'Murderbot' Episode 6 Recap & Ending Explained: Is Leebeebee Dead?

The reason most films about a person trying to look for their purpose in life never really interest me is because I never quite buy it. To even have the entirety of your calendar open for such long contemplations about what you’re supposed to do with your life, you gotta be uniquely privileged. And for most people, a purpose is usually a thought in the background that’s pulled to the surface by unexpected events. That’s precisely why I like this week’s episode of Murderbot so much. There’s so much the titular cyborg has had to handle since the start of the show, it didn’t have a lot of time to think about the reason why it had gone rogue. But what you’re supposed to do with your life often hits you in unexpected ways. And let’s just say that Murderbot’s gotten a taste of something that kind of slipped into the background.

Spoiler Alert

It can’t be nice for Murderbot to find triggers in the one thing that comforts it, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Mensah and her SecUnit were lucky enough to dodge the beacon explosion that almost killed them. But their hopper is toast. And as Murderbot looks around to find ways to fix it, it can’t help but acknowledge the very obvious parallels between an episode of its favorite show and the situation it’s in. Just like Mensah and Murderbot are stranded somewhere on the planet, Sanctuary Moon’s lead character and his beloved navigation bot are stuck in a far away place. Murderbot does acknowledge how cringey it is that Captain Hossein and his navigation bot are falling in love. With no genitals, and no dopamine in its system, the construct doesn’t really have any need to be romantically attached to a human. But that’s not why Murderbot isn’t enjoying this episode of Sanctuary Moon too much. For someone who sees the show as its refuge from life, finding that kinda relatability beats the whole purpose of watching it. It doesn’t want to be reminded of the crisis it’s in. It wants to escape the stressful reality of its life. Murderbot’s frustration is only compounded when it gets in trouble for doing something we’re all guilty of doing. Mensah’s been looking for ways to recover the hopper’s repair manuals, and as PreservationAux’s SecUnit, Murderbot is supposed to have a copy of them in its system. But we all know how frustrating it can be to run out of space when you’re trying to download your favourite show. So however much it may make Mensah want to pull her hair out now, we understand why Murderbot deleted the repair manuals to make space for the 19th season of Sanctuary Moon. Boy that’s a long show! In Murderbot’s defense, the hopper had a manual. It didn’t know there would be an explosion. But Murderbot has no urge to be defensive. It knows it has messed up real bad. And now the entire team’s lives hang in the balance because their Security Unit wanted to watch its favorite show. That’s a hard one to come back from. But Murderbot’s at least figured out the problem with the hopper. One of the control wires is fried. Knowing this is no comfort to Mensah at this point. They’re out in the middle of nowhere, and whoever has killed the DeltFall team might be headed to their habitat. You know, the perfect set up for Mensah to have a panic attack. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen her go through one of these. And judging by what she says to Murderbot, Mensah still mistakes her panic attacks for heart attacks from time to time. It’s a good thing that Murderbot’s there to keep Mensah from slipping down into that hole, however much its methods may annoy her at first. As someone who’s very new to human emotions, Murderbot only knows what it has learned from watching its little shows and observing the people of PreservationAux. You know it means well when it plays an episode of Sanctuary Moon to pacify Mensah, though she’s much less appreciative of this move than it expects on account of what it did with the repair manuals and why. But Mensah comes around when they get to the specific part of the episode that Murderbot wants to show her. What pushed Murderbot to try and pull Mensah out of her panic attack in the first place was the contagious nature of anxiety. It was getting to Murderbot. Unbeknownst to the adorable rogue bot, what it finds comforting about that specific episode of Sanctuary Moon is a breathing exercise. I’m just glad that it works for Mensah, too. But something tells me that the calm that’s washed over Mensah was also brought on by the fact that Murderbot now seemed more human than ever. That feeling is short-lived. Murderbot sustained a pretty terrible wound to its stomach in the crash, a wound that’s now leaking lubrication profusely. And however much it may want to believe that it’s far less prone to damage than humans, it’s not invincible. So it falls flat on its face in the middle of a very self-assured statement about its physical superiority to humans. But it kind of is superior, you know? I mean, you and I wouldn’t have finished the statement right after waking up. But Murderbot can. 

