Peacemaker Achieves Peace

For most of its existence, the DC cinematic universe, officially dubbed ‘Worlds of DC’ but called DCEU, has been faced with controversy, both from behind the scenes drama and the creative decisions that made it into the final cuts of the movies. The first entry in this universe that didn’t have any controversy with it was Aquaman, which came out 5 years after the first entry…the controversy with that movie came a few years later when the female lead was taken to court. Although it hasn’t affected the movie, it left a sour taste in some people’s mouths for having liked it when it came out. Things barely got better in the following years, but we did eventually get a couple of projects with no issues. One of them was Peacemaker: the spinoff from The Suicide Squad. It’s different from Suicide Squad because it has “The” in it. Don’t ask why it wasn’t just called Suicide Squad 2, or given a subtitle like “Project Jotunheim” or something.

The show goes into the life of everybody’s favourite douchebag: Christopher Smith. In the movie, he came off as a guy who was willing to kill anyone and anything as long as it was part of the mission and fit within his scope of keeping the peace. That was why he could not let Rick Flag get away with the information in the hard disk. It led to one of the most heartbreaking deaths in the entire universe. There weren’t that many. But this one did hurt. It hit hard. Although he did not show any regret in the movie, the show revealed that he was haunted by that one death. Kind of weird that out of all the people he killed (by the sounds of it, even children), this was the one person he regretted killing. We’ll just let it slide. He was also revealed to have a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, neo Nazi, anti-American-you know what? He was basically everything bad a human being could possibly be. It’s like James Gunn listed down all the deplorable mentalities he could think of and put them into one person. That was Peacemaker’s dad. Peacemaker loved his father, but his father hated him and only tolerated his existence. Peacemaker seems not to have picked up on that until the end of the show. Peacemaker is also an awkward person and doesn’t really know how to be around people, and what he can say without drawing negative attention to himself. Even when he’s trying to be nice and make friends, he comes off as very rude and discerning. One of the many things that he has to learn throughout the season is that he is not as good as he thinks he is. The audience also learns that deep down, he’s just a damaged man who is trying to do genuine good in the world.

Next up, we have Vigilante, the alter ego of Adrian Chase. It is a wild departure from the comic book counterpart. The comic book counterpart is a lawyer who eventually turns to vigilantism after a series of tragedies and becomes sort of DC’s Punisher. He does not get along with Peacemaker and eventually is beaten by him so badly that he forgets who he is. In this show, he is Peacemaker fanboy. It’s clear that Peacemaker doesn’t really like him but tolerates his existence and is the only person he knows he doesn’t have to kill. Vigilante doesn’t see this. To him, they’re just best buddies. It’s kind of sad and pathetic, but it adds layers to the comedic potential of such a relationship and does that very well. Vigilante is clearly not okay in the head in this show, as he delights in killing people…a lot more than someone should…or would. He’s a bellboy in the small town that he and Peacemaker live in and is also shown to be completely alone. It’s probably why he is also socially awkward. He basically became DC’s Deadpool equivalent.

Next up, we have Emilia Harcourt, played by James Gunn’s wife: Jennifer Holland. She’s from The Suicide Squad, and was part of the mutiny against Amanda Waller when she wanted the team to leave Corto Maltese to its fate against Starro. It was weird that she didn’t just imprison everyone on the team or have them executed, but okay. We’ll take what we get. To address those questions, Emilia pondered on the possibility that this mission was Amanda’s punishment for that incident. It doesn’t really add up, but we’ll take what we get. She is stern, perceptive, a good fighter, cold, distant and focused on the mission at hand. Although she has a tough exterior, she begins to develop a soft spot for the team and genuinely enjoys their company at some point. That could spell good news for Peacemaker too, since he wants to…practice yoga with her… She has a lot to learn as well about being a normal person, as she has some grey morals. She killed a man who was begging for his life because he stood in the way of the mission, and that put fellow teammate Adebayo at odds with her for a while. They did not shy away from having her get whooped. Her fights with pretty much everyone had her get beaten up.

Adebayo is also an interesting character. She is revealed to be Amanda Waller’s daughter in the show. Knowing James Gunn’s penchant for using unpopular characters in his projects in order to be able to do what he wants with them so as to not face criticism over comic accuracy, and to provide a platform for these characters to at least appear on screen, we went to do some research on the character. She does not exist in the comics. She was just made for the series. That would explain the uneasy feeling of knowing that someone liked Amanda Waller enough to do anything more than shake her hand. It’s a lot like imagining Palpatine having been intimate with someone, which, according to the movies, did happen. She was a kind of interesting addition to the story. Her main reason for being in it was to plant the forged diary that would incriminate Peacemaker after their mission was done. She didn’t go through with it, and that story was not explored well enough to justify why it took so long to be revealed.

