‘Murderbot’ Episode 3 Review

The third episode of AppleTV+’s ‘Murderbot’ feels more like an extended piece of filler than an episode in its own right.

After receiving no reply from the other group of researchers working on the planet, the team decide to check out what’s going on at their base. Once there, Murderbot discovers that everyone is dead, and what’s worse, it looks like their SecUnits were responsible.

This episode was incredibly short at just twenty-two minutes, and that shows, as nothing of any real importance happens. The first half is devoted mainly to talking about unimportant things, while the second throws in some short action scenes. It’s odd, as given the way the last episode ended on a big cliffhanger, I would have expected this one to provide some answers, or at least add another layer to the mystery, but not so.

We learn that everyone on the other base is dead, and that one of the SecUnits was responsible after having its safety protocols overridden so it would harm the people it was meant to protect, but who the culprit is isn’t revealed, and we cut to black again, leaving another cliffhanger. 

This isn’t actually an episode in its own right, more just the first or last part of one, and with a sub-half-hour runtime, it would have been easy to tack this onto the next episode. As it is, there’s no good reason for including it except to extend the season by another week.

There’s no real development for any of the characters, no big changes or astonishing revelations, it’s just filler clipped from the other episodes. All the same flaws are there too, with unlikable characters, and bad jokes. I’m pretty sure the humor is meant to make you cringe, at least it always has that effect, and fits with the slightly awkward feeling of the rest of the show, but it doesn’t flow well and comes across as trying too hard to be funny.

I really hope this show starts to move soon, as it’s going incredibly slow, and after three episodes we neither know anything about what’s really going on, nor have any tantalizing hints enough to keep the suspense up.