After a brief cameo in Superman, Peacemaker is back. Now, I’m on record (somewhere, probably) being fairly critical of the first season of Peacemaker. I found it was a peculiar combination of the Agents of SHIELD problem (where its placement, both in the franchise and narratively, meant that there could never be any real stakes in the show, so it felt like a pointless exercise in meaningless world-building) and extremely juvenile humor that lacked both punch and creativity (one of Peacemaker’s recurring jokes was calling Steve Agee’s character “dyed beard” because he dyed his beard; pause for laughs). I was in the minority, from what I could tell, and I am still fine with that (I still can’t believe Twisters is sitting at 75/90 on RT, I’m happily in the minority there), because a little hair metal and John Cena’s endless charm can’t paper over all cracks (including the hair metal; sorry if that’s your genre, but it has never been mine).
But, John Cena (Deep Cover, Vacation Friends) does have endless charm and that made for a certain amount of promise in the show, even if in the first season that promise was largely unrealized outside of a few bright spots. Not least of all, in addition to Cena, was Freddie Stroma, whom I’d never seen before, but apparently he was in Harry Potter as a character named Cormac McLaggen, which sounds like it should be a pun, but isn’t. Stroma plays Adrian Chase, also known as the vigilante called Vigilante, a goofy, insecure nerd who just wants to make friends, but also is on a violent crusade against criminals, killing them by the truckload. Just don’t get him started about crows.
The rest of the cast is back as well—Jennifer Holland (The Suicide Squad, Brightburn), as the tough as nails Emilia Harcourt, Danielle Brooks (A Minecraft Movie, Orange is the New Black) as Leota Adebayo, and the aforementioned Agee (You’re the Worst, New Girl) as John Economos. It also adds Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Zero Dark Thirty) as Rick Flagg Sr., who, if you don’t know, has serious justified beef with Peacemaker, and Tim Meadows (Bob’s Burgers, Mean Girls) as ARGUS agent Langston Fleury, who is monitoring Peacemaker with the help of Economos. He also has a condition that he call bird blindness, where he can’t tell one bird apart from another, except for vague sizes. You see an eagle, he doesn’t know whether it’s a duck or a sparrow. It’s completely ridiculous and felt very Brooklyn 99-coded, especially with Tim Meadows’s delivery, which is so good that he makes something that otherwise seemed like a throwaway gag feel like a defining characteristic for a character. Also returning, of course is the abundance of metal over the soundtrack (hair or otherwise; to be completely honest, it’s so not my genre that I’m not at all familiar with the nuances). There’s still the over-the-top violence at times, there’s still the silliness and ridiculousness of it, there’s still the awful TikTok dance opening sequence (new song, new dance, still an immediate press of the Skip Intro button), there’s still a trained eagle that is capable of taking down full squads of trained operatives.
But this time, it’s…good? Not the music, mind you, but the show.
The first two episodes had quite a lot of setup and what I call Peacemaker moments, where it’s just so comically over the top that it fails to find the actual funny along the way. But, after being rejected and relentlessly, unsparingly humiliated by Maxwell Lord and the Justice Gang, Peacemaker goes on a The Boys like bender/orgy and opens a dimensional portal to a parallel universe where his father and brother are still alive and they’re heroes, not white supremacist scum. Now, if you rolled your eyes at the mention of multiverse stuff, you’re not alone; I did as well. But it seems like James Gunn is using the multiverse for a different purpose than you usually see. A lot of times the multiverse is used for cheap shock value, such as killing characters unceremoniously or having them act contrary to their established behavior, or showing a nearly identical world to ours where some differences are odd, but ultimately small, like people maybe eat pizza with a spoon or have hot dog fingers. But Gunn is taking us down a different path. Chris, as Peacemaker prefers to be called out of costume, is getting a look at a different life. He’s getting to see how things could have been if he had made different choices and hadn’t become vilified for his actions.
