Series / The Brothers Sun

Some families are complex

The Brothers Sun is an American black comedy action television series created by Brad Falchuk and newcomer Byron Wu for Netflix. It premiered on January 4, 2024.

When his triad boss father is shot, Charles Sun (Justin Chien) travels to America to protect his estranged mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh) and his younger brother Bruce (Sam Song Li), who knows nothing about the family business.

On March 3, 2024, it was announced that the series was cancelled.

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This series contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Several examples.
  • Sisters May and June Song are talented fighters with the former even fighting Charles.
  • Xing is a member of the Jade Dragons who is just as brutal as her male peer Blood Boots.
  • Grace, Bruce's kind and dorky girlfriend, seems completely divorced from the criminal underworld, but is actually with the Boxers and holds her own against the triads.
  • Averted with Eileen who tends to resolve conflicts through diplomacy, cunning, and deception. However, she manages to kill Xing, who comes after her and Bruce under Big Sun's orders. Even Charles is surprised that his mom knew how to fight.
• Actor Allusion: While planning out a seating chart for a Triad meeting, one of the bosses is represented with a googly eye. This is a reference to Everything Everywhere All at Once, which also starred Michelle Yeoh.
• And I Must Scream: Eileen alters Big Sun's hospital charts to say he's diabetic. This means he will get regular unnecessary insulin injections that render him conscious but unable to move or speak.
• Anti-Villain: The Boxers, whose goal is to eradicate the Triads, who are vicious organized crime syndicates profiting of the misery and vices of other people. It is only their ruthless methods and almost complete disregard for collateral damage that keeps them from being hero antagonists.
• Arc Words:
  • "The riddance of evil must be thorough" is the slogan of the organization targeting the Suns.
• Asian Airhead: Bruce's best friend TK, who, unlike everyone else, is a total imbecile.
• Asian and Nerdy: Played with. Bruce is a med school student who is smart enough to finish his tests so quickly that his professor takes note of it. However, his true passion is a nerdy craft that isn't typical of stereotypical Asian nerds: improv.
  • Averted with TK. Despite being childhood friends with Bruce, he's an underachieving stoner who deals drugs, plays Call of Duty, and is involved with local Korean gangsters.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The lime green Lamborghini that Big Sun gifts to Bruce. Bruce doesn't know how to drive stick shift and it only has two seats, meaning that at one point TK has to ride on June's lap. Charles later tracks down Bruce when he sees the distinctive car in the parking lot of a seedy motel.
• Bathos: Bruce rescues his mother from the Boxers by flooding the room with unarmed aunties who shame them into not firing. Then he finds Blood Boots' body.
• Being Evil Sucks: Despite all his criticisms towards Bruce for not falling in with the family and showing utmost loyalty to them and their triad dealings, it becomes increasingly obvious that Charles secretly hates doing the things he does and just wants a normal life, trying to pursue a hobby in baking and watching soap operas and baking shows in his spare time, and Bruce repeatedly calls him out on it while trying to extricate their family from their dangerous lifestyle. It ultimately comes to a head when Eileen confesses to him that the incident where he became a murderer as "Chairleg Sun" was just completely staged to see if he could be molded into a killer, breaking his Undying Loyalty to his father as he realizes he'd doomed himself to the life of a triad for nothing at all.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite Bruce being far too kindhearted and oafish for the triad world once it invades his once-normal life, he repeatedly shows that he can somehow manage to hold his own and execute on plans that nobody counts on working to keep himself and his family alive. Big Sun practically spells it out to him when Bruce has him at gunpoint after Charles and Xing fail to kill him — Bruce is smart enough to know that his (and Charles' and Mama's) only way out is to kill his father, and his plans up till then were, in his words, inventive, strategic, and ruthless: he released a water monitor on campus to get Charles out of a confrontation with the cops, brought in a gang of Mahjong aunties to cause confusion and prevent the Boxers from killing anyone while he rescued his mother from them, and despite all the problems he caused in the process, he's the reason every Triad leader is either dead or arrested after getting the Boxers to attack their meeting to decide the next Dragon Head. Big Sun even offers him to take Charles' place and rule with him in Taiwan... before Bruce non-lethally shoots him and forces him to either give himself up or die, coming out on top yet again by winning his family's freedom from him while avoiding having to kill his father.
