‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 review: Rough but worthwhile

At this stage of his career, James Gunn is much like the musical artists he often borrows from. Even at his most divergent from his hits, the resonance of them echoes. This is most evident in Peacemaker Season 2 in the ways that it rhymes with Gunn’s other superhero work – and in the ways it tries not to.

Emotional damage.

Because of this, it’s possible to miss what Peacemaker Season 2 is actually: one of the most intimate character pieces Gunn has yet to put out. Harsher jokes and quiet moments replace the first season’s hectic action and rapid-fire quips. That’s not to say there aren’t jokes in the season. But even at its most comical, there just is not the same kind of laugh-out-loud edgy comedy of Season 1 or even of Gunn’s other work. 

This new form takes shape as each of the prominent cast members deals with their personal struggles. Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) has been bitten by the espionage bug, which puts her marriage on even rougher seas. At the same time, Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) has been completely blacklisted, and while Economos (Steve Agee) keeps his ARGUS job, he lives in constant fear of joining Harcourt in unemployment. These scenarios drag more humor and even more tension out of each character.

A+ to the 11th Street Kids.

Everyone is bringing their A game, especially Agee, who, after multiple appearances as John Economos, is finally able to dig into what makes the character tick. His neurosis and propensity for snark finally have some weight behind them. Brooks gets some of the most realistic moments of Gunniverse work, maybe ever. On the flipside, Holland is tasked with being even more withdrawn and – occasionally – toxic in a way that requires just as much vulnerability. 

The short stick sadly goes to the breakout fan favorites. Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) spends most of the season stuck with an incorrect animal fact bit, which wears thin much sooner than the show thinks it does. He does eventually get his own emotional moment, but it’s quickly replaced with petulant behavior and then forgotten. Peacemaker’s lovely eagle pet, Eagly, gets an episode of side-questing that sounds like something that will pay off, but then abruptly ends. In both cases, there’s a sense that their status as beloved by viewers forced them to be here, rather than them being needed in the same way as the other 11th Street Kids. 

Media’s nemesis: brand management!

Expectation versus reality is the unintentional theme of Peacemaker Season 2. The series tackles the daunting task of not only continuing one of the few good aspects of the past years of DC franchise building but also piggybacking on the new ones. That’s a lot to put on John Cena’s admittedly broad shoulders. Case in point: the season kicks off with a cheeky reshoot of the original Justice League cameo, now featuring the heroes Gunn has cast as the “Justice Gang,” who immediately appear in the first episode proper. 

This also includes expanding the cast with the DCU Nick Fury equivalent, Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo), cyborg Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriquez), HR nightmare Fleury (Tim Meadows), and a hilarious big-name cameo. Even with all these new and established connections, they never fully drive events. Clearly, there’s wisdom in ensuring that viewers do not need to watch a show filled with swears and penises to understand the next Superman film. But there is some mixed messaging as a result.

These expectations ultimately clash with the intentional themes of Peacemaker Season 2, which relies entirely on Cena’s performance of the character. 

What if…life didn’t suck?

Season 2 follows Chris Smith experiencing rejection from multiple sources. He’s laughed out of the room when attempting to join the aforementioned Justice Gang. A tipsy kiss with Harcourt doesn’t lead to his desired results. On top of all of that, he’s still yet to truly accept that he has been used by his father, Auggie (Robert Patrick), and Amanda Waller. Chris also finds that Auggie’s Quantum Unfolding Chamber from Season 1 contains multiple dimensional (and, as confirmed in the finale, planetary) portals, like Lex Luthor’s in Superman. And one of these leads to a dimension where everything is coming up Peacemaker. After accidentally getting that universe’s Chris Smith killed, a strange opportunity arises. 

Chris undergoes a tug-of-war between these lives. In his reality, he gets mixed messages from Harcourt. He’s hounded by Flag Sr., who seems perfectly fine with using his new power as ARGUS director to seek revenge for his son (Joel Kinnaman). He continues to harbor regrets about his family. In the alternate one, Harcourt looks at him lovingly. Rick Flag Jr. is alive. So are his father and – crucially – his brother (David Denman). It doesn’t take much to feel temptation, and following a particularly violent encounter with Flag Sr. in which Cena really sells being fearful for his life, the grass doesn’t only look greener; it seems like the only choice. 

The part where we have to get real.

