‘Butterfly’ Episode 3 Recap: “Busan”

We remain on Team Rebecca in this whole Butterfly mess. Not for any support of her wet work with Caddis – Juno built the outfit’s actionable arm off her own body of lies – but because her father’s reasons for blowing everything up with his sudden return feel really solipsistic. Jung assumed he could take the last vestige of his old life, plop her an Instant Pot with the seeds of his new one, and simply press “START.” Sure, Juno is the worst, and dangerous. But where is his respect for the person Rebecca has become? We would bet a big reason why she even joined Caddis in the first place, why she also became a superagent-assassin, was because of how he left.

And now that Jung’s insta-family is all on the run together, Rebecca keeps turning the screws. To Jung: “You replaced me and my dead mom with Korean replicas.” Ouch! To Eunju: “How do you meet a man who’s supposed to be dead? Is there an app for that?” Zing! And for Minhee (Nayoon Kim), her seven-year-old half-sister she just learned about in Butterfly Episode 2, a hands-on tutorial with a pistol. Yikes! It’s egregious. But it’s nothing Jung the superagent didn’t teach Rebecca herself back when she was still his main daughter. 

The fam’s in another safehouse by now, this time in Busan. Juno anticipated Jung pulling the emergency stop lever – is it that simple to stop a bullet train? Too easy, Butterfly – and even sent Gun to intercept them at the truck stop where they hitched a ride. But when the contract killer was deterred, he pivoted to a new target. Remember Yong-shik from Episode 1? He’s at his noodle shop, fabricating false identities for Jung and crew, when Gun strolls in at his calculating psycho’s pace. Poor Yong-shik. His own days as a superagent are long behind him, and though he puts up a fight – “In my day, I would’ve gutted you like a fish” – Gun gets the upper hand, plunges a blade into his gut, and takes the false IDs and passports with him. We feel bad for Jung’s old buddy. Yong-shik was cool. But Butterfly also benefits greatly from having a coldblooded wild card like Gun in the mix. 

Back at the Busan house, Jung’s fixated on getting everyone to Vietnam, a non-extradition country where they’ll supposedly be safe. (Too bad he’ll never get those passports from Yong-shik.) But an almost-bonding moment between the blended family is derailed again by acrimony. Jung can’t just reference their childhood game, calling Rebecca his “Butterfly,” and declare everything good. And Rebecca’s cold cut-downs coalesce into her harshest words yet.

“You selfish fucking dick. You said that you abandoned me for my own protection, because you wanted to put distance between your beloved daughter and your dangerous, fucked-up life. And then you went and HAD ANOTHER DAUGHTER!”

She’s got a point. Team Rebecca!

On Juno’s side of things, Senator Dawson is making his interest in her operation less friendly. He visits her again, and this time he’s got photos of Juno’s son Oliver cavorting with a wealthy South Korean. Like the Russian diplomat from Episode 1, through whom Caddis was selling intelligence dirt, Oliver’s special friend was also linked to the CIA, and also recently died under mysterious circumstances. Dawson drops the old pal act. He tells Juno he knows about Karpov’s links to Caddis. “And now you’re being cagey about what I know is a close relationship between your son and a CIA asset.”

Feeling the heat, Juno does what all terrible people do: she passes the buck. Dropping Rebecca Jung’s file on Senator Dawson’s desk, she burns her so-called top asset, pins Karpov’s murder on the woman she once treated like a daughter. “She’s a sociopath who went rogue and I’m not going to pay the consequences. A former operative went off the reservation, and her father came out of hiding to help her escape.”

But Juno also brushes up Oliver’s bruised feelings. When he whines that she always valued Rebecca over her own son, she accepts his pitch to go after her with a tactical team. Juno is bad people. She just sold out Rebecca to the US government, and allows Oliver into the field to play at his own “sibling” rivalry. Even though she tells Gun to keep her son behind him, it just feels like more self-interest.

Oliver, Gun, and a bunch of Caddis goons advance on Jung and the fam’s position. Busan’s on the coast, so the new plan is an escape via boat to Geoje Island. Loading Minhee and Eunju onto a fisherman’s rig, Jung and Rebecca become a two-person assault team. (Finally he respects her professional capacity!) We see her thrilled little grin again as Rebecca drops back into Assassin Mode, drawing the attackers’ fire, and Jung gets busy blowing up the spot with a diversion.

Despite his nickname, Gun’s a knife man, and it’s a pretty solid sequence on the docks as he faces down with Jung, the two of them bandying his blade between them like elastic. Eventually, Gun makes the mistake of most psychos of his type, pausing the action to speak highly of himself. It’s the opening Jung needs. He scrabbles for his pistol and puts two rounds in his adversary, who conveniently falls into the sea. We would imagine this is not the end of Mr. Gun.

As for Oliver, he never looked cut out for wet work, and Rebecca totally is. “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” she taunts – ha ha, Rebecca loves this shit – and pretty soon he’s out of bullets and on his back foot.  

Cornered by Rebecca and Jung, Oliver takes a page out of his mom’s backstabbing book. “You haven’t figured it out, have you,” he stammers. “David, Juno set you up.” He says it was Juno who sold Jung out to the terrorists nine years ago. Juno who let them target his family. The entire event that led to his disappearing act, and left his (first) daughter behind. So is Jung gonna take Oliver’s life as payback for stealing his own from him? Looking on, Rebecca seems to want him to. 

A phone call is placed to Juno. “Now it’s time for me to take something from you.”  

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.