Movies & TV Murderbot Murderbot’s Privacy Is Invaded in “Foreign Object” Thankfully, there’s more Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to offer us solace. By Alex Brown | Published on June 27, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome to the eighth episode of Murderbot and Its Selfish, Ungrateful, Hippie Clients! Murderbot has more of its privacy invaded, Mensah has had it up to here, and Gurathin is having the second worst day of his life. Spoilers ahoy! Ah, there’s my Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I missed thee last week. The scene we see is from a much later episode than the last clip we got; and it’s also a new one for Seccy. Captain Hossein is now dead, decapitated at the hands of his construct lover, the NavBot. Lieutenant Kulleroo has been promoted to captain after basically doing a factory reset on the NavBot. Except it doesn’t work and it drags them all into the event horizon of a wormhole. It’s pretty clear that in the Corporate Rim, sexualizing constructs in a gendered way based solely on surface-level assumptions of presentation is depressingly (frustratingly, disgustingly) common. We saw it in the way Leebeebee went after Murderbot and how Captain Kulleroo tells NavBot to smile. I talked about this in an earlier review, but I’m convinced it’s also a key selling point for AI. We’ve got tech bros arguing that AI is practically sentient, folks turning to LLMs for romantic relationships, and even a journalist who made an AI employee look like an attractive woman then immediately sexually harassed it. They get to have all the thrill of power with none of the consequences for abusing it.  Every woman or person who often gets assumed to be women (hi, it’s me) has had some creepy asshole man tell them to smile. If Kulleroo tried that on a human woman, she’d have some options for resistance, even if it was just complaining about it to her friends. NavBot wasn’t supposed to even realize resistance was a concept, much less offer any, not after that reconditioning. Love gave her choice, so they took that choice away. Control without resistance. It’s the main selling point for SecUnits and other constructs. The Company gets to replicate slavery but with a population that can’t fight…and sexual violence is part of that. It’s also an undercurrent of why the PresAux humans are so distressed by Murderbot being “rogue.” Their reaction reminds me more of the claim that was common in the 19th century (and still percolates around today) that Black Americans would rise up against white people and inflict upon them what they inflicted upon us. The Corporate Rim folks cannot conceive of a construct going rogue and just wanting to hang out with some space operas, while the Preservation Alliance humans only want SecUnit to go rogue in ways they approve of. They want a certain type of resistance done in a certain way; tone policing, anyone?  Hang on, I’m getting sidetracked. Much like Murderbot does when watching Sanctuary Moon instead of scouting out the PresAux habitat to see if the mystery third party is lying in wait. Using the transponder Murderbot left behind to record the habitat, the team figures out the group trying to kill them is from GrayCris, a mining company. And they have even more evil SecUnits. Much like PresAux, GrayCris is also led by a middle-aged Black woman, albeit one with a terrible hair care routine. Mensah wouldn’t be caught dead in public with her hair that fried. For once, Gurathin and Murderbot agree on something: neither think they should return to the habitat, despite how badly he needs the med bay. Ratthi, Arada, Pin-Lee, and Bharadwaj may think they were badasses in that last “punch-up,” as Ratthi adorably puts it, but we and SecUnit know that they only made it out of there alive by the miraculous intervention of a broody alien animal. It says a lot that while Gurathin is writhing about in agonizing pain, he and Murderbot both simultaneously realize it can use its own body to help him override his pain sensors in lieu of giving him pills. Murderbot doesn’t know anything about Gura’s past in the Corporate Rim, so it has no context for why he would reject pain meds. Yet it still occurs to it to help him. Mensah asks if this plan was inspired by Sanctuary Moon but nope. (It’s actually from Medcenter Argala, episode 502). For the first time, SecUnit gets to see things from a human perspective. It’s a lot gooier than expected.  