We have the defector from the butterflies: Murn, who is the leader of the group. He took over the group of a very dangerous mercenary and is trying to save the world from his kind, who want to take over all the humans in the world and make Earth their new home. You know how it goes. He was one of their soldiers, then he defected when he saw that it was wrong, and now works against them, giving humans all the information they need about his kind in order for the humans to win. Nothing you haven’t seen before. He’s the only serious person in the team, other than Emilia. The team’s disorganization and seeming incompetence make his reactions all the funnier. It is sad when he ends up dying towards the end of the season.

Then we have the secondary antagonist of the show. I say secondary because he wasn’t the final boss, but he actually was a very big threat and more personal to the character whose name is in the show’s title. In summary, he has a problem with every single minority that exists and is anti-american. He hoists his American flag upside down. We don’t get it either. He’s a super genius, as he is behind all the tech Peacemaker uses, and has managed to create an extradimensional space in his house. He is also an abusive father, as he used to make his kids fight for the neighbourhood’s entertainment. Sick stuff if you ask me. When one of them inevitably died because of one of the fights, he blamed the one that survived: Chris. He resented him well into adulthood. What made things worse was that Chris also had other traits that he didn’t like, like how he was revealed more than once to be pansexual, before and after Adebayo called him a “straight white guy.” Nevertheless, he died at the hands of Peacemaker, and a lot of people celebrated that. It is worth noting that the White Dragon is not Peacemaker’s father in the comics.

There are other characters as well, such as Economos, Adebayo’s wife, Judomaster and the two cops who kept running into Peacemaker’s dad. They don’t have much going on for us to explore in detail like the other characters.

The show is straightforward, but tries to play it off like there’s some deep mystery going on. It baited the fans with that possibility, but that was all laid to waste once we found it that it was the common “aliens are trying to take over the world by posing as humans” storyline we’ve seen in many movies before. The aliens are called Butterflies, and they are small creatures that enter humans through the mouth and take over them. Once those humans are taken over, they die. The way that the show handles the dilemma of beating them up or shooting them is the same way it did in The Suicide Squad. The show takes its time with the characters, and even with the limited episode count, it manages to give the characters personal lives. We actually know and see what’s going on in their lives outside of what they do to serve the main story. Superhero shows and movies are missing that nowadays, and it’s nice that James Gunn managed to find a way to show us these things in a storyline that does not draw negative attention. The CW tried it with Arrow, Flash and Batwoman, but people didn’t like. It’s hard to understand why, since the shows are more than 20 episodes long and it’s ridiculous to keep full attention on the main story for that long.

James Gunn has a talent for giving us emotional moments when we least expect them, and they are definitely present in this show. Peacemaker hugging Eagly in the penultimate episode was a very emotional episode. The comedy could have been dialed down a bit, but it doesn’t get to the point that Thor Ragnarok does when it comes to undermining powerful moments with comedy. The show gives off the same vibe as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad. Basically, it’s an R-Rated Guardians of the Galaxy. The characters went through their arcs solidly, and Christopher Smith definitely redeemed himself in the eyes of the watchers for having killed Rick Flag. He also had a moment to finally shake off all the messed up things his father indoctrinated him with when he chose to kill the leader of the Butterflies instead of letting her do what she wanted, with the promise that it would make the world a better place. Honestly, it did seem that it would be a better place if she won. Him killing her despite that was out of character, but was a good show of how he shook off his father’s influence.

The show is genuinely funny. It sparked a lot of laughter, and Peacemaker is a standout character in the DC Cinematic Universe. He has a bright future ahead of him. That being said, there probably doesn’t have to be a season 2, like what was announced. In the beginning, it was ludicrous to think that there was going to be a Peacemaker show, but here it is, and it’s good. Although it has been proven to work, the best way to go about this is to give The Suicide Squad the series treatment: turn it into a series instead of making movies. That way, the roster can change and evolve over time and we get more screentime. Plus, it raised a few eyebrows why Amanda Waller didn’t just call in Task Force X to take care of the Butterflies. The whole world was at stake.

The show is good. The storyline is solid. It didn’t have much room for improvement, and that is a very good thing, considering the standards of entertainment nowadays. We look forward to seeing more of Peacemaker in the future.