• Blood Knight: The first episode has Charles being attacked by three assassins and killing all three of them. His father criticizes him for not leaving at least one of them alive to interrogate, stating that he enjoys killing too much.
• Boring, but Practical: While Charles' preferred method of acquiring information is beating up or intimidating people into telling him what he wants, May prefers the simple but less thrilling way of simply asking questions or listening to local gossip. This is how she finds the Giant's name and address, for example.
• Butt-Monkey: TK gets arrested by cops, immediately spills everything with little interrogation, gets kidnapped by June and has his thumbs broken, gets used as collateral in a deal with Korean gangsters, gets thrown in a trunk, and gets tortured by being tied up on a golf driving range.
• Chef of Iron: Charles loves baking and is an excellent fighter.
• Combat Cue Stick: Zhi Zhu mentions seeing Charles kill a man by impaling him with a pool cue.
• Completely Unnecessary Translator: Charles takes TK along as a Korean translator to broker the use of a Korean spa for the peace talks. It turns out the Korean gangsters also speak English.
• Cool Car: Bruce gets to drive a Lamborghini, his dream car.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In the very first scene, three mooks attack Charles and he kills them swiftly and brutally.
• Daytime Drama Queen: While recovering in Alexis' apartment, Charles gets really into General Hospital.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The "Number One Seafood Restaurant" in Alhambra is the number one seafood restaurant in Alhambra.
• Education Mama: The Suns being under attack by an unknown assailant doesn't stop Eileen from making sure Bruce studies and takes his tests at school. Bruce's school performance is so important to her that when Charles refuses to take Bruce to school, Bruce is able to convince him otherwise with threats of their mother's wrath over a school absence.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first episode of the series does a lot to characterize Charles, Bruce, and Mama.
  • In the very first scene, Charles is watching The Great British Bake Off and making cakes. He is then attacked by - and swiftly kills - three would-be assassins before rushing back to his now-burnt cake, revealing that Charles is a highly dangerous triad member, secretly loves baking, and that his life as a gangster is getting in the way of what he really wants.
  • Bruce, meanwhile, has his car vomited in doing Lyfts, unsuccessfully tries to flirt with a girl in class, hands in a test early despite it costing him points on a previous test, and unsuccessfully tries to get an extension on his tuition, since he'd blown the money on improv lessons that he's hiding from his mother in a bid to become a big star. It shows that Bruce is selfish, a loser, and has little idea of what he really wants, which are the source of all his problems in the series due to the triad world demanding selflessness, effectiveness, and unwavering loyalty to the family.
  • Mama appears, at first, to be a normal single mother to Bruce, being hardworking, stern, and treating him with genuine love — until she has a very un-normal conversation with Charles in the presence of an assassin's corpse in her house followed by Bruce walking in on her chopping up the body, showing she's far more than she really seems.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Eileen raised Bruce to be normal and never told him about the family business.
• Fate Worse than Death: Eileen's enemies know that she cherishes Bruce, so instead of trying to kill her outright, they tend to target Bruce knowing that his death would be worse than just killing her outright.
• Friendly Enemies: Charles and Drowsy, the son of rival Triad boss Sleepy Chan.
• Gambit Pileup: Eileen has a vast network of Gossipy Hens who serve as spies as well as being a skilled investigator herself as she tries to figure out who attacked her family. She then takes advantage of her husband's coma to appoint herself as Dragon Head of all the triads. But Big Sun reveals he was faking his coma, had Xing spying on the family, and turns Charles against her by nominating him as Dragon Head and excluding her from the meeting. But then Eileen conspires with Frank Ma to get herself invited to the meeting on a technicality. Meanwhile, Alexis is manipulating Charles on behalf of the police while Grace is manipulating Bruce on behalf of the Boxers. This culminates in a three-way gunfight between the Triads, cops, and Boxers at a Chinese restaurant.
