[- Saying goodbye without even saying it -]
But even with its memories restored, Murderbot has changed. This could be due to some pieces of code going missing as part of the process, as Gurathin warned might happen. But there’s a greater sense that the robot has somehow evolved as a result of its experiences.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” it tells Mensah and the rest of the team, with a vacant, almost frightened look on its face. PresAux has bought out its contract, but they don’t want it to resume its old role. As we’ve seen quite clearly when the Company tried to deploy it as riot control, it’s no longer comfortable in its old role, which was more or less blasting organic targets on command.
At home on Preservation Alliance, Mensah says with a hopeful smile, she’ll be its guardian, but it won’t have to serve anyone. It won’t need its armor or guns. It’ll be a free agent, literally free to “do anything you want to do.”
Murderbot takes this in. Freedom is the ideal outcome, of course, but this isn’t the kind of freedom it seeks. Gurathin catches it as it’s slipping away, and though he’d be happy for Murderbot to come back to Preservation Alliance with him—the people there are weird, he admits, but they’re also the best people he’s ever known—he understands when Murderbot rattles off an oft-repeated phrase: “I need to check the perimeter.”
Though he’d griped at all the perimeter checks when they were on that far-flung planet together, Gurathin gets it now. “The perimeter” is what lies beyond the PresAux embrace, which is kind but also a bit suffocating. Murderbot’s future choices need to be the first ones it has ever made truly for itself.
While snagging a ride on a transport to a distant mining facility—a bargain helped along by promising to share its library of “premium quality entertainment” with the bot running the ship—Murderbot steals an unattended bag and disguises itself as just another augmented human.
“I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me… even if they are my favorite human,” it informs us in voice-over. We see a quick glimpse of Mensah realizing what has happened and reacting in a very Mensah way, by nodding understandingly through her tears.
It’s no longer SecUnit. It’s just… Unit.
As Murderbot heads to adventures unknown, we see a tiny smile emerge: “Murderbot—end message.”
Alexander Skarsgård’s Apple TV+ sci-fi series came to a poignant yet hopeful finish, with plenty more left to explore.