Written and Directed by James Gunn.
Adebayo is confronted by Murn who is revealed to have a Butterfly in his brain. He promises not to hurt her, and Harcourt arrives to the HQ. Adebayo asks for help, but Harcourt simply asks if she knows the secret. She says that she knew about the possession ever since "Murn" was unscathed after the explosion went off in Goff's house and straight up asked him afterwards. He explains the situation to Adebayo, telling the Butterfly inside Goff's head decided to conquer the world and he decided to rebel against the leader, taking over Murn's body. Waller is the only one of the higher ups not in the know, and they ask Adebayo to keep her in the dark.
Peacemaker is giving an open lecture at a local school as requested by his friend Jamil, being asked questions by children. When Jamil's daughter asks him how he became a superhero, Chris has a flashback to his brother's death and Auggie angrily shouting at him. Once it becomes a bit uncomfortable, the lesson is over.
Auggie is being released from prison, still finding an opportunity to insult the police officers, and resolves to kill his son. Locke is furious to learn that Peacemaker is being investigated, raising suspicions. A squad is sent to arrest Peacemaker at his trailer.
Peacemaker is keeping the "Goff" Butterfly inside his trailer, making strides in communicating with it. It draws a peace sign on the inside of the jar. The rest of the team is investigating the records found at the factory. The police squad heads to the trailer, and Locke warns Murn. Vigilante and Peacemaker try to communicate with "Goff", becoming furious at each other, but Murn quickly warns them about the sudden arrival of the police. The trailer is broken into, but they manage to escape. Detectives find the diary planted by Adebayo. Eagly gives out their position, and Song attempts to pursue it alone. Vigilante drops from a tree and breaks the jar with "Goff" inside, who quickly buries into Song's mouth and makes her cough out blood. The rest of the police start the pursuit, but Eagly takes out most of the officers and Locke helps them get away, finishing off the remaining cops.
Song appears to be fine and starts her own pursuit, while Vigilante breaks Peacemaker's untraceable phone, making him explode in fury. Fitzgibbon finds Locke with the bodies, who gives them a hilarious fake story about the Hamburglar killing them, but Song doesn't appear to care about it, reacting rather "alien" to her partner's queries. Locke takes the diary, attempting to get rid of it, and warns Murn about it.
Peacemaker arrives at the HQ, telling that "Goff" has taken over Song, and confronts Murn over Locke's behavior as well as being kept in the dark. "Goff" in Song's body tries to call over the rest of her species and makes Fitzgibbon back off, while Locke hides the diary in his desk drawer. Economos has found the source of the amber liquid that Butterflies need to feed - a "cow", and Peacemaker demands answers from the team, but gets nothing.
The rest of the Butterflies arrive at the Evergreen PD and quickly take over everyone inside, police officers and prisoners alike, with Fitzgibbon and Locke among others. Meanwhile, Auggie decides to cross the line and dons his White Dragon suit, fully certain that he needs to kill his son.
Adebayo decides to spend more time with her wife, who says that they should return to Gotham after the operation is over. Peacemaker tells Harcourt that he's not going to kill humans anymore, but aliens are fair game. She leaves him alone after giving him a heartfelt talk, and he stays at the HQ, playing "Home Sweet Home" on piano. Vigilante tells him that Locke at the press conference exposes the contents of the diary, that aliens are taking over and Peacemaker has been complicit in the murders, painting him as a psychopath and making him a wanted man.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim:
- Discussed and deconstructed by the Butterfly possessing Murn; the Butterfly is regretful that it had to kill Murn in order to take over his body, but he makes a point that the real Murn was a murderous mercenary and that's why he possessed and killed him instead of a more innocent person. Still, he's plagued with guilt because he can see all of Murn's fucked up memories and it dawned on him that he robbed the man of potential redemption.
- Played straight with Auggie's Mook Lieutenant Cool Steve, who is among those possessed by Butterflies during the attack on the police station.
