What do you do when your safe space starts looking like your reality? You delete the manual and binge the 19th season. This is me, rethinking life choices after watching Murderbot Episode 6, titled Command Feed.
You know you’re knee-deep in a cracking good episode when your favorite emotionally constipated cyborg ends up as both therapist and spare parts. After the previous emotionally intelligent sci-fi episode, this week’s chaos of Murderbot is like an existential crisis wrapped in a broken hopper and seasoned with enough social awkwardness to host a high school reunion.
Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård), our beloved angst-powered SecUnit, has finally come face-to-face with its own psychology, and unfortunately, that face is Mensah’s during a full-blown panic attack. From making space in its internal storage by yeeting the hopper repair manual (for Sanctuary Moon, no less), to being used as a literal spare part, spinal nerve and all, this episode pushes every boundary the show has so far flirted with.
And through all of this? Murderbot slowly, terrifyingly, begins to remember why it named itself Murderbot in the first place.
The therapy session nobody booked but everyone needed
Let’s begin with the beautifully tragic irony that Murderbot’s biggest emotional trigger… is its comfort show. Okay, so can you imagine discovering that the only show you use to escape your life is suddenly a grimy mirror? That’s what happens when the latest episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon starts feeling too real.
Murderbot’s been avoiding its feelings like we avoid Monday mornings, but the universe (and a very specific navigation bot in the show) has decided it’s time for emotional tax season. The bot’s discomfort is tangible, and dare I say, oddly relatable? That feeling when your favorite drama suddenly reminds you of your breakup, your trauma, or worse – your group project in college. Sanctuary Moon was never meant to resonate; it was meant to distract. But now it’s practically hosting an intervention.
And speaking of interventions, cue Mensah’s panic attack. Her chest tightens; she thinks it’s a heart attack, and Murderbot, who has watched more human drama than a bored barista in a soap opera marathon, decides it’s time to help. With a playlist. From the show. A specific breathing exercise episode. It’s earnest. It’s awkward. It’s adorable.
And yes, it works. Is this therapy? No. Is it Murderbot’s therapy? Apparently, yes.
How to lose trust in ten gigabytes
The hilarity or tragedy peaks when we learn that Murderbot deleted the repair manuals from its system… for season nineteen of its show. And I say this with no sarcasm: I get it. Hard drives are cruel gods. But unfortunately, this very human miscalculation leads to an impasse: a hopper that can’t be fixed, a team stranded on an unfriendly planet, and Mensah’s urge to scream into the void intensifying by the second.
Murderbot takes the hit without much protest. It knows it messed up. And yet, while it’s physically injured and emotionally glitching, it’s the only one pulling the emotional weight. Irony much? Also, I would love to shout out to the delicious bit where Murderbot claims it’s physically superior to humans, seconds before faceplanting due to internal fluid loss.
If slapstick comedy ever needed a cyborg mascot, Murderbot just dropped the mic and half its torso.
Mensah the surgeon, Murderbot the spare part
You know a sci-fi show is cooking with spice when a spinal nerve becomes a jumper cable. With their hopper dead and options thinner than a teenager’s patience, Mensah (bless her overachieving soul) figures out that Murderbot’s lube is compatible with the hopper’s. Naturally, this leads to an impromptu transfusion, where Murderbot becomes both patient and part donor.
The best part? Mensah’s (Noma Dumezweni) dietary ethics are in an existential crisis. To Murderbot, it’s simple: she’s not eating it. But to her, it’s a philosophical battlefield. The result? She goes full MacGyver-meets-Grey’s Anatomy. And it works. Hopper is up. Murderbot is standing. And yes, it cracks a joke right after being vivisected.
I won’t lie here; I would watch Mensah and Murderbot host a surgery vlog.
Leebeebee: The Corpspy you should have seen coming
Anna Konkle’s Leebeebee. A name that sounds like a nursery rhyme but delivers emotional and literal death.
I have to seriously agree to this: the woman was sus from the start. She kissed Murderbot. She pawed at Bharadwaj’s scar like a deranged Pinterest board. And she talked about adding a s*x module to Murderbot like she was shopping for toaster upgrades. I mean… what?? Leebeebee represents everything wrong with the Corporate Rim’s commodification mindset. She doesn’t just toe the ethical line; she dances on it in heels.
Still, Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), sweet summer child that she is, buys the whole damsel-in-distress act. Her naiveté is both heartbreaking and enraging. Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), on the other hand, has the sense of a hawk in a pigeon flock. He clocks her motives quickly, but too late. Leebeebee pulls a weapon, and the squad is toast.
Or… would have been, if not for our friendly neighborhood Murderbot.
In one of the episode’s most chilling moments, Murderbot executes Leebeebee mid-threat. Not wounded. Not warning. Just clean, clinical, done. It’s a move that saves the team and simultaneously draws a canyon between them and their resident rogue bot.
You’d think they’d be grateful. But the response is… complicated. Gurathin’s furious, Bharadwaj feels robbed of a chance to ‘save’ the infiltrator, and Mensah? Well, she’s too stunned to speak. No one wants to face the cold reality that Murderbot may have enjoyed that kill.
And that’s where the existential dread kicks in. For the first time, Murderbot isn’t just confused or annoyed. It’s disappointed. It expected validation. Applause. Maybe even a head pat. Instead, it’s met with suspicion. The loneliness, already chronic, is now terminal. The thrill of violence, buried deep under humor and sarcasm, begins to surface.
As Murderbot itself might say: Oh no!
Is Murderbot episode 6 worth watching?
This episode of Murderbot ambitiously dives into heavy themes like identity, trust, and trauma, which is commendable. However, the pacing sometimes feels uneven, with some scenes dragging while others rush through important emotional beats. Murderbot’s emotional turmoil is compelling but occasionally veers into predictable territory, and the slapstick moments, while funny, occasionally undercut the tension instead of complementing it.
The introduction of Leebeebee felt somewhat rushed and one-dimensional, lacking the subtlety the rest of the episode strives for. The climactic kill, though shocking, leaves the team’s reactions feeling a bit underdeveloped. Regardless, overall, it’s a solid episode that raises important questions but stumbles in execution.
One more thing I need to highlight here about Episode 6: it forces us to look at Murderbot, not as a machine learning to be human, but as a being that is already too human. It panics. It deletes useful data to make room for comfort. It tries to help. It fails. It kills. It regrets. It hopes. It expects love and gets fear.
And I, for one, find that heartbreakingly familiar. If this episode had a face, I’d hug it, slap it, and then cry in its arms!
Murderbot is available to stream on Apple TV+ now.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
