{"id":104796,"date":"2025-08-29T06:07:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T06:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104796\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T06:07:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T06:07:06","slug":"peacemaker-recap-season-2-episode-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104796\/","title":{"rendered":"Peacemaker recap: season 2, episode 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week\u2019s season premiere<\/a> of Peacemaker established with startling sincerity that spiraling feeling of being stuck where one does not want to be. Christopher Smith (John Cena) and his fellow 11th Street Kids, the victorious heroes of the classified Butterfly Invasion, now march bitterly in defeat, their road leading not to reward but despair, desolation instead of happiness. It was a bummer development for this kinetic, riotous series, and, so far, its most dramatically exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because while this snarky cadre of black-ops stooges and maladjusted masked avengers are hardly the most relatable figures on television, James Gunn\u2019s gift for drawing sympathy from even the most odious among them has been Peacemaker\u2018s greatest superpower. After all, who among us hasn\u2019t felt like the world\u2019s tilted off its axis into some darker reality? Last week, Gunn executed moments of regret alongside his most indulgent hard-R-rated montage yet\u2014a genitals-flailing orgy rooted in self-pity\u2014launching a new season of antihero TV that effectively turns the screws on the souls of its repentant characters. And as we learn this week, Chris & co. are still nowhere near rock bottom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA Man Is Only As Good As His Bird,\u201d written by Gunn and directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad<\/a>; Confess, Fletch<\/a>), thickens the miserable stew that life is currently serving the 11th Street Kids. It opens in flashback, with Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) given the grand tour as the new director of A.R.G.U.S., the replacement for deposed Amanda Waller (Viola Davis)\u2014or \u201cA-Dubs,\u201d in the not-so affectionate parlance of Economos (Steve Agee). Once the prickly pleasantries are done, Rick\u2019s first task for our dye-bearded friend is to retrieve the secret files concerning the death of his son, Rick Flag Jr.<\/a> (Joel Kinnaman). After a private debrief, where Flag mentally unpacks the fatal clash between Rick Jr. and Chris\u2014taking note of his boy\u2019s final words (\u201cPeacemaker\u2026what a joke\u201d), Flag makes his next move.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From there, \u201cBird\u201d returns to Chris Smith, still reeling from last week\u2019s accidental dispatch of his alternate-reality self. After a bit of macabre physical humor (Cena is in his wheelhouse here, as seen when he frantically tucks the cadaver into a cabinet only for it to roll back out again and again in a bloody heap), Chris makes a call: \u201cDo you still have those bonesaws?\u201d Later, Adrian Chase, a.k.a. Vigilante (Freddy Stroma with his fresh skibidi haircut), arrives with serrated solutions to Chris\u2019 home, where anonymous sex partners swung by for hedonistic frivolity the previous night. (Though not entirely anonymous: We did meet a helpful brunette named Zora.) Adrian, wounded that he wasn\u2019t invited to the festivities, nonetheless obliges with the grunt work of corpse disposal, a grisly sequence that I will come back to shortly.<\/p>\n

James Gunn’s Superman walked so that his Peacemaker could fuck<\/a>James Gunn would love to “Lucas the shit out of” Peacemaker season one<\/a><\/p>\n

First, a stop by the chilly Adebayo home, where Leota (Danielle Brooks) is greeted by her pups and her estranged wife Keeya (Elizabeth Ludlow). A quick look around their quiet apartment, Keeya in her fast-food uniform, her gaze flat with disappointment, says everything we need to know about Leota\u2019s sudden, destructive pivot to \u201cspy business.\u201d (\u201cWe were supposed to go home to Gotham!\u201d Keeya says.) At least love, however tenuous, still exists there. Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) continues her sad trudge alone, making a pharmacy run for concealer to cover up her rearranged face after last week\u2019s bar brawl, resulting in an altercation with a well-meaning stranger: \u201cWhatever you\u2019re going through\u2026I have resources that can help.\u201d Harcourt: \u201cThanks; that\u2019s not what this is.\u201d On her way out, she clocks the \u201cHelp Wanted\u201d sign on the door, a karmic twist of the knife that makes it feel that life is reserving its cruelest ironies just for her.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, outside the Smith residence, Economos\u2019 mandatory vigil is interrupted by an uninvited guest by the name of Agent Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows). \u201cWhat\u2019s your preferred greeting? Are you a hugger?\u201d No matter where Economos rests his laurels, unwanted foils find him. Predictably, his hostile first impression with Fleury results in a new nickname: Ginger Cool. \u201cDo you mind if I call you that?\u201d (Yes, he minds.) As his new surveillance partner makes himself comfortable, taking liberties with his horde of snacks and chuckling to himself, Jon reflects, yet again, on the latest indignity in his A.R.G.U.S. career.<\/p>\n