- Blood from the Mouth: When Butterflies go inside the mouths of their victims to take them over, the victims cough out a lot of blood as they lay on the ground shaking.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: After Goff manages to escape from the jar, she had the chance to possess Peacemaker and make him her new host, effectively killing Peacemaker in the process. Instead, she chooses to possess Detective Song.
- Call-Back: When the Butterfly-possessed Song tries to assure her partner, she makes a freaky smile. She then notes how her kind "keeps forgetting smiles look different on each face". After being possessed, the police station inhabitants are shown all bearing very creepy huge smiles.
- Cassandra Truth: Thanks to the press conference, any attempts by Peacemaker (or his team) to claim aliens are possessing people will be brushed off as the paranoid ramblings of a madman.
- Continuity Nod: Peacemaker refers to the Flash by his superhero name, which wasn't officially established until his brief appearance in The CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths, which he got from his Alternate Self.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Vigilante briefly makes a valid point when he tells Peacemaker that he prefers conversation partners that are unable to talk back to him, such as Eagly and the Butterfly. Peacemaker actually agrees with him on that statement.
- Embarrassing Ringtone: When Murn calls Vigilante on his phone, Vigilante has "Barbie Girl" by Aqua for his ringtone.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While escaping the cops, while Vigilante is willing to kill them to avoid getting arrested, Peacemaker wouldn't dare to do the same thing. He's even horrified by how Locke would kill them with one pleading for her life and the other is unconscious.
- Everybody Knew Already: Harcourt says she had figured out that Murn is a Butterfly after he took no damage from the explosion back at Goff's home and by the fact he knew way too much information about the Butterflies; when she confronted Murn about it, he told her the truth. Economos also knows, but literally sticks his fingers in his ears every time it comes up. Ironically, Amanda Waller doesn't know about it.
- Frame-Up: A unique variation as the possessed Locke calls a press conference to detail Peacemaker behind the deaths of the Senator's family and others and even talking of the man's beliefs in aliens possessing people... while making him out to be a dangerous madman now a wanted fugitive. It's also implied Waller intended Peacemaker to be The Scapegoat in case Locke would be unable to keep the police from interfering.
- Hidden Depths: Peacemaker may be a trained killer, but he certainly knows how to play the piano quite well.
- Hope Spot: The Goff Butterfly draws a peace symbol on her jar, and begins to communicate with Peacemaker and Vigilante, suggesting that maybe a way to settle the invasion peacefully has opened up. Then Song arrives to arrest Peacemaker and things immediately go south...
- I Did What I Had to Do: Butterfly!Murn defends taking over a human host, saying the real Murn was a twisted murderer — yet it feels plagued by his memories and guilty about robbing him of any chance to change.
- Leave No Witnesses: Locke shoots a few cops that were pursuing Peacemaker and Vigilante to ensure that they can escape. But while Vigilante thought it was cool, Peacemaker and Murn were horrified that Locke killed a cop that was begging for her life while he was mocking her while the other cops were unconscious when he kills them.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Even after Leota learned that Murn is a Butterfly and Harcourt and Economos revealed they knew the whole time, they still leave Peacemaker and Vigilante in the dark about Murn's secret and this angers Peacemaker that none of them are telling him anything despite the fact they're suppose to be a team.
- Luke, I Might Be Your Father: While Peacemaker is answering questions from the kids, a girl asks him if he knows her mother Becky Coolidge, who used to bartend at the Starlight Lounge. After he confirms he did met her ten years ago, the girl tells him he might be her real dad, which stuns Peacemaker but the teacher immediately ends the Q&A before things can get complicated.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Detective Song's actions created some serious problems in her pursuit to find the truth.
- Because she was intent on arresting Peacemaker, she freed Auggie from jail — and now he has plans to kill Peacemaker, for which he suits up in his White Dragon suit again.
- Her decision to arrest Peacemaker leads to a chain of events that makes her end up getting taken over by the Butterfly leader. She also indirectly caused the death of a few cops when Locke has to kill them to ensure Peacemaker and Vigilante can escape.
