After eight weeks of multiversal hoopla, crippling depression and alternate Nazi earth’s, Peacemaker finally reaches the end of its second season in quite a strange position. While the general thrust of the season has been of a high standard and the jokes and lunacy has been consistent with all the other fucked-up shit that James Gunn has whipped up in the past, the rather strange pace of season 2 has been frustratingly inconsistent with the middle chunk of episodes getting a little too bogged down with the doings in other universe.
However, if the past has taught us anything it’s that James Gunn is pretty good at sticking his landings, even if the whole central plot of a Nazi ruled earth had already been cleared up an entire episode ago. Can the close of Peacemaker’s sophomore outing manage to not only make sense of what’s already been and close out the show with style; can it also set up the upcoming, epic, DC venture, Man Of Tomorrow?
It seems that Rick Flag Sr. now has everything that he wants. Not only has he gotten his hands on Auggie Smith’s Quantum Unfolding Chamber that provides infinite doorways to alternate dimensions, but he also has Peacemaker, the man who killed his son, behind bars and apparently broken. While the rest of the 11th Street Kids try to get themselves put on the visitors rosta at prison, they are shocked that Chris has banned them all from visiting him as the events that killed his father from an alternate dimension and caused his friends to royally fuck up that reality’s version of his brother can caused Smith to slide even deeper into his own, personal, pit of despair.
Matters are made even worse when his friends use Vigilante’s vast hordes of confiscated drug cash to pay his bail, but Chris just vanishes as he seems to be fixating on a near perfect night a month earlier where he and Harcourt finally shared a kiss. However, while all this is going on, Flag is tasking multiple ARGUS agents to search the endless doors of the Quantum Unfolding Chamber to find a very specific universe that’ll meet the needs of a plan he’s seemingly cooked up with an incarcerated Lex Luthor – but this soon racks up something of a disturbing amount of collateral damage, it eventually leaves Agent Bordeaux feeling disillusioned with her work. Of course, when Flag finally finds another universe that fits the bill, he excitedly reveals that he plans to turn this world – dubbed Salvation – into an inescapable prison world for metahuman criminals and that proves yo be the final straw.
But after finding Chris and telling him how much he all means to them, can the 11th Street Kids finally be one again, change their fates and get Peacemaker out from under his dark, suffocating cloud of depression?
Even if they do, it seems that Flag still has plans for his son’s killer…
Peacemaker Season 2 has pulled off some pretty impressive shit during its run, least of all coming up with an opening credits sequence that managed to equal the one from the first season – admit it, you wasn’t sure at first, but over the weeks you ended up fucking loving it – however, thanks to the rather curious pacing of the season which saw the plot strangely stagnate in place for no real reason I could fathom, I was wondering what the actual end of the season would be after clearing up the entire Earth – X plotline already. Well, in a rather bizarre note, there ends up being more twists and turns in the “epilogue” of the story than there seemed to be in the main story itself, and while it’s genuinely gratifying to see the season end on a high, you’d kinda wish that some of that particular craziness and heart had filtered down through that boggy middle section.
The secret here is that Gunn makes the majority of the episode about to two main things that powered the season: the multiverse and Chris’ relationship with his friends, and proceeds to pay them off in spades. The multiverse stuff is more fun for obvious reasons as hapless ARGUS agents are sent in groups to check and catalogue all the various doors in the Quantum Unfolding Chamber with predictably horrifying results. Agent “Kewpie” meets a ghastly end after a trip to a candy universe results in his face bring eaten off by a horde of adorable little monters, Judomaster is nearly tucked into a black hole and let’s not even discuss the flaming world of screaming, skull-headed spiders. It restores a lot of the anything-goes feel of season one and it also manages to hint where the DC Universe may be heading thanks to the union of Frank Grillo’s Flag and an off-screen Lex Luthor. However, setting a multiversal space prisons elusive enough to hold Superman is one thing, but there’s still a hefty amount of emotional baggage to get through which the show immediately sets about trying to untangle.
Some of it is taken care of swiftly, but with a sure hand – Adebayo finally splitting from her wife once and for all carries a touching amount of dignity while her chat with a sullen Adrian to convince him to use his hordes of “blood money” is also nimble, but touching. However, the main course is finally picking apart the emotional malady that’s had Chris in a tightening grip ever since the season started and unsurprisingly, it centres around Harcourt.
We finally see the night that they connected thanks to a meal at Big Belly Burger, a potentially violent altercation between Harcourt and a passer by that Chris manages to defuse and a boat gig of one of his favorite bands, Nelson. It’s truly sweet to see Chris genuinely happy again and the moment later when the object of his affections finally admits the evening meant something feels like a genuine victory considering how low Chris had truly sunk. However, while seeing him happy again after all the shit that’s happened is really the whole point of the season – it’s what comes next that proves to be intriguing and frustrating in equal measure.
The fact that the 11th Street Kids, plus a rebellious Bordeaux, and (for some reason) Fleury and Judomaster, have all joined forces to create a new agency called Checkmate, has intriguing possibilities if only for the venomous work banter that’ll no doubt arise. Also, anything that Lex Luthor and his goons have their fingers in is bound to have massive ramifications on a certain last son of Krypton – but the major tease is that after finally pulling himself together and getting the life he’s been striving for all along, Chris is jumped by Flag’s goons only to find that the first inmate of Salvation prison will be him.
Some have already expressed displeasure with a cliffhanger ending that probably won’t be resolved for at least another two years and they’re probably pretty pissed that the rumours of a big cameo resulted in precisely squat. However, considering how seemingly aimless this season has felt at times (it almost felt like Gunn was holding the good stuff for episodes he was directing), I felt the ending was strong considering all the juggling it had to do to build for the next event while bringing all the emotional threads to a satisfying end. It’s certainly had its issues, but this second season managed to make its peace in the end.
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