[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Murderbot Episodes 1 & 2, “Free Commerce” and “Eye Contact.”]
In the first two minutes of Murderbot‘s series premiere at Apple TV+, we learn just how the titular robot (Alexander Skarsgård) feels about the humans it’s been built to protect: ‘Well, they’re a**holes,” it says in his internal monologue, as it sees the miners it’s been protecting start to celebrate the completion of their mission by getting drunk and torturing it a little for fun.
Of course, Murderbot also has some harsh things to say about itself, especially as it starts having flashbacks to a very violent episode involving a crowd of people.
“I think everybody is stuck in this position of being the only person who has an interior monologue as far as they’re concerned and of having a pretty cynical take on the way that the rest of humanity is behaving as well as on one’s own proclivities,” cocreator and episode director Paul Weitz told TV Insider of its colorful mental dialogue. “Murderbot is just as harsh about itself as it is about humanity… There’s something just so recognizable about Murderbot and the way that it’s thinking about things.”
Murderbot is soon reassigned to a new exploration crew that Murderbot considers “not your usual greedy psychopaths.” Crew leader Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) reluctantly picks it out from a lineup of more modern versions because the corporation requires them to have one, but she doesn’t want the shiny new model.
After Murderbot defends Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) and Arada (Tattiawna Jones) from a giant alien bug, the robot reveals its face and asks personal questions in order to calm the latter down and return to the ship. This raises the suspicions of others, particularly the computer-enhanced crewmate Dr. Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), who’s convinced — correctly so — that the robot is malfunctioning. He then demands the team steer clear of it while he has an interrogation and puts Murderbot to a mental test… and perhaps reveals something about himself in the process, too.
“Early on, there’s a weird thing with [Gurathin], which is with a lot of people who are cynical and sort of misanthropic, which is that they’re just one step away from needing love so badly and from wanting to bond with somebody. He’s the most like Murderbot of any of these characters. He has a really hard time relating to people,” Weitz explained. “So early on in Episode 2, he says, ‘What’s it like being you?’ And Murderbot can’t answer that because it doesn’t know what it’s like being anyone else, but to me, that’s Gurathian kind of reaching out and asking a very intimate question.”
The episode ends with Murderbot — whom Gurathian has ordered to try and recover the faded memory of his violent past — being invited to join the others on a mission to explore another exploration unit. From the flash we get of the crew inside having been ripped apart, it looks like there’s grave danger ahead for all of them.
Murderbot, Fridays, Apple TV+
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