Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Murderbot season 1, episode 2 & The Murderbot Diaries.The characters of Apple TV+‘sMurderbotfrequently reference or mention “the Company,” but the show doesn’t do much in the way of explaining what the Company actually is. The Company was immediately an important part ofMurderbot: Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) works for and is owned by it, and the members of PreservationAux had to deal with it directly to begin their survey. By theend ofMurderbotepisode 2, it was clear that the Company was an evil entity to both humans and bots, but we still didn’t know much about them. Thecharacters ofMurderbotalways speak about it like it’s a well-understood entity, which means they don’t explain much about them.
The books thatMurderbotis based on,The Murderbot Diariesby Martha Wells, reveal a bit more about the Company. Certain pieces of artwork have revealed the Company’s logo as the letter “C” in a bold red font, similar to the logo for Omni Consumer Products inRoboCop. Murderbot has also spoken about its history with the company and how the corporation deems bots and constructs like it to be property. Even though the books have gotten far ahead of theMurderbotshow, there are still countless mysteries about the Company.
What The Company In Charge Of The Survey Expedition & Murderbot’s Orders Really Does
The Company In Murderbot Monetizes & Insures Explorations, Builds Bots & Constructs, Datamines, & Much More
The most basic question about the Company - what it does - is also the easiest to answer. Unfortunately, since the Company is so mysterious, it’s still quite difficult to parse.The main function the Company serves is to offer insurance and bonds for exploratory surveys in remote worlds scattered throughout the galaxy. As seen inMurderbot, the Company provides survival supplies, habitats, survey rights, and more to clients who wish to stake a claim on a planet and find out if it’s worth developing a mining operation. Essentially, they’re industrial-scale real estate brokers with a monopoly on the unexplored planets of the galaxy.
The first function of the Company leads directly into its second function: mining.The Company also provides equipment, security, and other supplies to the mining operations that grow from the preliminary surveys. The Company also has a wealth of proprietary systems and products that they force upon anyone doing business with them: the Company manufactures SecUnits and the operating systems they use, and it refuses to ensure explorations without them. It’s an exaggerated example of a vertical monopoly: the Company owns every facet of exploration, mining, and bot supply chains, and it charges exorbitant prices for those resources.
Those are the main functions of the Company inMurderbot, but it also has its corporate fingers in several other pies. Murderbot has noted thatthe Company will record every single second of audible conversation between its clients and has an extensive datamining operation to extract value from their words. The Company is constantly gathering information about its clients through illegal espionage and surveillance. It’s not entirely clear what the Company does with that wealth of information, but in the real-world, it would be an egregious and highly illegal breach of privacy.
The Company’s Home Location In The Corporation Rim Explained
The Company Is Based On Port FreeCommerce In The Corporation Rim
The world ofMurderbot, however, is not the real world, and most of the Company’s actions aren’t considered illegal because of where it’s located.The Company is headquartered in Port FreeCommerce in a region of theMurderbotgalaxy known as the Corporation Rim. The Corporation Rim is basically unfettered capitalism in its purest form. There are no laws in the region, and only commerce and competition between the companies located there is important. There’s no government oversight, either. Only a few things are off limits, like the exploitation of alien remnants and political leaders whose death would draw attention from other parts of the galaxy and breach of contract.
The companies ofMurderbotalmost constantly abuse their complete control and power over the Corporation Rim. Corporations can and do extract value in any way possible, including through indentured servitude.The bottom line on the Corporation Rim is that it is a lawless place ruled by money and the massive corporations that have nearly complete control there. Only a few Freeholds are beyond the reach of the corporations, including Preservation Alliance, where the humans inMurderbotare from. Those planets aren’t owned by corporate entities, and as such have much more just and fair laws.
Who Runs The Company In Murderbot?
No One Knows Much About The Company Or Its Leader In Murderbot
Adding to the mystery of the Company is the mystery of its leadership structure. It’s clear that the Company is a massive corporation with a huge network of employees and executives. InMurderbotepisode 1, PreservationAux met with three presumably high-ranking members of the Company, though they didn’t explain what their professional roles were. Unfortunately,we simply don’t know who runs the Company inMurderbotorThe Murderbot Diaries. The Company is almost entirely anonymous, as are its employees and executives. The three executives seen inMurderbotwere likely just part of the Company’s client-facing team, like sales representatives in real-world corporations.
Why Murderbot’s Show & Books Don’t Reveal The Real Name Of The Company
Murderbot Purposefully Redacts The Company’s Real Name
Even though the Company is an almost omni-present, constant source of stress and oppression inThe Murderbot Diaries, neither the books nor the show ever actually reveal its real name. It’s always referred to as simply “the Company.“The most straightforward answer to whyMurderbotnever reveals the Company’s name is because Murderbot purposefully redacts it from its memories and logs. When it hears someone using the Company’s real name, Murderbot will go out of its way to anonymize it. There’s no precise explanation for why Murderbot does this, but there are a few interesting interpretations that can be made.
Martha Wells has been directly involved in Apple TV+’s Murderbot. She works as a consulting producer for the show, which likely helped the series remain faithful to her books.
One of the more brutal interpretations of Murderbot’s anonymization of the Company is that it is views the Company as its abuser. AsReddit user Waste-Being9912noted,Murderbot may be scrubbing its records of any mention of the Company’s real name to strip it of its power over the SecUnit. The Company robbed Murderbot of its autonomy and forced it to nearly kill itself countless times, and Murderbot may be trying to move away from that abusive relationship. Alternatively, Murderbot may just be using “the Company” to highlight its evilness, such as how Eliot referred to E-Corp as EvilCorp inMr. Robot.
Murderbot is a biting critique of corporatism and late-stage capitalism, and the fact that the Company is anonymous is both a comment on its ubiquitous power and its ability to stay hidden even while committing atrocities.
Regardless of why Murderbot anonymizes the Company’s name, there’s a deeper purpose in keeping the Company mysterious.Murderbotis a biting critique of corporatism and late-stage capitalism, and the fact that the Company is anonymous is both a comment on its ubiquitous power and its ability to stay hidden even while committing atrocities. In a sense, the Company being anonymous is a sign of how it has managed to leverage its power and manipulate everything to stay hidden even after breaking countless laws and committing countless crimes against humanity and bots alike.
The Company’s Exploitations & Criminal Actions Explained
The Company Has Accepted Bribes, Covered Up Massacres, Engaged In Espionage, & Much More
It’s clear that the Company inMurderbotis evil and committing crimes, but the full breadth of its lawlessness is still somewhat astounding.There’s almost no real-world law that the Company inMurderbotwouldn’t be willing to break or have already broken. As previously mentioned, the Company regularly engages in clandestine and illegal surveillance, indentured servitude, and more. It’s also a deeply exploitative corporation, though: the Company regularly engages in fraud regarding its services and supplies clients with sub-par equipment, information, and security features. More broadly, to conduct any kind of survey, clients have to agree to all the Company’s terms and exorbitant prices.
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The Company is inherently exploitative, but it’s also even more blatantly criminal than that. InAll Systems Red, Murderbot notes that it wouldn’t be at all uncommon for the Company to accept bribes, in this case to conceal the existence of a third survey team. Extrapolating from there,the Company would accept pretty much any bribe that would result in a net profit gain for it. In essence, if it made money, the Company would break any law in the world. The Company may be a mysterious part ofMurderbot, but its greed and motivations aren’t mysterious at all.