- After her possession, she calls in more Butterflies to take over everyone in the police station and the prison.
- Inverted, when the villainous Vigilante's bumbling releases the Butterfly that takes over Detective Song.
- Vigilante breaks Peacemaker's untraceable phone, leaving them cut off from the rest of the team for a while.
- Peacemaker's decision to keep the Butterfly possessing Goff as a pet/prisoner due to not trusting anybody on the team bites everyone in the ass when it escapes, possesses Detective Song, and then has a bunch of Butterflies possess everyone on the Evergreen police force and put a warrant out on Peacemaker.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Detective Song freeing Auggie from prison for a crime he didn't commit and trying to arrest Peacemaker for the actual crime gets her killed by getting taken over by the Butterfly leader.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Murn hearing Locke just flat out murdered some cops, which he didn't expect.
- The team seeing the press conference telling the world Peacemaker was behind the murders of the Senator's family, is considered a madman and is now wanted on a national level.
- Once for Yes, Twice for No: In order to communicate with "Goff", Peacemaker tells her to tap once on the glass jar for "yes" and two for "no". Vigilante, on the other hand, doesn't seem to get that they can only use "yes or no" questions.
- Out-of-Character Alert: After being possessed, Song begins speaking in a flat tone, taking things literally and referring to herself in the third person. Sadly, her partner just brushes this off as side-effects of a concussion, not realizing the truth until too late.
- Pun-Based Title: The title is a pun on "burn after reading".
- Samus Is a Girl: It was assumed that the butterfly that possessed Goff was a male, but Murn reveals the Butterfly is a female and also his leader.Murn: The one in Goff, she's our leader.
Adebayo: She?
Murn: Yes.
Adebayo: Why she?
Murn: Well, she had a... vagina.
Adebayo: Aliens got vaginas? What is her real name?
Murn: Unlike humans, we don't name our genitalia. - Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Murn reveals he rebelled against the leader of the Butterflies due to not agreeing with her modus operandi.
- The Smurfette Principle: There is by all appearances only one female member of the Aryan Empire, and she's mainly used so Auggie can get his rocks off after getting out of jail.
- Stupid Crooks: Implied with Kite Man when one of the kids points out a hole in Peacemaker's story about how he took him down. The kid points out if the black heart ruby that Kite Man stole weighed 30 lbs and he was flying a kite, then he would have crashed anyway due to gravity.
- The Unsmile: Aside from "Goff" (who seems to have gotten the handle on a Psychotic Smirk, though she gripes she has to re-learn smiling "for every new head") the sequence where the Butterflies Kill and Replace everyone in the police station features a hallway full of these. Goff rallies up her minions and they all decide to try some triumphant smirks, which look goofy on their new bodies.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Murn's repeated machinations to have Auggie Smith remain The Scapegoat to keep Peacemaker from getting arrested get shot to shit when Detective Song decides to ignore orders, and releases the evidence providing his innocence. This spirals into the police raiding Peacemaker's home to arrest him finding his forged diary and Song and later the entire force getting possessed by the Butterflies. The episode ends with them revealing the details of Peacemaker's diary to the world.
- Wham Episode: The episode was filled with many reveals and twists — and most of them will fundamentally alter the status quo of the show moving forward.
- We finally learn something about the backstory of the butterflies and Murn's role in stopping them.
- Auggie decides to suit up and kill his son.
- When the Butterfly-possessed Song meets the Butterflies that came from space, it's revealed that the strange object Peacemaker found at his Butterfly one-night stand and changed its form in a later episode was a Butterfly spaceship.
- The contents of the diary are revealed, and are used to make Peacemaker wanted by more than just the Evergreen Police department.
- The entirety of the Evergreen PD and prison are turned to butterflies, so even if there weren't legitimate police officers hunting Peacemaker, the ranks in Evergreen have swollen.
- Murn's "man on the inside" was turned, meaning the butterflies now know details of the operation, though to what extent Murn kept it compartmentalized is unknown.