Gurathin’s been losing his mind back at the habitat. Packing for a week hasn’t taken most of them long. So now that Mensah and Murderbot are unreachable, and the beacon hasn’t been launched, all they can do is sit and worry. That’s true for Gurathin, at least. Ratthi’s still not totally over the shock from the incident at the DeltFall habitat. So no amount of very off key playing of his strange musical instrument can calm him down, really. His sudden interest in making babies has put off Pin-Lee and Arada. So it’s only awkward when an insecure Ratthi pushes into their massage train. The three of them don’t quite see eye to eye on Murderbot, someone who’s becoming a growing concern for Gurathin. It’s bad enough that he can’t get his friends to see the rogue bot with as much suspicion as he does. And now the woman that he’s secretly in love with is stuck somewhere with the SecUnit that he hates? Even I feel bad for Gurathin. 

But Mensah’s no damsel who needs rescuing. She’s more resourceful than her anxiety and self doubt lets her believe. If she wasn’t smart as heck, how could she have figured out that Murderbot’s lubrication was compatible with the hopper’s lubrication? And thank heavens that she took the chance and plugged Murderbot into the hopper for a quick transfusion. That’s what gets Murderbot back on its feet. But Mensah isn’t gonna get to take her scrubs off yet. She’s got to do one more thing first, and that, to her major dismay, involves a scalpel and a wrench. Mensah’s method of saving Murderbot has given it an idea that might just save the day. If the hopper’s lubrication fluid is compatible with that of Murderbot, the busted control wire could be replaced by its spinal nerve. What? You didn’t know that Corporation Rim made comms parts out of synthetic human bits? Don’t feel too bad. Neither did Mensah. And this information is especially disturbing for her because she now has to wield a scalpel and remove a nerve out of Murderbot’s spine. It doesn’t get what Mensah’s vegetarian diet could possibly have anything to do with this whole process being nerve-wracking for her. She’s cutting Murderbot, not eating it. And I gotta say that Mensah really holds her own through the whole gory business. Lucky for them, the plan works. Mensah didn’t have to crack open Murderbot’s spine for nothing. Even with its back cut wide open, Murderbot’s too thrilled to not crack a joke or two. I bet that calms Mensah’s nerves a lot. That’s the last one, I promise. 

At least Bharadwaj is having a nice time with Leebeebee following her around like a kid, even though I really don’t see how anyone isn’t immediately creeped out by her. I think Bharadwaj is just excited to have someone so interested in the samples she’s collected from the planet. You know how interest translates into reassurance and validation. And it looks like there’s plenty of validation to go around when you have someone like Leebeebee in the mix. After kissing Murderbot, she’s now managed to set things up so she can kiss the scar on Bharadwaj’s hand. Bharadwaj is just glad that someone’s giving her such focused attention. Ever since her traumatizing brush with the giant centipede that almost ate her, she’s been wanting to talk about it. So now that someone’s asking, Bharadwaj is too weepy to pick up on her weird behavior. 

It’s not that Leebeebee doesn’t rub her the wrong way, because she does. Almost immediately after they join Gurathin, Leebeebee starts another very offensive monologue sexualizing Murderbot, literally. I mean, she actually wouldn’t mind tweaking it up with a sex module, because apparently where she comes from, you buy it, you own it. That doesn’t quite go with the Preservation Alliance’s view of sentient constructs. They don’t even want to see them as slaves, let alone sex slaves. Leebeebee doesn’t do a super convincing job at finding their moral superiority admirable. But Bharadwaj and Gurathin being just so darn nice makes it easy for her to keep switching topics to continue their chitchat. Turns out, she wants to be a mom with the money she gets from finishing up her indenture. The Corporation doesn’t want poor people making babies, so they need a license to be parents. All of that sounds preposterous to Bharadwaj because in the Preservation Alliance, people are free to make as many babies as they want. Leebeebee asks a fair question. Who even pays for all those babies? If you ask me, I think Gurathin is only being realistic when he claims that their finances are all just debt. The survey their team has come to conduct on this planet is supposed to clear up some of that debt. So however much Bharadwaj may want to believe that their community is self-reliant, they’re not. This group is risking their lives on a mission to find information and resources that they can sell to power hungry corporations. How’s that for a moral win? It only goes to show that not everything is so black and white, even in the fictional, futuristic world of Murderbot. While very respectful of every human and construct, the Preservation Alliance have dug themselves in a hole in their efforts to create a self-sustaining financial system that doesn’t require forced labor. And while completely cruel, evil, and exploitative, the Corporate Rim’s system is much more sustainable. They haven’t even given people the choice to make terrible financial decisions. The bad part? People aren’t really free. The good part? They aren’t free to overpopulate the planet and reduce a whole section of the population to the extremes of poverty. It’s almost like a healthy blend of the two worlds could actually become a wholesome way to live life. But how do you even go about starting a change that big? Gurathin and Bharadwaj have more immediate things to worry about as of now. 

