We’ve reached the final episode of what is hopefully the first of many seasons of Murderbot. In it, we get corporate shenanigans, a PR nightmare, and the illusion of choice.
Spoilers ahoy!
“Something has happened.” We open with “system reboot” flashing on the screen. Murderbot’s voice sounds hollow. It repeats that phrase as its eyes open, sounding more like itself now. Murderbot doesn’t know where it is, but we the audience do. It’s back in the Threshold Pass Fabrication Center from the fourth episode. The workers wipe its memory, and the last thing it sees is Mensah gazing up at it. Next comes a new governor module (and a globule of spit). The Company claims SecUnits are nothing more than equipment, but they treat them worse than that. You don’t humiliate, degrade, and insult a tent, to use Arada’s example. The workers treat the equipment they use to maintain SecUnits better than they treat the actual SecUnits.
PresAux is also in the Corporate Rim, back in the meeting room where they made their initial deal with the Company. The suits are confused as to why they’re so concerned with “the physical location of a particular piece of equipment.” Pin-Lee gets to play lawyer for a hot minute as they take on the “fucker” in charge. Later, as the group discusses next steps, they’re torn about SecUnit. As Gurathin points out, “that Unit is full of proprietary data.” He’s certain the Company is going through Murderbot’s memory looking for anything they can sell.
Things aren’t great in the Corporate Rim. We’ve seen hints of this in the indenture contracts and Gugu getting press ganged into the Company’s espionage squad, but now we see that unrest billowing out into the working class. SecUnit’s contract has been passed onto law enforcement, something Ratthi discovers the hard way. I live in Southern California, where the military is marching around doing disruptive demonstrations, ICE is terrorizing my neighbors, and local cops are aiding and abetting the state. So to see Murderbot go from a goofy little droid who just wants to watch space soaps to a weapon of state violence was a hard dose of truth in fiction.
Strikers are protesting and the cops are eager to “do some damage” by antagonizing the workers into bloodshed. It’s a helluva thing to hear human strikers chant “We’re not slaves!” while a bunch of cops sic a group of enslaved constructs on them. Because these people are in violation of their indenture contract, they’re effectively without rights. However, remember that most of these humans are/were on indenture. Indenture is terrible for everyone involved except those turning a profit, but it’s not slavery. They have the choice to strike and fight back (so did real enslaved Africans, to be fair; there were a couple hundred slave rebellions in the so-called New World, not to mention the Haitian Revolution). SecUnits do not have that choice.
Those strikers don’t see SecUnits as potential allies. Why would they? SecUnits are things, equipment, tools. They aren’t people to Corporate Rim indentured workers. That division is sown by the Corporate Rim and reinforced by Corporate Rim humans (and those streaming shows Murderbot likes so much). That fraction of a memory of a massacre is still in Murderbot’s brain, and it pops back right as the melee kicks off with the protestors, causing it to glitch out. It doesn’t want to hurt humans, no matter what its governor module commands. Instead of using Murderbot’s glitch as an opportunity to go after the human cops or to try and turn that SecUnit to their side, the strikers pummel Murderbot with their own weapons. On one hand, I understand why. They feel powerless, and as we’ve seen before, wielding what tiny bit of power they have over SecUnits is a way to feel in control of their lives. On the other hand, SecUnits are tools in this situation; go after the hand holding the weapon, not the weapon itself. Most of the humans in the fray aren’t doing anything but cheering on those attacking Murderbot with hammers. They aren’t attacking other SecUnits or the cops, just celebrating destroying a toaster. It’s a complicated, nuanced scene in which humans on both sides come out looking not great.
This moral haziness is explored again through Gurathin’s interactions with his former drug dealer. The guy acts like he had no choice and elides all responsibility, as if the fact that he doesn’t deal drugs now makes up for what he did then. He did his time in the trenches. He used Gurathin to earn his way into a good job, nice apartment, and a happy, well-cared-for kid. He nearly ruined Gurathin’s life, but at least he came out on top, right? Then Gurathin turned around and did the same thing to Mensah, or tried to before he realized he wasn’t a slave to the Company, not really. He had a choice. His memory wasn’t wiped. He didn’t have a governor module installed (his version of that was the drugs, and he was able to kick that, just like Murderbot). He has a choice now, too. The Gurathin we met in the first episode wouldn’t have confronted his former dealer and taken all this risk to help a SecUnit. Gurathin uses the guy to get access to the data file and tracks down Murderbot’s memory. Then he does something surprising. He downloads all of Murderbot’s memories into his own brain. He’s been digging around Murderbot’s mind all season, and now he finally gets full access… and he does it all to help Murderbot.