• Gossipy Hens: Eileen's mahjong buddies, who unwittingly serve as her eyes and ears.
• Guile Hero: Despite having absolutely no experience in the world of organized crime, Bruce manages to pull off pretty clever moves that manage to get his family members out of trouble through nothing more than outside-the-box thinking.
• Harmful to Minors: The first person Charles ever killed was an assassin that had been sent after his parents. Charles was only 14 at the time and was deeply traumatized by what he had been forced to do, although his father could not have been more proud. [[Spoiler:The final episode reveals that Big Sun orchestrated this incident to complete Charles's transition into his ultimate enforcer.]]
• Hidden Villain: Bruce's girlfriend Grace is secretly leading the assassins trying to kill all of the triad members. Arguably also Big Sun who turns into the main antagonist against his family.
• Hypocrite: Big Sun makes a big deal out of the idea of "protecting the family", but is really only after power, each member of his supposed "family" being either a tool or a threat. Charles finally points out his hypocrisy when he realizes exactly how insane the idea of killing his younger brother and breaking his mother's spirit in order to "protect the family" sounds.
• Improvised Weapon: Charles "Chairleg" Sun earned his namesake by beating an assassin to death with a chairleg. He's killed with so many different things that when others recall stories of his past fights using other objects, he doesn't remember, but also doesn't outright deny that he could've killed with them before. When getting ready to confront June for kidnapping Bruce, he meanders through her warehouse picking up progressively more appropriate tools to deal with his opponent's knives, from a shop brush to a wrench.
  • Alexis incapacitates a would-be assassin by poking him in the eyes with uncooked spicy noodles.
• Indy Ploy: Fittingly for a person who's passionate about improv, Bruce is able to come up with a plans on the spot to accomplish what has to be done no matter how high the stakes are.
• Karaoke Bonding Scene: The brothers sing a love song where Bruce reaches out to Charles, who pushes him away.
• Knowledge Broker: Charles goes to see Zhi Zhu who is described in-universe as a "knowledge broker". Unfortunately, Zhi Zhu is murdered before he can reveal who the killers chasing Charles' family are.
• Married to the Job: Alexis has nothing going on in her life besides building a historic crime case around triad activity. Charles even accuses Alexis of being so hell-bent on her work that she has no identity outside of her career, not even enough to unpack her moving boxes and decorate her apartment–something Charles was able to do over the course of an afternoon or so.
• Meet Cute: Bruce meets Grace when they sit next to each other at a test and talk about how they tend to poop when they're nervous.
• Morton's Fork: Bruce's ultimatum to Big Sun is effectively this after his father fails to have him killed—Bruce has just non-lethally shot him in the gut, and he has to make a choice between either bleeding out or being arrested after calling an ambulance. No matter what he does, he's stuck in a position where he can't ruin his family's lives any more, and Bruce doesn't even have to properly kill him to do so.
• Omniglot: Drowsy Lee speaks English, Mandarin, Russian, French and Korean.
• Pragmatic Villainy: When Bruce asks Charles if their family has ever been involved in the Snakehead business (labor trafficking), Charles tells Bruce that they haven’t… because it has a bad risk-to-reward ratio.
• Real Men Cook: Charles is a skilled fighter, a mobster, and a talented baker.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: As it appears more likely that Suns will be the head of the Taiwanese triads, TK asks Bruce if he can join up with the Jade Dragons. Bruce then berates TK for even thinking he could make it in the triad life and then lists all of his failures including how he immediately caved to police interrogation, got his thumbs broken by June, and got beaten by his own Korean gang brethren with golf balls until he pissed himself. Even Charles–with his own doubts on Bruce's ability to protect the family, let alone survive being a part of the criminal underworld at all–is unnerved by this speech. As Eileen points out, however, this is Bruce's attempt to keep him out of harm's way, though it doesn't actually pan out and TK stays with Bruce anyway since he knew what he was trying to do.