It must be the unusual extent of Bharadwaj’s faith in the goodness of people that makes her so deaf to Leebeebee’s very obvious lies. She doesn’t even do a very good job at pretending to be emotional as she makes up a whole story about how the DeltFall team had a very similar experience on the planet as the PreservationAux team. But if they also had missing spots in the maps, and giant critters attacked them when they went to check these spots out, why did Leebeebee look so shocked when Bharadwaj told her about her experience? Bharadwaj is too uncomfortable with the feelings of suspicion to acknowledge these contradictions. But luckily, Gurathin has the good sense to put an end to what was clearly becoming a sneaky way for Leebeebee to gather information about their work. Well, lucky might be a stretch considering Leebeebee’s actual employers haven’t given her the time to take things any slower. So she pulled the gun on Gura and Bharadwaj. Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and Arada are nice enough to make things easier for her by coming downstairs totally unarmed. I mean, you can see why these people frustrate Murderbot so much. In the previous episode, Murderbot called Mensah out on her naive instinct to blindly trust anyone who asks for help. Leebeebee doesn’t even work for DeltFall. And when she tried to infiltrate the PreservationAux team and learn more about them from the bad guys, she didn’t even have to put in a lot of work. She only had to say the words, and they took her in without verifying her employment status with the DeltFall team. So in hindsight, Murderbot was dead on. 

And even in the ending of this week’s episode of Murderbot, it’s the rogue bot saving the day by rushing in and blowing Leebeebee’s head off before she can finish her threat. It’s seen scenarios like this play out too many times in the shows it watches. People are grateful and joyous when you save their necks. But the reality proves much less rewarding for Murderbot. Even with a bullet wound in his knee, courtesy of the crazy Leebeebee, Gurathin is more furious at Murderbot than he is grateful. The rest of them aren’t doing that great either. Things kind of slipped out of Bharadwaj’s hands when she was in the middle of trying to convince Leebeebee that she isn’t evil. Bharadwaj might just be too sheltered to even believe that people can prioritize money over actual human lives. But now that Murderbot has killed Leebeebee, which I believe it totally needed to do if it wanted the PreservationAux team to stay alive, Bharadwaj feels as though she wasn’t given enough time to save the woman. I doubt that they could really change someone like Leebeebee, someone who was hired by the people who killed the DeltFall team and plans to do the same with the PreservationAux team, even if they got the whole day to do it. If it wasn’t for Murderbot, one or more of them would be dead now. But Murderbot gets it, really. Just as they were starting to think that it was one of them, it went ahead and liquified someone’s head. That’s quite a difficult thing to be okay with. But the scary thing is, Murderbot expected them to shower it with gratitude. Which only means that the lack of positive reinforcement has created an empty space in its lack of a heart. What does Murderbot plan to do about that? I’m afraid it wants to chase the feeling that made it name itself Murderbot after going rogue. Killing Leebeebee reminded him of the thrill of shooting people. That can’t be good, right? If the PreservationAux team are to have any chance at getting out of this planet unscathed, they need to keep Murderbot from going homicidal and living up to its name. But first, they need to find someplace safe. Not hearing anything back from Leebeebee will probably light a fire under the bad guys. They’ll come looking for the PreservationAux team.