R Us" first on September 13, "Killerwatt" carries production number 75001, making it the first regular episode the show actually put into production. It was originally intended to premiere the series. According to The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, published in 2025, "Ghosts R Us" simply crossed the finish line first while "Killerwatt" still needed more work, so the two episodes quietly swapped places in the broadcast order. The second episode audiences ever saw was, by design, the one meant to introduce them to the show.

Watch Killerwatt right now on Youtube:

Watching it with that knowledge, the episode plays almost like a pilot. The story opens with unexplained blackouts hitting New York City as electrical spirits begin traveling through the power lines. Back at the firehouse, Ray serves the team his family's Ferocious Fondue Casserole, which everyone discretely unloads onto Slimer the moment Ray looks away. A call sends the Ghostbusters to Stacy's Department Store, a thinly veiled Macy's parody, where possessed appliances and power tools have turned against the customers. The building itself eventually levitates from the concentrated psychic energy before the team brings things under control. Once those ghosts hit the Containment Unit, the citywide blackout threatens the firehouse directly, and the team's emergency generator gets possessed too. Their solution is wonderfully absurd: hook a generator to a bicycle and have Janine pedal to keep the Containment Unit running while they track down the source. The episode establishes the show's rhythm cleanly and early, from Slimer's role as lovable nuisance to Ecto-1 being treated as something closer to a fifth Ghostbuster than a company vehicle.

The villain behind all of it is Killerwatt, leader of the electrical spirits, voiced by James Avery. Before he became Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and before he defined Shredder in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Avery was supplying the booming voice of one of The Real Ghostbusters' earliest antagonists. Call sheet research also credits him as the Stove Ghoul. Killerwatt is a clever concept because his army does not simply shoot electricity; they use it as a medium for possession, turning ordinary objects into ghost bodies. Killerwatt himself eventually possesses Ecto-1, and Ray refuses to let the team fire on the car, arguing it is like one of the family. When they trace the disturbance to a Brooklyn power plant, Killerwatt draws directly from the generators and absorbs the Ghostbusters' proton streams, turning their own weapons into a power source. Winston is the one who recognizes the solution: stop feeding him. Slimer disconnects the power, Killerwatt loses his energy supply, and the trap finally works. The title itself is a pun on kilowatt, and on the original production call sheet the character was listed simply as "Beast."

Written by Len Janson and Chuck Menville and directed by Richard Raynis, the episode features the full original cast including Lorenzo Music as Peter, Frank Welker as Ray and Slimer, Maurice LaMarche as Egon, Arsenio Hall as Winston, and Laura Summer as Janine. The featured song is "Charge You Up" by Tahiti, which later reappeared in "Citizen Ghost." Killerwatt himself turns up again inside the Containment Unit during "Xmas Marks the Spot," and the 2016 Tobin's Spirit Guide later classified him as a Class VII elemental entity, though that designation comes from secondary canon rather than the original episode. The city throws the Ghostbusters a parade at the end. Nobody remembers Janine is still back at the firehouse on the bicycle.

Check out our full image gallery with screenshots from Killerwatt here: