Death by Lightning
Casus Belli
TV Flash files “Casus Belli” as a desk essential hour — Death by Lightning (2025) on Netflix, season 1, episode 3, aired 2025-11-06, 47 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E03: listed hour 3 of 4 in the Death by Lightning guide, hour 3 of 4 in season 1. It aired 2025-11-06 (47 min). The listed hour before it is “Party Faithful” (S01E02). Next is “Destiny of the Republic” (S01E04).
Essential hour: “Casus Belli”. Casus Belli as the titled cause: war-grammar on a domestic assassination, still standom tragedy, still a limited series the desk watches for the pivot.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Treachery from within the White House complicates Garfield's attempts to appoint a Cabinet. Guiteau tries everything to secure a Presidential audience.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Casus Belli sit in the Death by Lightning guide?
S01E03 is listed hour 3 of 4 — hour 3 of 4 in season 1, season 1 episode 3.
When did Death by Lightning S01E03 air?
Casus Belli aired 2025-11-06 and is listed at 47 minutes.
Do I need to know Garfield first?
No. Obscure presidential history made bingeable: rise, office-seeker, assassination as standom tragedy. The series is the primer and the poem.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Garfield's assassination as standom tragedy: Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen bearded, obscure presidential history made bingeable. Watch for Macfadyen's post-Succession pivot into an office-seeker who loves too hard, and for a Netflix limited series that treats 1881 politics like a fandom with a gun and a terrible poem.
The first look is beard as costume and 1881 as a fitting — *period wool, terrible sincerity, a poem nobody asked to hear*. Mike Makowsky's Death by Lightning, 2025 on Netflix, puts Michael Shannon as James A. Garfield against Matthew Macfadyen's Charles Guiteau, Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur waiting in the wings. President Garfield's rise collides with an obsessive office-seeker. Assassination as standom tragedy. Obscure presidential history made bingeable. Four episodes, one limited series. **This was not a…
Filed against
- Michael Shannon as James A. Garfield
Michael Shannon’s Nelson Van Alden turned Boardwalk Empire’s Prohibition piety into a sweating moral problem — Scorsese sheen, sequins and mud — then bearded up for Death by Lightning’s assassination-as-standom tragedy. Early-HBO gangster…
- Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Guiteau
Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans is Succession’s midwestern climber in a borrowed coat — insult-comedy courtier inside Jesse Armstrong’s media-dynasty knife fight. HBO kept the Sundays scarce on purpose; Tom made hunger look like manners…
- Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur
Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson turned libertarian woodcraft and breakfast meats into Parks and Recreation mythology, then broke hearts as Bill on The Last of Us. Deadpan masculinity as affection became a cottage industry. TV Flash still…