Warning: Contains spoilers for Peacemaker episode 5.
In a brief scene, Peacemaker episode 5, “Monkey Dory,” revealed a big element of the secret DCEU backstory of the Butterflies. The Butterflies were first referenced in Peacemaker episode 1, but information on what they are and what they want has only come in bits and pieces. It’s appropriate that the audience is left almost as much in the dark as Peacemaker himself, but a scene between Clemson Murn and Locke gives a key detail that helps fill in a lot of the picture about the strange alien species.
When Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) needs a solution to his White Dragon (Robert Patrick) problem in Peacemaker episode 5, he gets help from Locke (Christopher Heyerdahl) via Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). The conversation with Locke reveals a part of Murns dark and secretive past when they discuss their shared experience killing people during a conflict in the jungles of Nyasir, a fictional northeastern African country in the DC comics. Murn notes that he has “changed” since then.
While Locke might read Murn’s statement about having changed as referencing not killing in the same way, with the knowledge that Murn is in fact a Butterfly, the audience can infer something different. His statement suggests that Murn became the host of a Butterfly only after his time in Nyasir and has retained his memories. This in turn implies that his attempts to be better about expressing emotions, which are still in their infancy, came after that change, and are notably already taking place early in Peacemaker episode 3. This means that he was definitely already a Butterfly before both the assassination of the Goff family of Butterflies and before the mission to Glan Tai and he helped to enact both, suggesting that the Butterflies are in a form of civil war with Murn’s Butterfly acting against the larger force.
Murn and any possible allied Butterflies must be working against a much larger force of Butterflies in Peacemaker and are cut off from other supplies or reinforcements. When Murn needs someone inside the police department, he has Waller send in the antagonistic Locke to replace the Evergreen police captain. If Murn had additional Butterflies at his disposal that he could command, then he could have saved time and effort by simply having a Butterfly take over the existing police captain, rather than introducing the wild card of Locke to the situation.
While a conflict has been set up within the Butterfly species, it is not immediately clear which side of that conflict might be the “right” one. While Amanda Waller is supporting Murn in his mission, that is hardly a stamp of moral approval, and Murn himself has remained cagey about motivations or even the true nature of Butterflies. While Peacemaker episode 3 showed a map of suspected Butterflies spreading across the globe, the only action that has been revealed from them is controlling a senator who is pushing for better climate change legislation, which isn’t the most villainous of plots, suggesting that Peacemaker might morally need to switch sides of this Butterfly war down the road.
Peacemaker releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO.
