As we delve into the penultimate episode of the HBOMax series, Peacemaker, I want to remind you that what follows is full of spoilers. I get into depth into what happened in the episode, so if you haven’t watched it yet, consider yourself warned.
Episode eSven of Peacemaker, titled “Stop Dragon My Heart Around,” focuses on Peacemaker’s past and the reckoning that it brings upon him. It begins with a flashback where we finally find out what happened to Peacemaker’s brother, Keith. As kids, their father, Auggie (Robert Patrick), would make Keith and Chris fight while his friends bet on the winner. An errant punch from Chris sent Keith into convulsions, killing him. Auggie, in all his paternal concern, blames Chris for Keith’s death, despite the, you know, underage Fight Club he was running in his backyard. This is where the divide between Peacemaker and his father stems from.
Cut to the present day, and Peacemaker (John Cena) and Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) are gearing up at headquarters as the police mark Peacemaker as wanted dead or alive on the news. Peacemaker decides that he might as well kill the cow that’s feeding the butterflies before the police track him down, so he and Vigilante guilt Economos (Steve Agee) into finishing the mission.
On the other side of town, Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) confronts Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) in her apartment about the diary she planted in Peacemaker’s trailer. It’s finally revealed that Adebayo is Amanda Waller’s daughter, which takes Harcourt by surprise. Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) bursts into the apartment, and when Harcourt reveals Adebayo’s secret, Murn reveals that he knew from the beginning. He tells them to gather their things and that they need to run because with the butterflies inhabiting his “man on the inside,” Captain Locke (Christopher Heyerdahl), they’ll know where to find them.
As Harcourt comes back from packing her bags, the police pull into the motel parking lot, led by Detectives Song and Fitzgibbons (Annie Chang and Lochlyn Munro, respectively). Harcourt stays out of sight as the police breach Murn’s room. He goes down fighting, but he’s eventually killed by Song. Actually, he’s killed twice by Song; once when she shoots Murn’s body, and then again when she crushes the butterfly inhabiting that body as it tries to escape.
After all that, Judomaster shows up because he’s still alive and the episode spends an unnecessary amount of time reminding us of this fact. He fights with Harcourt and Adebayo, but the pair manages to take him down and subdue him. Then they seemingly patch up their differences as Adebayo tends to Harcourt’s wounds.
Back to Peacemaker. He, Vigilante, and Economos as driving to where they believe the cow is when they’re hijacked by the Peacemaker’s father in his White Dragon armor. The White Dragon is fully prepared to kill his son, but Vigilante, with the help of a sub-machine gun, distracts the king of the racists and his white-hooded posse of bigots before blowing them, and himself, up with a grenade. The distraction gives Economos the chance to help Peacemaker escape into the woods.
The White Dragon can track Peacemaker through a GPS beacon in the helmet, and the bad guys give chase. As they do, a bloodied, messed-up Vigilante steals one of their cars and drives away.
Through a series of hijinx, the White Dragon catches up to Peacemaker and has him at his mercy. Just as he’s about to deliver the killing blow, Vigilante leaps into the fray and buries a blade in the armor, reminding us that he noticed the armor’s weakness back in Episode Four. This allows Peacemaker to take down his father, but he just can’t quite do it. And Auggie knows this, which is why he flaunts his power over his son. But as it turns out, Peacemaker can shoot his father, which he does. He breaks down into tears at what he was forced to do.
They take Eagly, who was injured by the White Dragon, to a nearby veterinarian where Harcourt and Adebayo meet them. Peacemaker sits by Eagly’s side, praying to God that he will change if only He will spare his only friend. Adebayo watches as Eagly wakes up and wraps his wings around Peacemaker in a gesture that she didn’t believe was possible earlier.
In Murn’s absence, the team nominates Harcourt to lead them. She runs them through the plan to kill the cow. On the way there, Adebayo tries to apologize to Peacemaker, but he doesn’t want to hear it, clearly hurt by her betrayal.
The episode ends by giving us our first look at the cow — a giant, writhing, pink thing that looks like it’s in constant pain at being an endless source of food.
I was a little more impressed by this episode than with the previous six, but by and large, it still didn’t redeem the show for me. They spent a lot of time building up the showdown between Peacemaker and the White Dragon, only for it to be resolved within fifteen minutes. Not to mention the fact that that the face-off was little more than a twisted Captain America versus Iron Man. I’m glad that the storyline didn’t overshadow the alien invasion story, but it took so much time away from it that they could have made the A-plot more compelling.
At the very least, I understood the purpose of this story. Peacemaker’s worldview was sculpted by his father, a sick and twisted person, so by killing him, he’s symbolically freeing himself from the tethers of that past. But this still isn’t a redemption story, and we’re still essentially rooting for the bad guy from the movie he was introduced in. Nothing about Peacemaker’s journey in these seven episodes, including the killing of Auggie, is evidence of atonement. Sure, it seems like he’s changed, but every positive action he’s taken has had purely self-serving purposes, so has he really evolved?
There’s also still a ton of filler being put into these episodes, and that’s obvious when it comes to Judomaster. He’s added nothing to the story as a whole, so every scene he is in is just wasted time. There was a moment that he almost, kind of had a purpose, when he was about to tell Peacemaker the truth about the butterflies, but that was abandoned as quickly as it popped up. I don’t see why this series needed to be eight episodes long.
All in all, I’m glad that Peacemaker is finally over. I did enjoy the butterfly invasion storyline, if not for much else. I am, in a weird way, looking forward to the finale, because I’m curious as to how they’ll tie the whole thing up. But when it comes to television series based on the DCEU, this has been a lackluster first outing.
