Critics Have Seen Daniel Dae Kim's Butterfly, And They Seem To Agree About What The Intense Prime Video Series Plays ‘Too Safe’

Packed as the series is with fistfights and shootouts and car chases, its heart truly lies in the family drama, driven by heightened but recognizable impulses. And while the series, created by Steph Cha and Ken Woodruff, never quite takes that intriguing premise to its fullest potential, its mix of sentiment and thrills makes for a pleasantly innocuous addition to the platform’s ever-growing catalogue of shows about guys who know their way around tactical gear.

Since the show leans almost solely into action, a lot of the emotional beats of the story are forfeited.  It may have been sharper if the tale had been contained within a two-hour-long feature film, eliminating much of the show’s empty space. . . . Still, the show isn’t all bad. There are a couple of intriguing twists, and it’s entertaining enough for audiences to stick around until the end, to see whether Rebecca and David can truly rebuild the bond that was severed nearly a decade ago.

Although the spy stuff accounts for the running and shooting, the car chases (which Rebecca seems to especially enjoy), the martial arts dust-ups and near constant threat of death, it’s also beside the point. Butterfly is a sort of an action soap, an extended family melodrama with guns. The political story, should you care to track it — not that you really need to — matters less than the personal one, set in motion by David’s reappearance and his desire to reconnect with and save Rebecca, which puts him into conflict with Juno. (And with Rebecca, who is not convinced she needs saving.)

Despite those highs between the father and daughter—an opposite for mother and son, Juno and Oliver—I wasn’t fully engaged while watching. If it sounds like I’m going back and forth on it, you caught me. Throughout the six-episode run, I kept questioning whether this series works or not. I’m still not sure. However, by bridging South Korean and American cultural cues, with the heritage of Korean craft, juxtaposed against the current world, Butterfly takes on more depth. The cities in the episode titles aren’t just essential places, but a signal that the series wants to take the audience somewhere.

The key to Butterfly is that both halves work. It can be a taut spy thriller when it wants to, with solid action and suspense-building across a variety of locations and formats, but the family drama doesn’t feel tacked on and tokenistic. There’s a pleasant symbiosis between the two, which simultaneously lightens what might be a dour conspiracy plot while adding welcome danger and stakes to the character drama. You couldn’t have one without the other.

Despite its efforts, Butterfly plays it too safe. The first half of the season is more of a fugitive series, while the second half is a proper spy thriller. Yet, even as it strives for some big twists, they're too easy to predict ahead of time. What's worse is that none of the characters ever felt like they were in any real danger. Apart from one scene in which David is injured by Gun, played by Money Heist: Korea's Kim Ji-hoon, he and Rebecca aren't put in situations where they can't talk or fight their way out of.