Summary
“Murn After Reading” fleshes out the overarching plot with some intriguing new developments.
This recap of Peacemaker season 1, episode 6, “Murn After Reading”, contains spoilers.
Following on from the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode, “Murn After Reading” is quick to ensure us that no, Murn doesn’t kill Leota. In fact, he rewards her accidental discovery of him being a Butterfly with more useful exposition than we’ve received in the entire show thus far. See, it turns out, Harcourt and Economos already knew about Murn being a Butterfly, having figured it out when he took an explosion to the face in Goff’s house, and have since given him the benefit of the doubt. As the creature inside Murn explains, its people came to Earth since they were dying. But the one inside Goff — which, remember, is currently in Peacemaker’s trailer — was their bloodthirsty leader; Murn’s inhabitant was a dissenter who just wanted to live in peace and has since endeavored to work towards taking the rest of its kind down. It took over Murn because he was the worst person it could find, so the morality of stealing his body and memories isn’t too questionable. The ends will hopefully justify the means.
As long as they can find the cow, anyway. More on this in a bit.
Peacemaker season 1, episode 6 recap
But the Butterflies are the primary focus of “Murn After Reading”. After showing up for a school show-and-tell as a favor to the guy he met while recuperating in hospital, Peacemaker returns home to his trailer and discovers that Goff’s Butterfly — which he and Vigilante simply refer to as Goff, as will I — is trying to communicate with him by drawing a peace sign on its jar in remnants of the amber fluid Peacemaker has been feeding it. With a simple system established — one knock for yes, two for no — Peacemaker and Vigilante start conversing with Goff, but their interrogation is cut short by the arrival of the police, which they’re just tipped off about by Murn.
The reason the police are outside Chris’s trailer is because of Detective Song, whose string-pulling judge uncle has set Auggie free and produced an arrest warrant for Chris. We get a little of Auggie here, but mostly as a set-up for subsequent episodes. He has his Klansmen mates round for a celebration, and they all help him don the suit of the White Dragon, which he’s going to use to kill his son, which he figures he should have done long ago (presumably when Chris inadvertently killed his brother, Auggie’s favorite, which we learned in a flashback during the show-and-tell sequence). Expect more from this next week.
In the meantime, though, the police raid the trailer, and despite Peacemaker and Vigilante being able to initially escape, Vigilante’s antics result in Goff getting free and promptly disappearing inside Detective Song. Despite Locke, Murn’s psychopathic ally, intervening personally to ensure Peacemaker and Vigilante escape — describing the assailant as the Hamburgler, hilariously — he can’t stop the police from finding the journal that Leota planted, nor can he prevent Song from going out looking “for some friends”.
As it turns out, Goff has a lot of friends. Through Song, it summons a legion of Butterflies in little spaceships, and together they raid the police department, taking control of everyone there, including Fitz, Locke, and the prisoners in the cells. This is bad news.
And there’s more to follow. When Peacemaker returns to the HQ to tell Murn about Goff and about Locke being a psychopath, he’s kept in the dark about what Murn, Harcourt, and Leota discussed earlier. Instead, his attention is drawn to the cow, a presumed one-of-a-kind organism that the Butterflies are “milking” for their fulfilling amber nectar. Luckily, Economos thinks he knows where it is. But that’s a mission for next week.
“Murn After Reading” ends on a relatively melancholy note, with Peacemaker confessing to Harcourt that perhaps he doesn’t want to kill people anymore, and then playing the piano for a surprisingly long time until he’s interrupted by his so-called “diary” making the news. Locke is holding a press conference claiming that the journal details the Butterfly operation. Capturing Peacemaker has just become the number one priority of law enforcement.
You can stream Peacemaker season 1, episode 6, “Murn After Reading”, exclusively on HBO Max.
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