After glitching, Seccy is decommissioned and set to be destroyed in acid, the thing it fears the most. It’s been stripped of its armor and is fully exposed, but it has no reaction. It’s a blank slate. Fortunately, it’s saved at the last minute by Pin-Lee’s injunction. Back in their quarters, Mensah is devastated that its organic parts haven’t retained any memory of them. It’s curious that it still has the massacre memory and not anything of PresAux. I feel like Mensah has a pretty big impact on it. Either way, Gura passes on the memories and Murderbot is back! A bit subdued, but back nonetheless. According to Mensah, it’s going with them to Preservation Alliance where it will be a “free agent.” Except no, not quite. It won’t have a job, a purpose, or even its armor. It will be under Mensah’s guardianship.
Preservation Alliance can sneer at indenture and slavery all they way, but they’re doing something not all that dissimilar to constructs. Murderbot would be free to make simple choices such as picking a hobby or deciding what clothes to wear, but bigger things would seemingly require Mensah’s permission or are outright denied (it couldn’t marry a human, for example). Even if she was likely to say yes, it is in effect putting another governor module on it. What Preservation Alliance offers isn’t freedom, it’s ownership by another name. All this reminds me of how 19th century white abolitionists often talked about freeing enslaved Africans but didn’t think they could be educated or have equal rights. I think of Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose poetry authorship was consistently challenged as either a trick or a pleasant surprise that couldn’t be replicated by other enslaved Africans. I think of Sojourner Truth’s speech from the 1851 Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention and how the version most people know is not her true voice but a heavily altered transcript produced more than a decade later by a white woman abolitionist that changed Truth’s words to sound like the stereotype of an ignorant, largely illiterate Black Southerner. I think of that line in Sinners about Jim Crow in the North: “Chicago ain’t shit but tall buildings instead of plantations.” And I think about how Preservation Alliance still refers to it as SecUnit even though they know it calls itself Murderbot, even after it is no longer a Company-owned SecUnit. No one ever asks what it wants to be called.
In a moment that is both bitter and sweet, Gugu and Murderbot have a moment of total honesty and mutual respect. Gurathin wants to help Murderbot get used to Preservation Alliance, but Murderbot can’t go with them. The moment he realizes what Murderbot is asking for, you can see his heart break in real time. It’s tremendous acting from David Dastmalchian and Alexander Skarsgård. Not even Gurathin, a guy who experienced indenture at the hand of the Corporate Rim—indenture but not bondage—really understands why. Given her reaction, Mensah accepts its choice, even if she doesn’t like it. Gurathin gives it one last command and off Murderbot goes. As it sails away with a cargo transport bot excited to watch new shows, We get one last voiceover and a small smile: “I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want…or to make decisions for me. Even if they are my favorite human.”
Thank you for joining me on this journey! I hope you loved this show as much as I did. I think the showrunners did a great job expanding the world Martha Wells created while staying true to the tone and themes. I maintain that the show should’ve cast a nonbinary spectrum actor in the lead, but Skarsgård did win me over. I’ve been watching him in other movies and TV and he is a much better actor than I gave him credit for. Lots of good, subtle work from him. The ending wasn’t some big cliffhanger, but it was perfect. Season 2 can’t come soon enough!
If you want more Murderbot, I’ll be covering the entire series starting this summer with All Systems Red over at Reactor’s Martha Wells Book Club.
Final Thoughts
- Episode 10 covers the rest of chapter 7 and chapter 8 (the rest of the book) in All Systems Red, but much of the episode is invented for the show.
- Not hearing Murderbot’s voiceover hit harder than I expected. The silence was deafening.
- I’m going to be thinking about that little half smile Gura does when Mensah asserts her authority and that lone tear when he realizes Murderbot is leaving forever.
- It’s not lost on me that most of the cops are white or white presenting.
- That hostile alien world is officially known as planetary body 898/8712. How creative.
- Nice little nod as to why Murderbot doesn’t like eye contact. It spent its entire life having to look at humans directly as part of its normal functioning, albeit from the privacy of its helmet. Once it hacks its governor module, it gets to choose how it wants to look at them based on how it feels about that interaction. That and watching TV are pretty much the only choices it gets to make before meeting PresAux.
- I love the shot of Murderbot as it stands just off center in the PresAux suite. Hands in loose fists, wearing fabricated clothing and surrounded by things it cannot use and doesn’t own.