Naturally, there is a catch: the other universe is the DCU approximation of the comics’ Earth X, a reality where the Axis powers won World War II. Peacemaker escapes to Nazi America. To the season’s credit, once Chris realizes the truth, he immediately drops the dream. But it also doesn’t pull any punches about how ridiculous it is that he couldn’t tell until his friends came to drag him home. While using the framing of a joke – the punchline being Cena staring at a giant mural of Hitler and asking how the fuck he missed that – Peacemaker Season 2 is demonstrating how easy it is for even well-meaning people to fall for fascist messaging. 

One of the tenets of the right-wing manosphere is the narrative of men, particularly white men, being “left behind” by society. Online, especially, men often experience messaging that tells them that things like diverse storytelling, general equality, and expecting bad actors to take accountability are ruining their lives. Of course, none of this is true. Women are not always shopping, casting Black people in movies does not materially impact white men, and more than half a decade of trying to walk back The Last Jedi has done far more damage to Star Wars than Rey ever could. 

Pipelines and lovebombs.

But men, including white men, do experience real issues. They experience alienation, rejection, and struggle. When they go to find support or community to help with these, they often find a far-right pipeline waiting for them. Using cult-like tactics, these messengers bring men in with arms wide open, hitting them with enough uncritical affirmation that it becomes pretty easy to miss the red flags. A great example of this can be seen in the King of the Hill revival: 

Filtering through a multiverse story, this is what Chris is put through. It’s way easier for him to run into the loving arms of his Nazi brother and girlfriend than see the Mein Kampf on the desks or address his own issues. Sure, his reality’s Harcourt was stonewalling him, but he spends most of his time with her accosting her about a drunken kiss instead of addressing her being on the verge of homelessness. He shows little appreciation for Economos’s repeated risks. Despite constantly calling Adebayo his best friend, he continually dismisses her advice. In all of these situations, Peacemaker flees from accepting his own faults, and as a result, rejects the love of these people, too. If they didn’t go the extra mile (which does involve killing a bunch of Nazis, thankfully) to give him one more chance, he would have been stuck in that pipeline. 

Remixing the hits.

This is not new ground for Gunn to cover, of course. The man loves killing some Nazis and tackling toxic masculinity without throwing the whole man out. It’s very easy to see the same energy of Peter Quill learning the truth of his mother’s death in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, pulling him out of a similar pipeline. But that wasn’t delivered via punchline, nor was it in a season of television that has no intention of closing any kind of loop. It didn’t even have swear words and penises. It also didn’t need to use Quill’s personal growth to set up the following slate of movies. 

Frankly, Peacemaker Season 2 is like a major label follow-up album to an indie band’s breakout. It’s clear that Gunn’s creative instinct is telling him that Peacemaker is a character that can contain the multitudes he wants to write about. But he wants to do that while also handling the larger Kevin Feige-esque role he now finds himself in. The show simply has to maintain its place as a part of the larger narrative now. There’s a specific sound to match.  It must continue the thread weaving and keep the crowd pleasing high. That means it can’t help but cede parts of its eight episodes to plot points that can only be described as “this will be important later,” while also attempting to please the social media crowds with Vigilante shenanigans. 

How we make genre TV now.

Juggling the need to expand with the desire to move inward likely causes the uneven season pacing, starting with shorter episodes leading up to the reveal of Earth X. Much of the plot hinges on that twist, but lingering too long on it would detract from the larger metaplot. As a result, there’s a case to be made that the Nazi world is but a set dressing itself. It is indeed the plot’s hinge and its soul, but it’s not the point. That gets to be handed to setting up a deep cut comic reference that Man of Tomorrow will still need to explain because of the swears and penises. 

On the other hand, there’s also the high likelihood that Gunn wouldn’t get to make the introspective parts of Peacemaker Season 2 without the rest of it. Because that’s how we make these things now. Much like when Doctor Who did it, there’s still value in a blunt and straightforward metaphor; if only for the people who look and sound like this article’s writer. There’s still value in putting John Cena through the paces and discovering that he can portray an incredibly vulnerable and emotional person while looking like masculinity’s default. It’s kind of a miracle getting something that’s trying to be this raw across the finish line, especially these days. 

I, for one, love Minutes to Midnight.

Just like your favorite band’s third album, Peacemaker Season 2 is a mess at times. It is a struggle to balance the emotional depth the show aims to achieve with its market appeal, causing the season to stumble. However, the attempt is a valiant one. It is ostensibly better to try to confront the issues these characters have than sand them off. As James Gunn continues to steward what is hopefully a new Silver Age of superhero media, here’s hoping he keeps taking the risk of a bad note or two.

Peacemaker Season 2 is available to stream now on HBO Max. 

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Images courtesy of HBO.