Of course, there’s more to who we are than just our choices, as big a percentage as they play in our conceptual makeup. How we’re raised and who we’re raised by play a huge part in that as well; and Chris had a bum start. Not only was his father a white supremacist murderer, which is probably not the best example to be as a father, he also killed his brother in some sort of backyard child gladiatorial competition that his father was holding. It was a complete accident, but he’s lived with the grief of that his whole life; it’s what made him so desperate for his father’s approval while he constantly heaped blame on Chris. It’s not hard to imagine how different a person Chris would have grown up to be had that not happened—instead of being so under the thumb of a truly horrible and despicable man, he had what seems to be a regular father. I mean, what little we see of his alternate dad’s character, it’s not like he’s Mr. Rogers, but basic human decency would have been exponentially better. And he doesn’t have to live with the trauma of his brother’s death. He was a literal child at the time, being forced to fight by his father; on a real level, he carries no blame for that. His father is who should carry all that blame. But it was Chris’s fist that struck the blow that led to his brother’s death. Which isn’t the kind of thing easily rationalized. It was still his fist, his punch that was the direct cause of brother’s death on a physics level.. And Chris has been living with that weight on top of him since the moment it happened. The idea of a world, of a life, where the worst thing that ever happened to you never happened, now that is very appealing. Perhaps more than any drug. Shield yourself from your worst trauma while getting a reset button on everything that comes after that event? It’s tempting. Even more so than the Morpho machine.
Not only that, Peacemaker is a portrait of a work in progress. His character has actually changed and grown over the course of the first season and the work he’s done is evident. He no longer relentlessly belittles people due to his own insecurity. He’s grown a real closeness and sense of camaraderie with his former team; to the point where they have a little get-together when Economos returns after being stationed away, he makes a heartfelt, but short speech about how no matter where they may go, they’ll always have each other. That doesn’t sound like the talk of a hardened, unfeeling murderer. In fact, the team’s relationships with each other have taken center stage early in the season. Despite no longer working together and all facing hardship after the events of season one, they have stayed close. They talk to each other, they lean on each other, they look out for each other. Chris’s growth has been great to watch, turning him from a character I had trouble getting behind into a person I really want to root for. He’s really trying to be a good person, not just some indiscriminate killer in the name of someone’s idea of justice. Not even his own; it was the one imparted to him by his father. Allowing Cena to play into his innate goofiness to portray a more genuine Peacemaker instead of a brash, mean, insulting ass plays so much into Cena’s strengths. He’s got the goofy, lovable big guy thing down better than anyone else in the game and it’s really to the point that his mere presence in a movie or series pushes it up a level for me.
It’s a compelling look at redemption. I’ve said before that not all characters can be or should be redeemed, but it often is the case that those who seek redemption are worthy of it. They’ve realized the error of their ways, they are remorseful, and they want to do better. Be better. At least when we’re talking about fiction; real life, well we’ve all seen and heard enough hollow apologies over the years to know that’s not real. At the time of writing, three episodes are out on HBO Max (again), but by the time you read this, the fourth will have aired. But after the third episode, I can finally say that I’m on board with Peacemaker. It really feels like Gunn is building to something meaningful and deeper than we’ve seen from the series previously and I really hope that he pulls it off. Chris seems like he’s on a journey to earning redemption and the temptation that is pulling him away from it is strong. Strong as I’ve ever seen, really. That level of wish fulfillment at your fingertips can’t be easy to deal resist. I am looking forward to his struggle and I’m rooting him to come through it a better man. There are some new characters as well that have yet to really do much, but I’m hoping to see them fleshed out a little bit more. Tim Meadows is obviously being played for comic relief, which is great casting, but also introduced is ARGUS agent Sasha Bordeaux, played by Sol Rodriguez (Star Trek: Picard). So far she’s just been playing a tough boss style of character, but it would be nice to see an expansion of these characters in the revitalized DC cinematic universe. The DCEU was in dire straits before James Gunn stepped in, with miss after miss overshadowing the few decent films they released over the years, like Blue Beetle. With Superman, the second season of Peacemaker, and the upcoming Supergirl, as well as the incredible The Batman and its upcoming sequel (though technically outside of the DCEU bubble, Superman’s score dropped a big reference to it, giving me hope for Robert Pattinson’s inclusion in this burgeoning cinematic universe), like Marvel, it seems like DC may finally be righting the ship. And I’m thrilled about that, really. I was always a bigger DC fan growing up (especially Batman), so seeing DC shake off the numerous poor movies their name was attached to is really heartening to see.
Peacemaker airs Thursdays directly on HBO Max at 9PM Eastern, on a weekly release schedule, thank goodness.