- I think that was the first time we’ve seen Gurathin and Murderbot really smile, and they did it to each other.
- I think the show needed to dig into the guardianship aspect a little more. It gets glossed over so that the impact of why Murderbot chooses to leave doesn’t carry as much weight as it should. Most of my reaction in this review was based on what I know from the books, rather than the show itself. I also wish we got a depiction of the cargo bot interaction, even if just as data on Murderbot’s screen. It would help set up for ART, assuming season 2 follows at least part of the plot of Artificial Condition.
- The first thing Murderbot does when it’s finally free? It sits down.
Quotes
“Madam President. You will address me as Madam President.” Damn Mensah!
“On the Corporate Rim, eventually there is nothing but misery.”
Murderbot saying “I’m going to…check the perimeter,” then cutting Gurathin off with “I need to check the perimeter.” My heart!
“Murderbot, end message.”
I think you may be selling Preservation Alliance a little bit short, here.
We don’t really know the legal status of hybrids like Murderbot in this universe, and it’s entirely possible that Mensah’s “buying its contract” and taking the role of guardian is a legal fiction to get Murderbot out of Rim control.
And the only mention of marriage in the episode is a reporter asking if Sexbots can marry humans in the PA. To me, that seemed more like the media trying to spin Mensah’s group as a bunch of weirdos than an important cultural point.
(Don’t forget the line of reporters parroting the Company line during the riot…)
All that being said, Mensah does come across a little condescending and maternalistic in her talk with Murderbot… but I sort of get the feeling that’s less about indenture and more about a Preservation Alliance citizen simply assuming that everyone wants the same kind of life they do.
What Murderbot decided at the end was that it wanted to make that choice for itself.
You’re right about this. Buying out SU’s contract is simply a necessity to get it out of the Rim’s ownership. In Preservation Alliance, it would be a free citizen, if a second-class one.
And yes, you’re absolutely right about Mensah. She wants what’s best for SecUnit, but it’s what she thinks is best for it, and it needs to figure out what it thinks is best.
I don’t think Mensah would own Murderbot under Preservation Alliance any more than a parent owns their children. Which is to say, an improvement over indenture and slavery but still not the respect due an adult person.
I’m not fond of the Company getting its hands on MB. I think the central conflict could have been closer to the books. Though Gurathin hacking the company to get MB’s memories back may have been worth it.
I don’t know if they properly captured the vibe of MB moving through the public spaces of the station. The way it was always under surveillance and needed to subvert that surveillance.
I honestly hated most of the finale. There was no need to strip SecUnit of its memories and make it a docile little slave again, no need to have its whole personality saved by the humans while it spent most of the episode not only deprived of agency, but basically not existing as a character at at all (since, apparently he has no memory of the time between wipe and reupload). It was all time that could have been better spent explaining SecUnit’s conscious decision to not be anyone’s pet.
Not to mention that having a memory wipe now, combined with the fact that SecUnit’s organic components didn’t retain any memory at all, is gonna make a certain scene from a later book come up as both contradictory and redundant – if they’ll do it at all.
I did like the scenes with Gurathin, both with his former dealer and the moment of understanding with SecUnit. Dastmalchian is a great actor, when they allow his characters to be more than just “the weird one”. And we finally get to see Pin Lee actually be a bit of a badass lawyer.
As to why they don’t call it MurderBot: it explicitly said that it was private, and it never asked not to be called SecUnit either, so why would they change it now?
The memory wipe was upsetting, returning MurderBot to a powerless victim to be mocked by sadistic techs and exploited by The Company. But I’d say that seeing the life it would have / did have in The Company, contrasted with the infantilization of the PresAux clients, made it clear why the best option for MB was to deny both and choose the third unknown path.
The books are better for internality and directly reading the characters’ thoughts, I don’t think on screen it works as well to have 10 minutes of Skarsgard voice acting through the decision process of wanting to stay with it’s favorite humans but needing to leave to not be a pet – not when it’s perfectly summed up in those Five words, “Need to check the perimeter”.
Also, the (newly written) scene of The Company re-deploying MB as a SecUnit, to be viciously and intentionally turned on a crowd of protestors by murder-hungry fuckhead cops, was an unfortunately importantly relevant scene to have right now.
