The central premise of Murderbot, that a lonely, somewhat socially awkward security droid refers to itself as “Murderbot,” is both a joke and deeply serious. It’s a joke because the main character has a kind of sardonic, gallows-humor view of life. But it’s serious, because the idea that our SecUnit mysteriously murdered 57 miners in the past, and it doesn’t actually know why. In Martha Wells' series of Murderbot books, the mystery of why this incident happened and why SecUnit’s memory was erased is a plot thread that carries over from the first book, All Systems Red, to the second, Artificial Condition. And now, in the just-released Episode 8 of the Apple TV+ version of Murderbot, “Foreign Object,” the PreservationAux team learns of this mystery, too.
And, because of this revelation, there’s no way Murderbot can be just a single-season sci-fi show. Here’s why this twist demands that the show get at least one more season.