And here comes another one of my favorite moments from the book. In the novella, the reveal about SecUnit’s chosen name comes at the same time as PresAux learns it’s rogue. Here, Gurathin wasn’t able to dig past its defenses the first time around. Murderbot decides to use this opportunity to go rooting around in Gurathin’s brain, and then Gurathin returns the favor. Alexander Skarsgård plays this moment so well. If SecUnit was really an evil, killer rogue bot like NavBot from Sanctuary Moon, we’d expect to see it react with anger, threats, or violence. Instead, Murderbot is frightened and nervous. It’s having its most private thoughts and memories aired out in public sans context and by the one person who has gone out of his way to make life inordinately more difficult for it. Director Aurora Guerrero shoots this scene with a lot of close-ups and medium shots of the actors, then when there’s a pause after the reveal, switches to a wide shot of the entire cast where we watch the humans in unison shift ever so slightly away from Murderbot. Then a slow zoom in on it when Gura calls it defective. It’s subtle yet so effective. Even Mensah leans back. It’s a gutting betrayal, to be seen and then rejected by the only humans to ever show it kindness, to paraphrase NavBot. Composer Amanda Jones’ score really drives home the shame and sorrow Murderbot feels in the moment where it agrees with Gurathin’s accusation that “Maybe you’re just defective.” Not having anything else to do, and not getting any defense from its supposed allies, Murderbot puts its helmet up and leaves. Bharadwaj and Ratthi mount a defense of Murderbot, and Mensah finally shuts Ratthi down by reminding him “It’s not your pet!” They can’t force it to return or help them, so she redirects them to figuring out who GrayCris is. I gotta disagree with Mensah here, not about the pet part but about the root of her anger. In the past, she’s always been able to pull Murderbot back in with a little patience and compassion. This time, she feels like a line has been crossed. She’s right that it isn’t a pet, but it is a person. She’s choosing to let it go, to not fight for it. She offered Gurathin forgiveness for choosing to cause her harm despite being addicted to Company substances—we know it was ultimately a choice, even if a meager one, because he was about to end his life. Murderbot doesn’t know why it has that memory of 57 miners being slaughtered. Perhaps it was forced to like those DeltFall SecUnits and like it was going to do before it shot itself. Perhaps it was manipulated like Gura. Perhaps it was ordered to by another human. We don’t know anything except that it didn’t choose to murder those miners or any other humans. It was doing the thing that humans programmed it to do. And now another set of humans are placing all the blame on it for actions it couldn’t control. Yeah, I’d storm out, too.  PresAux deduces that GrayCris is likely after the alien remnants. The Company probably didn’t have a hand in the attacks on DeltFall or PresAux, but someone employed by the Company probably did take a bribe to cover GrayCris’ tracks. DeltFall was killed simply for knowing GrayCris was on planet. The only reason PresAux is still alive and kicking is because GrayCris needs their data on the location of the alien remnants, data Leebeebee failed to retrieve. While Murderbot “wanders aimlessly,” it tries to self-soothe with its favorite episodes of Sanctuary Moon, to no avail. The NavBot wormhole episode we saw in the cold open gives it an idea. Why not play the part of “the rogue SecUnit who betrayed its clients?”  Next week is the penultimate episode of the season. Will Murderbot’s plan work? Final Thoughts Episode 8 covers parts of chapter 6 in All Systems Red but is mostly invented for the show. Constructs sure do love decapitating people don’t they? I don’t know what John Cho did to piss off his NavBot lover, but it’s quite a left turn from that romantic fireside chat.  Speaking of sexualizing constructs, it’s not lost on me that NavBot is the only crewmember forced to wear that shiny, revealing, short skort thing.  Hope that next season (if we get a second season) they tweak the text of what Murderbot sees on its screens so it’s darker and more opaque. Be kind to my old eyes! I had to get right up next to the TV screen to read “area clear” written over the blood spatter. It’s also not lost on me that Bharadwaj does the same exact procedure on Gurathin as she did on SecUnit. At least Mensah gave Ratthi that light touch as a silent apology. They’ll have to talk about it later.  Kinda glad that throuple thing ended. The show never did anything interesting with it.  I think this is the first time the show has told us Mensah is a planetary administrator? We knew she had some sort of leadership role, but this is basically the President of Preservation Alliance. In the book, it’s pointed out that killing someone of her stature would be just as financially destructive to the Company as paying out the bonds on the rest of the teams. Lmao that the CGI of Murderbot scanning the area is the same as the scanning animation in The Sims 4 Career pack. Apple TV+: Murderbot minifig when??? Quotes “When you inducted me into this hideous religion called ‘love,’ you took away the only human who has ever shown me kindness. You have taken away my reason for living. Or letting you live.” “Yes, Seccy, yes.” “This doesn’t have to end in violence.” Murderbot and I both scoffed at that. “Hey. Hey. We’re gonna fix you right up, okay, Gugu?” And that little thumb rub over his cheek! Le sigh. Someone page the rarepair fanfic writers. I need some Ratthi x Gurathin fics forthwith! “Massacres are bad for business.” Until next week…[end-mark] The post <i>Murderbot’</i>s Privacy Is Invaded in “Foreign Object” appeared first on Reactor.