Fleury, as it happens, is a trip: He ogles Adebayo at Chris\u2019s door with the resigned admiration of a Tex Avery wolf, then confesses to having \u201cbird blindness\u201d upon mistaking Eagly for a parrot. (\u201cIt\u2019s my sole weakness,\u201d he confides.) Any other show would treat this as a gag that turns out to be bullshit. Meadows, like a gale-force hurricane of smarm and charm, sells it to the degree that later, when Fleury meets Eagly in person, his malady functions as both true and hilariously idiotic. Paradoxically, we discover that antagonistic, rude Fleury also keeps a mental dossier on manners; later, he informs his fidgety A.R.G.U.S. soldiers on the finer\u2014and correct\u2014points of considerate party etiquette.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With all this introduction, introspection, and yearning, this week\u2019s episode can feel like the back half of the premiere. That said, its major set piece at least tightens its two major threads: the Flag-sanctioned home invasion, which is interwoven with a reunion party for the 11th Street Kids. Ads, Economos, Harcourt, Vig, and Chris crack some Bud Lights (the ones Economos doesn\u2019t drop), and Chris makes a toast: \u201cNo one will ever break us apart.\u201d Foreshadowing is rarely this obvious. As the Kids share chips and dip, Fleury deploys with his goons to infiltrate Casa del Peacemaker. Their discovery of Chris\u2019 cosmic closet, which is emanating all kinds of strange energies, is interrupted by Eagly, who defends the home with the same eye-plucking brio he brought to his showdown with the White Dragon and his racist goons<\/a> last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back at the party, Chris and Harcourt share a brittle one-on-one. Chris notes the wound above her eye and suggests that she went looking for a fight, to which she spits right back: \u201cWe both know that\u2019s what you\u2019d like\u2026[to be] some sort of damaged, broken bird, \u2019cause water seeks its own level and all that. Sorry. I\u2019m not as fucked up as you, Chris.\u201d She leaves Chris to marinate in Bud Light and self-loathing, quite hungover and haunted by the dismemberment of his doppelg\u00e4nger just hours earlier. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to meet yourself. It\u2019s chilling as fuck,\u201d he said to Vigilante, just before he stared into his own blue eyes dimmed by death and sawed off limbs that may as well have been his as Vigilante gave him an encouraging, \u201ccorpses, amirite?\u201d grin. (Stroma is, as ever, great at playing a wonderful, demented buffoon. By the time he gets his beer shower, he\u2019s already been spiritually rinsed of his latest foul deed.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This brings us to this week\u2019s final moments, where Chris texts the alternate-reality Harcourt to see what\u2019s shaking on her side of the cosmic divide. (Gunn, a consummate nerd, clarifies that cell coverage does not hop across dimensions.) Her reply, a broken-heart emoji, sparks a flicker of hope on his face. Chris makes himself comfortable in a reality he doesn\u2019t belong to but can slip into easily. He\u2019s likely to have an easier time mending this Emilia\u2019s heart; it can\u2019t be as calloused as her alternate\u2019s. What kind of person this alt-Chris was, or why he was estranged from alt-Emilia in the first place, are questions for another day. For now, in a desperate attempt to mend a fractured heart, Chris indulges his, thoughtlessly careening toward an emotional reckoning so intense that its devastation will be measured in megatonnage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2022 For those who only mildly enjoy Peacemaker\u2019s new opening dance\/credit sequence compared to season one, did Flag\u2019s grief and fury in this week\u2019s opening scene recalibrate those feelings? Grillo\u2019s line just before Foxy Shazam\u2019s \u201cOh Lord\u201d queues up\u2014\u201dFuck \u2018The Peacemaker’\u201d\u2014threw gasoline onto the song\u2019s soaring opening bars as Chris, in all his chromed glory, faded into view, the object of Flag\u2019s channelled rage. It certainly made a fan out of me.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 It took me a minute to realize Sol Rodr\u00edguez is playing Sasha Bordeaux, who other DC heads will remember was Bruce Wayne\u2019s bodyguard during the \u201cBruce Wayne: Murderer?\u201d arc. She was created by Greg Rucka and Shawn Martinbrough.
\n\u2022 A quick update on that Quantum Unfolding Closet in Chris\u2019 house: It\u2019s a nexus connected to 99 other universes, according to our hero.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Among Fleury\u2019s Dubiously Monikered Heroes are \u201cMexicali\u201d (Reinaldo Faberlle); Agent Angler (Anissa Matlock; dunno if I should bother with her nickname), Agent Tillerson, a.k.a. \u201cEncino Man\u201d (Patrick Logan); and \u201cPonyboy\u201d (Brandon Stanley), the latter of whom objects to his nickname and is summarily demoted to \u201cBarely Legal,\u201d then to \u201cKewpie Doll.\u201d (\u201cFuck!\u201d is his final, awesome protest.)
\n\u2022 The Eagly home invasion sequence parallels a bit in Superman<\/a>, where Krypto (another loveable, computer-generated super-pet) defends the Fortress Of Solitude against unwanted intruders. The scene even ends with a Superman-style strike from Eagly, who attempts to reset Fleury\u2019s bird blindness with a drop on the head from on high. Fleury, afterwards: \u201cA fucking duck attacked me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week\u2019s season premiere of Peacemaker established with startling sincerity that spiraling feeling of being stuck where one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-104796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}