Written and Directed by James Gunn.
Peacemaker is gearing up for the assassination assignment alongside his handlers, having already given the miniature jet to Murn and Economos to study. They're being stalked by Vigilante, who wants to be helpful to Peacemaker, but Harcourt is against his involvement, so he leaves.
During the ride Peacemaker is debriefed about his target, a US Senator named Roland Goff who is secretly a Butterfly, but a nude pic from Adebayo's wife briefly breaks up the tense atmosphere. Murn warns that if Goff's wife and children are also Butterflies, they would have to be killed as well, making Peacemaker hesitate a bit about this part of the task.
Murn and Economos have a slightly awkward conversation about the former's past, during which he reveals that he's not shared his emotions with anyone in his life, startling Economos a bit. Later in the evening, Peacemaker and Harcourt prepare to snipe Goff and wait for his arrival. When the family enters the house, they start behaving strangely, prompting the team to think that all of them are Butterflies. As Peacemaker couldn't make the shot, they have to wait until the morning. Peacemaker and Harcourt briefly talk about the past, and while she leaves the spot for a minute, Vigilante appears from behind the bushes, having followed them all the way to Goff's house. Murn decides to keep him with the field operatives so that he wouldn't cause any ruckus while getting away.
During early morning, Peacemaker and Harcourt see the family feeding through probiscuses in their mouths, confirming that they are all Butterflies. Murn gives the order to eliminate all of them. Peacemaker is clearly nervous about having to kill children and decides not to take a shot, and Vigilante takes over and swiftly snipes all of them with sadistic glee, but before he can execute Goff himself, the senator's bodyguard Judomaster emerges from the ambush and attacks the field agents. Harcourt is taken out while Peacemaker and Vigilante engage in a brawl, forcing Murn and Adebayo to leave the van and help out. Judomaster knocks Vigilante and Peacemaker out and he and Goff take them into the house, while Adebayo helps Harcourt, but hesitates to shoot a bodyguard.
As Peacemaker wakes up in Goff's cellar, the rest of the team decides to storm the house. Goff decides to torture Vigilante to make Peacemaker reveal what he is doing there, while Judomaster leaves to relay the message to "others", prompting Economos to stop him. As Murn manages to blow up the door to Goff's lair, Peacemaker frees himself and fights the senator, shooting him in the face with a shotgun. Judomaster is injured when his car is rammed, and Economos beats him over the head with a tire iron, knocking him out.
Vigilante introduces himself as Adrian Chase to Peacemaker, and as they're about to leave the cellar, an alien butterfly emerges from Goff's body, with the screen in the team's van showing thousands of suspected Butterflies all over the world.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Leota mocks Peacemaker's belief that climate change is a hoax by comparing it to believing that pro wrestling is real.
- Agony of the Feet: Part of Goff's torture of Vigilante includes using pruning shears to try (and fail, horribly) to remove his pinky toe. The most important toe.
- Boom, Headshot!: This is how Goff is killed by Peacemaker, with a one-liner to boot. Vigilante earlier eliminates Goff's wife with a headshot and is implied to have done the same to the Goff children (though that part isn't shown on-screen).
- Car Fu: In order to stop Judomaster from escaping, Economos rams his van against Judomaster's car.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Goff tortures Vigilante in order to make Peacemaker talk, but Smith refuses to budge.
- Electric Torture: Goff tortures Vigilante to get information by hooking up jumper cables on his testicles and electrocuting him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Peacemakers previous boast about being willing to kill children in the name of peace gets thrown back in his face when he's tasked to assassinate Goff's kids. When the time does come, it turns out this really was just a boast, Peacemaker finds killing kids to be the line he's not willing to cross.
- Everyone Has Standards: Harcourt and Murn are clearly disturbed when Vigilante casually kills Goff's family.
- Fingore: Goff manages to cut off half of Chase's toe while torturing him for information.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Peacemaker mentions having 400 gigs of lesbian porn on his computer.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The deaths of the Goff children when Vigilante snipes them are not shown on-screen. When Leota briefly glances in the room where the bodies are at, only their legs are seen for a split second with their upper bodies obscured behind the room's furniture.
- Groin Attack: Goff repeatedly electrocutes Vigilante's testicles with jumper cables for information.
- Kiai: Judomaster makes one before fighting and Economos explains what it means.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: As psychotic as he is, Vigilante knows he can't take Judomaster by himself, and tries to run... and fails.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Courtesy of Peacemaker: "Peace out, motherfucker!"
- Pun-Based Title: The title is a pun on "Better off dead".
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Butterflies are revealed to be this when one emerges from Goff's corpse.
- The Reveal: The Butterflies are just that. Butterfly-like Puppeteer Parasite aliens inhabiting human host bodies. And they are just about EVERYWHERE on Earth.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Leota gets into a whole argument with Clemson and John over the pronunciation of The Berenstain Bears, with the latter two insisting that it's supposed to be Bernstein, reflecting the long-running misconception with the book series' title.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: As with the previous episode, Peacemaker suffers another panic attack, this time when pressured to snipe the Goff children.
- Skewed Priorities: Leota and John arguing over how The Berenstain Bears is actually spelled with Murn making a Face Palm that the butterfly invasion should be the more serious matter to them.
- Would Hurt a Child: Once Murn finds out Goff's kids are also Butterflies, he orders them to be killed as well. When Peacemaker can't bring himself to do it, the slightly more sociopathic Vigilante steps in and does it for him.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Despite previously saying he'd be willing to kill children, when Peacemaker is ordered to kill Goff's kids he can't make himself do it.