As to the memory wipe completely clearing PrmesAux from MB’s organic parts (but not removing the mining planet killing spree) that’s easily handled in world: MB learns (from this organic trauma response) that it *can* maintain memories in it’s organic parts that will persist beyond an invasive digital memory wipe. It now appreciates the value in storing some memories in that (previously deemed inferior) location, even though the memories aren’t saved with the same fidelity and get all weird and squishy. It starts intentionally making more use of it’s organic components, which goes further to advancing it’s capability as a unique cyborg-hybrid that doesn’t work like most bots or constructs or auggie-humans or … basically any thing that isn’t a MurderBot.
Also, I’m amazed at how much the subtle changes to Gurathin’s character have changed the way I read them in the books. This was the one character that went from kindof flat in the books to much more interesting in the show in a way that enhances the material in the original.
But to me it doesn’t really convey that decision process if SecUnit doesn’t remember being wiped, being made a slave again, being forced to attack people, risking destruction. It’s a threat that is made present and raw to the audience, but to SecUnit it’s just “something has happened”. Yes, logically we know that that was its ‘regular’ life before it hacked the governor module (And how did implanting the memories hack the module again, anyway?), but why put it through all that trauma if it’s not even going to retain an echo of it?
It felt more like a raising-the-stakes scene for a series finale if the series didn’t get renewed that an “end of part one”.
Why wouldn’t MB remember the trauma, though? There wasn’t a second memory wipe, Getting all it’s older memories back wouldn’t erase or replace these new, horrific ones.
If I remember correctly, all that MB says after the re-upload is that it’s missing some episodes of Sanctuary Moon and that “Something has happened”. It seems surprised to be on the station in the company of the PresAux team, which it wouldn’t be if it had memories of its time after the wipe. To me it doesn’t seem to indicate that it has retained those memories, nor does it really explain how it hacked its governor module again, unless Gurathin did it for him.
I get it that they would want us to understand the horrors of what a construct is facing if they manage to be resistant to orders (and how did Murderbot do that without hacking its governor module *again*?) but essentially the plot has now elevated Gurathin to be the “saviour” and although it might do good things for Gurathin’s character, and it gave us a nice moment between them, it overshadows Murderbot’s inner struggles with choice.
I don’t see it as making Gurathin a savior, I see it as redeeming him and showing that he’s finally accepted SecUnit to the point of taking a risk to save it. Coming to a friend’s rescue doesn’t make you a savior figure. Was Han Solo a savior when he came back to save Luke from Darth Vader’s TIE fighter, even though he’d already gotten paid and didn’t have any more stake in it? No, he was just someone who’d finally accepted Luke as a friend. Needing a friend’s help doesn’t take someone’s agency away. It’s a reflection of their agency, because they earned that friendship.
While I kept wanting to shout “No, you’re telling it wrong!” at my tv, I did love it.
I also wish we didn’t live in a post-physical media world as I’d totally buy this boxed set.
I overall enjoyed the finale. I had a visceral reaction against the memory wipe, but I get why they did it storywise. I do agree that it would have been better to have MB at least recognize PresAux, even if it didn’t remember everything they went through. Gurathin’s character development was A++, a significant but I think organic expansion from the books. “I need to check the perimeter” is one of the top scenes in the series, no question. OOOF. I liked that the last bit seemed almost verbatim from the books, although I thought it odd that it said “they” rather than “you” are my favorite human, although clearly Dr. Mensah got the message anyway.
I do wish they’d explained guardianship a little better, but I think they did an okay job. Of course it’s difficult to separate my knowledge from the books from what’s presented in the show.
I agree that Skarsgård earned his stripes, but I still feel like I have to mentally asterisk a wish for a non-binary spectrum actor every time I mention it, like you did, hah. Hopefully this is another step towards the general public expanding their idea of the spectrum of gender.
I am just so excited and relieved that we get season 2! I wonder how they’ll do it, if they’ll find a way to weave in these characters or leave them entirely to flashbacks. I hope they bring them back!
Wow! I’m in tears. Season Finale was a very touching episode. I was begging to get angry due to differences from the book’s original story early on the scenario, eventually though, from a point and on I couldn’t hold myself. All protagonists-actors are exceptional at their roles and Mensah, Raathi, Pin Lee, Arada, Gugu.. I love them. Congratulations. Although some events were a bit rushed the outcome was touching, dramatic, and full of powerful messages and heart. Thank you.
Frederick Douglas wrote (regarding slaves) : “Give him a bad master and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master”. I was reminded of that when I first read the book, and again during this episode
(P.S. One aspect of the book that is changed in the series – in the book I got the sense that one issue that Gurathin had with SecUnit was that as an augmented human, Gurathin felt of lower status than non-augmented humans, so any movement by the others to raise SecUnit’s status, felt to Gurathin as a lowering of his status).
