The Ridiculous Ending of 'Butterfly' Goes Off the Rails

Typically, when I review a streaming television series, I haven’t seen it in its entirety. I don’t like to watch the ending beforehand because I might be tempted to spoil it in the review (and because I like to write follow-up spoiler reviews). And I apologize: Had I seen all of Butterfly before reviewing it, I never would have offered even my half-hearted recommendation.

What a mess.

I want to say I still like the characters played by Daniel Dae Kim and Reina Hardesty, but in the latter’s case, I was at least hoping for a modicum of growth (she starts the series as a 23-year-old who still acts like a petulant, rebellious teenager and ends it as… something much worse). And even at just six episodes, the series manages to endlessly repeat itself: It’s a cat-and-mouse game that never stops cat-and-mousing. Contrary to what I thought after watching the first four episodes, Butterfly actually does manage to wear out its welcome and then some.

Here’s the spoiler recap:

Nine years earlier, David Jung (Daniel Dae Kim) co-ran an intelligence outfit called Caddis with a woman named Juno (Piper Perabo). What does Caddis actually do? Apparently, that’s not important, because it’s never really explained. They go on missions, they kill people, and that’s about it. One of those missions goes awry, everyone is killed except David, and he fakes his own death so the bad guys — whoever they are — won’t target his family.

Cut to the present: David resurfaces to pull his daughter out of Caddis, where she’s become Juno’s protégé. Once he pops back up, Juno sends her people — including David’s daughter, Rebecca — to kill him. No one is more shocked to see David alive than Elizabeth, who thought her father was dead.

For several episodes, Juno repeatedly sends her people to kill David (why? Because reasons!) and to take down Rebecca once she realizes Rebecca is working with her father. One of those people is her son, Oliver — “soft” but desperate to impress his mother. David and Rebecca kidnap Oliver, who spills that Juno set David up to die nine years ago. Why? Because David had a moral code, and Juno couldn’t have that nonsense.

After interrogating Oliver, David and Rebecca let him go because they’re “not killers” (except for the dozens of nameless henchmen they kill). Then they hatch a scheme to convince Oliver that his mother is going to kill him for ratting her out. It works. He runs to a U.S. Senator and agrees to testify, dismantling Caddis.

That should be the end of Caddis, except Juno still wants David dead so he won’t interfere with her next big evil plan. She sends henchmen who fail to kill him but do manage to kidnap Rebecca and bring her back. Juno tries to convince Rebecca that she’s like a mother to her. And Rebecca listens. Because this is a bad show.

In the finale, David convinces his powerful father-in-law to loan him some men to rescue Rebecca in exchange for a “favor.” (Do we ever learn what the favor is? Of course not.) Endless shootout, henchmen dead, Rebecca rescued. Rebecca then convinces David not to kill Juno because “they’re not that kind of people” (never mind the trail of corpses).

Juno walks away, boards her private plane — because consequences are for better TV shows — and calls Oliver to assure him she’d never hurt him. Meanwhile, David and Rebecca have dinner with David’s wife and young daughter, with whom Rebecca has been slowly bonding over the course of the series.

During dinner, David’s wife goes to the bathroom. Rebecca joins her, and they’re laughing on the way. When they take too long, David abandons his four-year-old to check on them. I’m terrified he’s going to come back to find someone has taken his four-year-old, but that’s not what happened. In the bathroom, he finds his wife stabbed, Rebecca gone. The show heavily implies Rebecca killed her stepmother — possibly on behalf of Juno. Roll credits, teeing up a second season that no one needs.

Truly: David spends the entire season trying to save his daughter and reunite his family, only for her to—possibly—murder his wife. Ridiculous. Dumb out of 10. Would not watch again.