‘Butterfly’ Episode 1 Recap: “Pilot”

Oh shit, he knows all the words to “Mr. Brightside,” and can drink your entire office party under the karaoke parlor table. He’s everyone’s friend, no one’s enemy, looks like three different people from three different angles, and later, after all of the soju is gone and so is he, you’ll wonder: “Who was that guy?” But by then, he will already be outside this hotel, breaking the window on your minivan.

Daniel Dae Kim is David Jung, this mysterious “he,” and it’s crazy this dude’s wowing people at karaoke, because he’s technically unalive as the new spy thriller series Butterfly begins. By design: years before, when he was still a superagent for something called Caddis Private Intelligence, Jung needed to get gone toot suite, or the terrorists he was tracking were gonna blow up his house with his family still in it. Jung made the decision to go permanently off-grid, leaving Caddis in the dust and letting his daughter believe he was dead.  

Now, nine years later, he has emerged from hiding. And the reappearing act has a specific intention: pry that same daughter away from the influence of Caddis, who now employs Rebecca (Reina Hardesty) as its top-ranked assassin. 

In Episode 1 of Butterfly, this is all taking place in downtown Seoul, South Korea, where Jung’s karaoke act has placed him at the same hotel as Rebecca (Reina Hardesty). While he fights through supporting Caddis operatives in an effort to reach her, she’s wearing a prosthetic pregnancy belly and a blonde wig, and too easily infiltrating the security cordon of a Russian diplomat. Rebecca slips the politician a poison pill via manipulated mobile device, and soon she’s exfiltrating the scene. But not before an elevator fight with one unfortunate security guard.  

And what about Caddis? Elsewhere, at a company black site, we meet Juno (Piper Perabo), leader of this outfit. “I know you betrayed me,” she tells the bleeding man strapped to a chair before her. Apparently he fed Caddis secrets to the CIA, and Juno can’t have this, because her company thrives on global disorder. “I’m in the private intelligence business,” she tells her prisoner. “The only enemy I have is peace.” And after he gives up a name she needs, she has her minions kill him anyway. 

This is appropriately chilling behavior, just as the opening sequence with Jung and Rebecca was replete with stylized contemporary action. But in the early going of Butterfly, we’re just not feeling the urgency. Right after the series cheapens human life to stress how Juno is a moral blank space, it feeds her a string of dialogue that feels utterly store-bought. Someone’s messing with the Caddis hit in South Korea? “I want the entire Seoul office on this – I want this guy’s head on a fucking platter.” Groan.

Back in Seoul, Jung’s dialogue isn’t faring much better. “She’s my daughter, I can’t leave her again.” He’s on the phone with Eunju (Kim Tae-hee), his now wife – evidently he only faked his own death to those international terrorists and Caddis, and is otherwise living out in the open? Seems like a private intelligence agency or its powerful adversaries would’ve easily figured out this ruse ages ago. But we’ll go with it for now, as Jung leaves Rebecca a set of lats and longs where she can find him.  

Jung’s plan is to reunite with Rebecca and convince her to drop her entire life as a Caddis agent. But from what we see of all this through Rebecca’s perspective, she seems to quite enjoy being the company’s most effective asset. And for that matter, as Rebecca, Reina Hardesty is the best thing about this first episode of Butterfly. The assassin’s entry and attack on the Russian diplomat was too clean and easy. (Again, no urgency.) But Hardesty gives Rebecca the corner of a mischievous grin, and is at least convincing in the up-close fight scenes. It’s clear that for Rebecca, she likes this shit. We hope her reunion with the dad who decided to disappear won’t render her character – introduced as a highly capable professional – as a suddenly helpless appendage to his apology tour.  

The father-daughter dance across South Korea finally leads to Andong, out in the country, at a safe house/soju distillery owned by Jung. His map point lured her there, but without revealing his identity, so it’s a revelation when they’re pointing pistols at each other. “Dad?” Everything he did he did to protect her, Jung says. OK, add that to the list of store-bought dialogue. 

Even if the words he’s saying are bland in Butterfly, we like Daniel Dae Kim in this role. He plays Jung as stoic, but with a quiet charm. We see a good example of this during a little side quest of Jung’s, as he visits Yong-shik (Park Hae-soo), his old buddy from the intelligence community, at the Incheon noodle shop he now runs. They laugh about the old days, and Yong-shik promises to prepare a round of new fake passports to help with escape. We also learn a tidbit: not only did Jung once work for Caddis, he co-founded the company with Juno.

Still, during all of this, Butterfly did yet another cheap thing. It introduced a random Caddis agent Rebecca works with (and occasionally has sex with) just so she could shoot him dead later, after the reunion with dad. He was gonna kill Jung, see, because Juno texted him the order. By now the Caddis boss knows Jung is out here operating again, knows that Rebecca is with him – and she’s sure to send more agents after them. The question going into Butterfly Episode 2, besides wondering if the dialogue will get any better, is where Rebecca’s allegience lies. She saved Jung from her boss’s kill order. But she also tells him Juno became a kind of mother-figure to her in the years he was away. Given what we know about Juno’s moral makeup, that she’ll transact your life right out of you if it’s beneficial to her, maybe this new disconnect was always in the offing. Then again, maybe Rebecca likes being an assassin and doesn’t want to stop – no matter how much guilt her dad feels about leaving her high and dry.     

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.