Frederick Douglas wrote that a slave with a bad master wants a good one, but a slave with a good master wants to be his own master. I thought of that quote when I first read the book, and again when I saw this episode
Years ago Steven Gould, when asked about the movie version of Jumper said one needs to treat them as separate from the book.
I’m trying to do this with Apple’s version of Murderbot. As a TV show it’s well done. But so much is changed from the books.
Instead of highly competent scientists we get space hippies.
They are cute and amusing. Likewise MurderBot is less intelligent.
However this version fits well with the space hippies.
I don’t think it’s that MurderBot is less intelligent exactly.
In the books he is *extremely* competent at violence in all its aspects – this comes across as a sort of intelligence. Although he takes damage ultimately everyone / thing comes off worse if they tangle with him.
On the other hand the book MB is much worse at interacting with humans – only happy with his mask on and watching though remotes.
This would probably be very difficult to create as a video, so I can accept that the essence of the story remains
Murderbot uses it/its pronouns, not he/him
Sorry. I *did* know that, no real excuse
worse at interacting with humans – only happy with [its] mask on and watching though remotes
Yeah, this was one of the aspects of the show I didn’t like, even as I can also acknowledge that the demands of a visual presentation necessitated the change.
I really enjoyed reading through these articles! A great way to revisit a show that I loved.
I thought the memory of the massacre didn’t resurface for some time – hasn’t it had at least 7000 hours of TV watching by the time it connects with PresAux in the show, at least 10 months, and the memory resurfaces around the time it’s assigned to PresAux. So it makes sense to me that it would take time for the organic memories to resurface and mean anything.
Really I thought it was a brilliant adaptation – and I say that as someone who dearly loves the books! Yes, they are different, but the format is different. The showrunners hit all the major plot points but just got there different ways, and I was nearly hyperventilating through the last episode wondering how they were gonna do it, or if they were going to betray me at the last minute and just take everyone back to Preservation with a blank slate SecUnit.
I’ve read the series many times and now rewatched the show several times and regardless of the changes, I feel the showrunners understood the characters. The things that bothered me the first time – PresAux feels WAY more naive in the show, and Murderbot feels less practiced – but I think both changes will lend well to character development over the course of the show which is already settled by the time that the books start. I’m looking forward to seeing the PresAux storyline (hopefully) develop over season 2. And I *cannot* *wait* for ART!
Thanks for your thoughtful write-ups of each episode, Alex!
You’re welcome! Really enjoyed covering this show. I hope you’ll join me next month when I start my reread of the books here on Reactor.
Now, that was premium quality entertainment. I was surprised they added this new epilogue to the book, but it worked so well. It was a wonderful payoff for Gurathin, who’s been so hostile to SecUnit throughout, being the one who makes a difficult personal sacrifice (not just downloading so much data, but facing his dealer, probably the last person in the galaxy he ever wanted to see again) to save it. (Arrgh, I keep writing “he/him” for SecUnit and catching myself. Old habits are hard to break.) And it was perfect that the key to restoring SecUnit’s memories was Gura remembering Sanctuary Moon. Naturally the Rim’s systems didn’t bother to classify that frivolous data, so it gave Gura an unsecured back door into the rest of Seccy’s memories.
Their farewell scene was also terrific, taking something that the book could handle through internal monologue and making it work better for a dramatic medium. Calling back to the running “perimeter” business throughout the season was a perfect shorthand.
I don’t think it was unclear why SecUnit walked away from going with the PresAux team, and you don’t have to believe it would’ve been poorly treated in the Alliance to understand why. It said it right there in the closing lines. It didn’t want to just do what other people, however benevolent, thought it should do. It wanted the freedom to make its own decisions, to find out what it wanted without others putting pressure on it, whether through commands or through well-intentioned solicitousness.
“Nice little nod as to why Murderbot doesn’t like eye contact.”
This isn’t something that needs an explanation. Eye contact is just hard for some of us. Although SecUnits are intended to have their helmets on most of the time and watch things through drones and video feeds, so there’s no reason why they’d need to make eye contact in most instances, and thus no reason to find it desirable.
I actually felt Skarsgard was making too much eye contact at the end, but in the final scene with Gurathin, I caught him doing the thing I do where I make eye contact for the shortest possible moment to sell the illusion and then just let my gaze rove around in the same general direction.