TV-16+ | 6 episodes | Thriller | 2025
The private security company Caddis represents the American version of Russia’s Wagner Group, but co-founder Juno Barnes (Piper Perabo) pursues power and profit without any sense of loyalty to her country.
Despite her CIA background, she regularly betrays American security interests by supplying black ops mercenaries, surveillance, and intelligence services to the highest bidder.
Barnes is a globalist in the worst way, maintaining field offices around the world, including in Seoul, where she is conducting her latest assassination plot. That wasn’t the kind of business her co-founder David Jung (Daniel Dae Kim) envisioned, but he was conveniently forced into hiding.
Many years later, he returns to rescue his daughter, Rebecca (Reina Hardesty), from Barnes’s dangerous influence, but it isn’t initially clear whether she wants to be “saved,” in co-creators Steph Cha and Ken Woodruff’s six-episode “Butterfly.” The short series is loosely based on Arash Amel’s graphic novel of the same name.
Father and Daughter
While Rebecca was still a young girl, Jung led a Caddis operation targeting an Islamic terrorist. When his team arrived at the secret compound, they found a full file on Jung and his family.
Jung was the sole survivor of the subsequent ambush, but he faked his death. He misguidedly believed that Barnes would keep his daughter safe if the terrorists believed he was deceased. Instead, she molded Rebecca Jung into an elite Caddis assassin.
Rebecca’s latest target is Mikhail Karpov (Boris Kravtsov), Russia’s ambassador to South Korea. He serves as Caddis’s primary contact, receiving stolen American intelligence on behalf of his government. Karpov understands Caddis’s close collaboration with the Russian regime better than anyone. Inconveniently for Karpov, this makes him a loose end when Barnes’s former CIA mentor, Sen. George Dawson (Charles Parnell), starts investigating the leaks.
David Jung doesn’t care about Karpov or Russia. The assassination operation launching in the swanky Seoul hotel that hosts the wedding of Karpov’s daughter simply offers an expedient opportunity to intercept Rebecca.
Jung has lived clandestinely in South Korea since his disappearance. He feels comfortable operating in Korean territory, but that also entails a greater risk of exposure.
Their reunion isn’t the tearful affair he might have hoped for. Instead, Rebecca is furious at Jung for abandoning her. Learning that her father has a second wife in Korea, Eunju Kim (Kim Tae-hee), further stokes her resentment. Nevertheless, father and daughter forge an uneasy alliance after Barnes issues kill orders for the entire Jung family.
Cha, Woodruff, and their co-writers might have taken considerable license with their adaptation of Amel’s graphic novel, but they stage plenty of flashy, supercharged action scenes.
The series also offers a whirlwind tour of South Korea’s major cities, in all their gritty, nocturnal glory, as the Jungs try to evade Barnes’s inexhaustible supply of hit squads. The political and corporate intrigue regarding Caddis isn’t especially complex.
Complex Characters
However, there are some deviously clever mind games. They mostly focus on Barnes’s insecure son and would-be successor, Oliver (Louis Landau), as well as the deeply conflicted Rebecca.
Both Kim and Hardesty look lethally credible in their action-driven father and daughter roles. Kim also projects convincing “dad” vibes, along with impressive physicality. They maintain a tense relationship dynamic, rooted in the lack of trust between them. This remains a major source of conflict and suspense throughout the series.
Piper Perabo clearly relishes playing Juno Barnes’s flamboyant villain. She also brings surprising maternal angst to her fraught scenes with her poor nebbish son. Without question, parenthood stands out as a dominant theme of “Butterfly,” even though the complications that Jung and Barnes wrestle with are undeniably exceptional and extreme.
Parnell adds dignified weight to the series as the shrewdly perceptive Sen. Dawson. Kim Ji-hoon chillingly rounds out the ensemble as Gun, the sadistic assassin hired by Barnes to liquidate her old partner, Jung. Ironically, he is rather inaptly named since his weapon of choice is a sinister-looking Karambit tiger-claw knife. Regardless, Gun’s cold, slimy presence quickly raises the stakes and helps viewers invest in the dysfunctional Jungs.
Frankly, “Butterfly” encourages cynical skepticism with respect to private security firms like Caddis and the government bureaucrats who are supposed to be minding them. But maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
Despite the murky worldview of the series, the energy rarely flags. Two installments apiece were helmed by Kitao Sakurai, Jann Turner, and the South Korean Kim Jin-min. All are experienced series television directors who maintain a reliably snappy pace.
There is definitely a paranoid vibe throughout “Butterfly,” but it’s usually the direct result of characters’ decisions. Actions have consequences for everyone in this series, just like in the real world. Those choices also often result in some impressive stunt performances.
Recommended for the skillful fight scenes and the evocative local Korean flavor.
“Butterfly” streams on Prime Video on Aug. 13.
‘Butterfly’
Director: Kitao Sakurai, Jann Turner, Kim Jin-min
Starring: Daniel Dae Kim, Reina Hardesty, Piper Perabo, Charles Parnell, Louis Landau
Rating: TV-16+
Running Time: 6 episodes (approximately 55 minutes each)
Release Date: Aug. 13, 2025
Rated: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
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