Murderbot (2025): The Droid You’re Looking For… Unless You Want Eye Contact

Set in a futuristic, corporate-controlled spacefaring society, the story follows Murderbot as it protects a group of scientists surveying a distant planet. When the team is attacked and discovers missing hazard warnings in their data, Murderbot uncovers a sinister plot involving sabotage and murder. As it reluctantly works with the scientists to survive, it begins to experience emotions and connections it finds deeply inconvenient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEioDeOiqEs

Listen, I’ve had relationships with fewer trust issues than this android, and I once knew someone who thought Mercury in retrograde was a medical condition. So, when Apple dropped Murderbot, I cleared my schedule, muted my group chats, and settled in for some cold, sarcastic comfort—and boy, did it deliver.

Alexander Skarsgård is our titular robo-wallflower, Murderbot, a weaponized security unit with social anxiety that could outclass any millennial at a networking event. Set in a glossy, hyper-capitalist future where corporations run the show and scientists are sent to survey potentially deadly planets with all the oversight of a wet paper towel, the series kicks off with a bang—and a missing hazard warning. That’s never a good sign, folks. It’s the equivalent of boarding an Uber with bloodstains in the backseat and thinking, “Eh, probably just ketchup.”

What follows is a twisty, tech-noir trek through sabotage, conspiracies, and our favorite questionably autonomous cyborg catching feelings like it’s a rom-com, but with more plasma weapons and fewer meet-cutes.

And let’s get this out of the way: Skarsgård crushes it. If sarcasm were a power source, he’d run the entire Intergalactic Transit Authority for a century. He nails that delicate Murderbot balance: part Terminator, part teenager forced to socialize with extended family. Watching him squirm through basic social interaction is like watching a toaster try to explain feelings to a cat—both hilarious and deeply tragic.

Mensah, played with calm gravitas by Noma Dumezweni, is the emotional foil to Murderbot’s sardonic shutdowns. She treats him like a being, not a bot, which makes things all the more complicated for our antisocial android. Meanwhile, David Dastmalchian’s Gurathin is all repressed rage and razor-edge tension, the kind of guy who would’ve started a fight in the comments section of your science fair project.

The rest of the crew -Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski, and Tattiawna Jones -form a compelling support group of well-meaning nerds trying to survive a corporate deathtrap with the emotional support of a bot who’d rather be binge-watching soap operas on internal storage than saving their skins. (Seriously, Murderbot canonically downloads entertainment feeds instead of dealing with reality. Same, buddy. Same.)

Visually? This show is as sharp as an Apple product commercial with lasers. Great effects, slick UI overlays, and a production design that makes Toronto look like the sexiest dystopia this side of a Netflix algorithm.

But let’s not swipe right too fast. A few bugs in the system:

First off, let’s address the Woke Bingo Card. Apple, being Apple, just couldn’t resist slapping every checkbox like a bored teenager on Tinder. Look, diversity is great—until it starts to feel like casting was done via AI prompt titled "progressive 2077."

Then there’s the pacing. Each episode clocks in at "wait, it’s over already?" length. They end just when things start to cook. It’s like getting served one sushi roll and being told the rest is "in beta." This thing is screaming to be binged, not spoon-fed weekly like a ration pack during a Mars storm.

And don’t get me started on the imaginary cutaways. You’ll be watching, fully immersed in some tense corridor scene, and suddenly—bam—we’re inside Murderbot’s mind palace, watching a simulation of a scenario that doesn’t actually happen. The tonal whiplash is real. It's like if Black Mirror and Mister Rogers shared a director.

But what truly holds it all together is that razorwire tone—a mix of existential dread and emotional constipation—that only Murderbot can serve up with such self-aware detachment. Credit where it's due: showrunners Paul and Chris Weitz said they didn’t overthink the tone, and it worked. Much like breathing, once you start trying to control it, you look like a malfunctioning Roomba.

And for all you production nerds out there: yes, Skarsgård sweated buckets inside that armor. Turns out, filming in a Murderbot suit is the sci-fi equivalent of CrossFit in a sauna. But the performance? Effortless. He looks like a killer Alexa with daddy issues, and somehow, I mean that as a compliment.

Lastly, huge shoutout to Martha Wells, the original author of the “Murderbot Diaries.” Not only did she offer input on the show’s tone, but she also personally recommended the “ring of dead creatures” in episode two. That’s not just creative consulting—that’s disturbingly delightful.

In the end, Murderbot is a moody, sleek, sarcastic ride through what happens when an introvert robot gets shoved into a leadership role and slowly discovers—begrudgingly, hilariously—that it might care about people.

So here’s my verdict:

7.0/10

It’s fun, stylish, and emotionally awkward in all the right ways. Binge it when the season’s done, and thank me later when Murderbot becomes your new anti-hero spirit animal.

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