This article contains spoilers for Peacemaker episode six.
Given that John Cena’s Peacemaker and his team are fighting against an invasion of alien butterflies who are body-snatching people, we probably should’ve expected one of their number to be a secret butterfly themselves. Episode four of the hit HBO Max series ended on the reveal that tough-nosed black-ops boss Clemson Murn wasn’t who he seemed, but it took until this week’s episode six for us to get the whole story.
In episode 1×06, titled “Murn After Reading”, we find out that Murn isn’t one of the evil butterflies out to takeover the world, but is actually a renegade member of the race trying to stop them. We’ve been geared to distrust Murn from the beginning, so it’s a surprise to find out he’s actually one of the good guys. While talking to TV Insider, star Chukwudi Iwuji revealed that he knew about Murn’s twisty-turny arc all along – and that’s all thanks to creator James Gunn’s punctual scripts.
“I’ve known from the start,” Iwuji explained. “One of the luxuries of working on TV with James Gunn is that he gives you all the episodes before you start shooting! In very early conversations with James and Peter Safran, one of the producers, that was part of my attraction to playing Murn: This huge, wonderful reveal. He has this secret.”
Iwuji went on to clarify that he wasn’t the only one aware of the revelation as the whole cast had the full season’s worth of scripts beforehand, too. The British actor — who’s teaming up with James Gunn again for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — said that they all decided to play it free from any “sly looks” in order to preserve the shock for the audience when the truth comes out.
“They knew from the beginning,” he continued. “Everyone got the scripts, everyone knew it, yeah. But we were all joined in the knowledge of playing each scene as it comes. We all bought into that, instead of giving sly looks or moments. It was all about scene to scene and forgetting about that until we had to deal with it… I’m very conscious of never playing the arc of a character, that luxury of knowing what is going to happen and playing that in real-time to the audience.”
While most of the gang now know Murn’s secret, Peacemaker and Vigilante are still in the dark about his true nature. And, seeing as Chris Smith has now been framed as a lunatic serial killer by the police-controlling butterflies, the fact he’s on the outside of the loop may well cause problems going forward. With just two episodes still to go, find out whether Peacemaker and pals save the day as the DC show continues Thursdays on HBO Max.