  • Bruce is on the receiving end of this when after the Boxer attack that ruined his mother's attempt at becoming the head of the Triads, with her pointing out how much she sacrificed for him all his life including skipping meals just to afford him a popular backpack at school without him ever being grateful or do something in return.
• Red Herring: Sleepy Chan is the original suspect for the person who attacked Big Sun. Turns out he had nothing to do with it.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Bruce, who was raised as a normal guy, is the Sensitive Guy. Charles, who was raised as a mobster, is the Manly Man.
• Spanner in the Works: Bruce's involvement in the Triads' meeting effectively ruins everything for everyone. He tells the Boxers where the meeting is held so they can wipe everyone out under the assumption that his family would make it out, ruining both of his parents' plans to claim the title of Dragon Head when they attack. He also gets worried for their safety after the fact and goes after them, intruding on the meeting to get rid of a bomb that would have killed all of the Triads and subsequently causing both them and the Boxers to slaughter each other. He even takes Charles' coat with him after his brother had mistakenly taken his, and with it the phone that Alexis had bugged while Charles was laying low with her, causing the FBI to join in a three-way firefight that results in them arresting any Triad who hadn't been killed in the preceding fight. Bruce can't even take solace in knowing his family got out due to the massive danger he'd put all of them in, and that's before he has to deal with the problems of his brother and then Xing attempting to murder him.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: The Big Bad Ensemble is composed of Grace, Bruce's Love-Interest Traitor and high-ranking member of the Boxers, a tragic, if fanatical, Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants revenge on the Triads who ruined the life of so many people ; and Big Sun, the father of the titular brothers who turns out to be an abusive Hate Sink who preaches "family must be protected" while actually being ready to manipulate and even kill them if it suits his ambitions of expanding his criminal empire.
• Theme Twin Naming: The twin sisters May and June. Bonus points for May, the oldest of the twins, being named after the preceding month.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Charles discovers churros on his trip to the US. He buys them and even tries to make his own.
  • Alexis' favorite food is spicy Korean noodles, which she eats uncooked out of the bag.
• Trapped in Villainy: Despite all his hidden misgivings about the Triad life, his inability to kill his own brother on his father's orders, and learning that his very existence as a Triad was rooted in a lie, Charles still can't bring himself to oppose his father since it's all he'd known his entire life. Just returning to his father afterwards and begging him to spare his brother and mother is a monumental ask, and he can't even begin to entertain the notion of killing Big Sun when that's the only way Bruce and Eileen would be safe.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The Sun family are a powerful triad, though Bruce doesn't know about it until the events of the series.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: One of the assassins who attack Charles in the first episode brandishes a knife which Charles uses to stab him with.
• Waiting for a Break: Bruce wants to be an actor and is paying for an improv class. In the meantime he drives Lyft and reluctantly sells drugs.
• We Can Rule Together: Despite how Big Sun just ordered Bruce to be murdered, once he sees that Bruce has arrived to kill him, he offers to bring him home to Taiwan to rule the Jade Dragons. He reveals to Bruce that he knew all about his involvement in the Boxers conflict and actually praises his ingenious thinking, seeing potential in his second son despite him having lived a life outside of crime. Bruce doesn't buy it and shoots him, albeit nonlethally.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Boxers, who are targeting organized crime but use torture and terrorism. They also don't really care about collateral damage.
• You Killed My Father:
  • After kidnapping Bruce and TK, June reveals she did it to bring down Charles, under the mistaken impression that he was the one responsible for her sister May's death. After being convinced of Charles' innocence, she joins up with the Suns to kill the real perpetrators.
  • Grace also reveals that she has a very personal stake in trying to bring down the triads with the Boxers, as her father had been murdered by her parents' triad labor traffickers.