{"id":65547,"date":"2025-10-10T09:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T09:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/65547\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T09:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T09:56:07","slug":"peacemaker-season-2-finale-review-making-the-world-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/65547\/","title":{"rendered":"Peacemaker Season 2 Finale Review – \u2018Making the World Better\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full spoilers follow for Peacemaker<\/a> Season 2, Episode 8 – \u201cFull Nelson.\u201d<\/p>\n

After what has been a fun yet simultaneously heavy season, and certainly an uneven one in terms of pace, James Gunn\u2019s Peacemaker Season 2 comes to an end with the weakest episode of the bunch. While \u201cFull Nelson\u201d \u2013 which is the longest segment of the season at 58 minutes \u2013 resolves the major character threads of the season, it only effectively does so for one of them, that of the Chris\/Harcourt relationship. Everything else, from Rick Flag Sr.\u2019s real plan to Adebayo\u2019s marriage and career to that whole Nazi world thing<\/a> \u2013 remember them? \u2013 gets short shrift in this finale, despite its extended running time. Also, all that talk about this season setting up the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow<\/a>\u2026 well, I guess it kinda does?<\/p>\n

Peacemaker Season 2 Finale Images\"\"<\/p>\n

First the good: John Cena as Chris Smith\/Peacemaker and Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt have been great all season, and the Moonlighting-style will they\/won\u2019t they plot finally comes to a cathartic place here. Gunn, who wrote the whole season and is back to direct the finale, finally takes us back to that \u201cnight on the boat\u201d that we\u2019ve been hearing about for the past two months, where Chris and Harcourt apparently hooked up in a drunken moment that at least one of them has seemed to regret.<\/p>\n

Gunn, always a master when it comes to weaving pop music into his narratives, reveals that the night in question saw the two getting drunk and commiserating over Harcourt\u2019s job situation before happening upon a \u201crock cruise\u201d by the early-\u201990s duo Nelson. This is textbook James Gunn, and it works perfectly to sell the idea of Chris and Harcourt having a true moment of connection, even if it\u2019s in the unlikeliest of places. It\u2019s perfect and the actors once again sell the evolution these two have undergone since they first met, and it\u2019s made all the better by the fact that it turns out that the \u201cnight on the boat\u201d wasn\u2019t some random hook-up. No, it was just a quick kiss and a look and a feeling. Way better than a random hook-up.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not much else in the episode comes together as well as Chris\/Harcourt.<\/p>\n

I also like how the near-ass-kicking that Harcourt is ready to give that random dude outside the Big Belly Burger is thwarted because of Chris, and how his outlook on life \u2013 \u201cLook at the moon! Look at the stars!\u201d \u2013 serves to illustrate why Harcourt might fall for the big lug. Between that and being caught up in the magic of Nelson, how could she not?<\/p>\n

Of course, Harcourt and the 11th Street Kids use that very same Chris-vibe to bring him out of his funk later in the episode, when he\u2019s at his lowest and under the impression that he\u2019s \u201ccursed\u201d because of all the bad things that have happened around him. \u201cI believe in miracles because of you. I saw an eagle hug a human!\u201d Ads (Danielle Brooks) cries, and it\u2019s not in a funny way. It\u2019s in a \u201cMan, these guys do all love each other\u201d way. But it still comes back to Chris and Harcourt, the latter of whom finally admits that, yeah, of course the night on the boat meant something \u2013 \u201cIt meant everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not much else in the episode comes together as well as Chris\/Harcourt, with Frank Grillo\u2019s Rick Flag Sr. really coming across as kind of a mess of a character at this point. Did I miss something? Why was he having a jolly-good time with the rest of the staff at Lex Luthor\u2019s old command center while his A.R.G.U.S. men were out there getting their faces eaten off in Candyland and the such? (And sure, the other dimensions encountered by those poor guys in the QUC were cool, but we kinda saw too much of them in the trailer for this week\u2019s episode.) I understand that Rick Sr. has a grudge to bear against Peacemaker and that he might very well never forgive him for killing his son, but his slide from a good guy in Creature Commandos<\/a> to neutral\/good in Superman<\/a> and now outright villain in this finale surprises me. I like Grillo as Rick Sr. too much and it\u2019s hard to buy that he would act the way he does here.<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a>John Cena’s Peacemaker hits a wall in the season finale.<\/p>\n

Which isn\u2019t to say that his plan to lock away metahumans on that extra-dimensional prison planet (Salvation in the comics) doesn\u2019t make sense for the character. And certainly this has to be where Peacemaker the show\u2019s connection to the Man of Tomorrow movie<\/a> comes in, with Rick Sr. now hanging so tightly with Lex\u2019s old henchmen and admitting that he doesn\u2019t like the billionaire villain but \u201che is the smartest man in the world. Why not use his brain to make the world a better place?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the scene between Ads and her wife Keeya (Elizabeth Faith Ludlow), which is well played but also feels like too little, too late, as the problems the couple have faced just didn\u2019t get enough room to breathe over the past eight episodes. And as for Freddie Stroma\u2019s Vigilante and Steve Agee\u2019s John Economos\u2026 well, again, they had some fun moments this season (and this episode), but that\u2019s about it. Of course this is John Cena\u2019s show first and foremost, but an ensemble cast like this just needs a little more attention.<\/p>\n

Speaking of fun, getting to see Foxy Shazam perform the season\u2019s title track back on that same \u201crock cruise\u201d is pretty cool, even as it\u2019s intercut with the montage that sets up the group\u2019s creation of Checkmate, the new super-spy org that they\u2019re going to be running. That said, I\u2019m not sure that I\u2019ve fully followed the thread that led to the decision to just up and launch their own covert ops group? It comes in that moment when Harcourt and the rest are pleading with Chris to get back on track, but still.<\/p>\n

And while we didn\u2019t go back to the Nazi planet at all this week or get a visit from David Denman\u2019s Keith Smith, we have to assume this isn\u2019t the last we\u2019ve seen of that character. It is a bit of a letdown that that particular story is left so open-ended here, and also that Gunn didn\u2019t grace us with one last big action scene this week. Instead, Chris being stranded by Rick Sr. on Salvation has to pass for our big QUC twist, and there\u2019s no denying that the prospect of Chris having to fend for himself Cast Away-style with nothing but the Foxy Shazam shirt on his back and his ingenuity is an enticing set-up for Season 3.<\/p>\n

Thoughts From the Quantum Unfolding Chamber:<\/p>\n

Always be proud of your freckles like your mom taught you!Man, Vig is so mean to his mom.Speaking of Vig, looks like all that speculation among some fans that the wrong Vig came back from Earth X<\/a> was, well, wrong.I guess I was wrong too about Michael Rooker returning as an alt-version of Red St. Wild. Well, there\u2019s always next season!And so the 11th Street Kids are joining forces with some former foes in the creation of Checkmate, including Sol Rodr\u00edguez’s Bordeaux, Tim Meadows’ Fleury, and Nhut Le’s Judomaster.Eagly and Economos, man!It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve done weekly reviews like this. I forgot how fun it could be. Hope to see you soon on another show!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full spoilers follow for Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 8 – \u201cFull Nelson.\u201d After what has been a fun…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-65547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}