Butterfly Season 1 Review: A Formulaic but Heartfelt Spy Drama

Butterfly Season 1 is a deft six-episode spy drama, with impressive performances from both leads, Daniel Dae Kim and Reina Hardesty.

The series does not seek to break out of the typical formulaic spy drama mold, but the family relationships at its center help make it distinct from the rest.

Butterfly starts out fairly standard for a spy thriller — Daniel Dae Kim’s character ominously says, “It’s me. I found her. She’s coming to Seoul, but not for long. I have to go after her.” Then you see the city lights of Seoul, and Daniel Dae Kim is singing along to Mr. Brightside at a karaoke bar. It is certainly one of the more interesting opening scenes of an espionage thriller.

Aside from that, and the occasional glimmer of intriguing action, Butterfly is mostly formulaic in its approach to espionage.

What makes Butterfly distinct is its specificity in the Korean-American identities of both David and Rebecca, as well as how they navigate their revived relationship.

Since they last saw each other, both David and Rebecca have changed a lot. Both Kim and Hardesty portray this wariness well, as David and Rebecca spend a lot of time closely watching each other for glimpses of the daughter and father each knew.

The jaw-dropping reveals are mostly saved for the family drama, rather than the espionage, which is an atypical choice, but there is not much intrigue about who did what here. Almost the minute you hear Piper Perabo as Juno on screen, you can put together that she is not up to any good.

But the unraveling of the mystery of why Rebecca was sent to kill the Russian Ambassador to Korea is paced well enough that viewers will be invested enough to want to know the answer.

Butterfly also explores the lost heritage between David and his daughter, as he translates for her occasionally and shows her around Seoul, through street food and a couple of history lessons.

The contrast between Rebecca’s limited fluency in the Korean language and culture and how her step-sister, Minhee, is adored by everyone makes for a particularly tense few scenes between Kim and Hardesty.

Charles Parnell brings his usual gravitas to his character, Senator Dawson, but plays a rather understated role in the grand scheme of the show, mostly acting as a vague threat to Juno and the empire that she has built. Perabo is very convincing as an ambitious cutthroat spy who is slowly losing control — especially with her son being abducted.

The parallel relationships between Juno and her son (played by Louis Landau), and David and Rebecca, make the latter half of the season far more interesting, as David and Rebecca seek revenge for their being torn apart by doing the same to Oliver and Juno.

The character done the greatest injustice is David’s wife, Eunju (tenderly portrayed by Kim Tae-Hee). She barely gets to do more than act as the concerned mother and wife, only to be killed off at the very end of the finale.

Tae-Hee does get a couple of moments to shine, but it would be so much more interesting to see her develop a relationship with Rebecca in a potential Season 2.

Eunju is reduced to the dutiful wife, mother, and daughter, and we don’t get to know anything about her outside of her relationships with her family. Even that could be more interesting; she did kill a man to keep her daughter safe, after all.

One of the family members is going to be killed off. Still, Eunju’s death feels like a cheap shot, rather than anything the audience will actually be emotionally invested in.

Despite this misguided choice, Butterfly manages to make use of its six-episode structure far better than most series of the same length.

The tension grows as the enemies hunting down David and Rebecca close in — including the very threatening Gun, played by Kim Ji-Hoon — and the final action sequence is well-choreographed.

Some of the fight choreography relies too heavily on fast cuts, but the final fight between Gun and David is well done in comparison to the rest.

Butterfly shines best when it focuses on the price the Jung family has paid for being ruthless spies and assassins, but it follows a formulaic structure typical of spy thrillers and dramas, complete with a shocking cliffhanger. Season 1 makes for an interesting introduction to the characters. Hopefully, the creators get a chance to explore their stories further.

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Butterfly Season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video.

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