The following article contains spoilers for Peacemaker.
In the world of superheroes Peacemaker is the ultimate underdog, and yet James Gunn’s television debut has somehow been able to become a rare breath of fresh air in the usually convoluted mess that is the DCEU. This is largely down to the fact that Peacemaker’s journey from The Suicide Squad until now is surprisingly consistent, despite a few plot holes left here and there.
After all, Christopher Smith is supposed to be nothing more than an afterthought in the same cinematic universe that features Batman, Superman, and company, nevertheless, -save for one Wonder Woman entry- DC movies intrinsically divisive among fans. The Suicide Squad is seen as a marked improvement over David Ayer’s predecessor in part due to lowered expectations, which is exactly what’s happened with Peacemaker and his inelegant Justice League namedropping.
A Befitting Story For Peacemaker
Both Suicide Squad movies take after a classic DC Comics trope, rounding up a bunch of villains or antiheroes and set them on the type of black ops mission no sane being would assume otherwise, however, at the heart of Peacemaker lies a somewhat generic threat. The Butterflies have no comic book origin to speak of, instead being more like a typical run-of-the-mill alien invasion that even has Adebayo looking back at Tim Burton’s Mars Attack!.
Although Gunn has made these bug-like aliens seemingly slot in his own branch of the DCEU, a full swarm of body-harvesting aliens verges on the type of enemy that might just be beyond the capabilities of Peacemaker and the rest of the ARGUS team. When Murn was revealed to be a rogue butterfly fighting against his own kind, the show did kill him off with a few unanswered questions, specifically Adebayo’s mole status within the team which Murn was somehow aware of and able to look past, even if that meant having Amanda Waller’s vigilant eye over them.
Waller is among the few completely irredeemable characters in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, so as the series scraps villains like White Dragon and his Nazi gang, most likely the Butterflies in its finale, and even Judomaster sort of looming in the background, it would seem like a waste not to have her as the connecting element between Peacemaker’s first season and whatever comes next. The only problem is that in case she plays a bigger role, it would be revealed all of a sudden and not in necessarily in a good way.
Lastly, Judomaster left a huge revelation in Peacemaker’s third episode when he seemed to paint the Butterflies as more than they seemed to be. Considering the show has only depicted them as nothing more than murderous aliens, deciding on the contrary in the final moments would undo that notion just a tad too quickly.
Real Characters Make For A Real Story
Perhaps the reason why it’s so easy to see past these faults is the fact that for every possible weak point in its story, Gunn managed to write a coherent path for practically the entirety of the show’s cast. Among them, no one is a better example of this than the show's star, of course.
Peacemaker’s first seven episodes are long therapy sessions of sorts for its titular antihero, who suddenly has to contend with the severe consequences that the many traumatic events in his life have left him with. At the genesis of it all is his childhood, which is cleverly shown in incomplete flashes that leave the audience in the same position that Chris is, that something horrible happened to him, it’s just not clear what that is.
Rarely does a superhero have the kind of repressed memories Peacemaker has to live with, but the series answers the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of Keith’s death (and thus Peacemaker’s persona) with great timing as its protagonist goes from having sudden nervous breakdowns to ultimately realizing his father, the true villain in his life, is one of the few individuals that really deserves to be killed.
The same goes for Harcourt, Adebayo, and Economos, as every agent’s background develops from someone who’s simply there to do a job, towards explaining why is it that their life set them on this course. In Emilia and Economos’ case, the audience knows there’s some good in them because they’re the kind of people unwilling to blindly follow Waller’s orders; whereas Adebayo us there to be the type of character that viewers can relate to since she’s the most “normal” in the crew.
Last episode’s scene with Peacemaker, Vigilante, and the ARGUS team singing hard rock songs in a van is the culmination of everyone’s story arc, a moment where each character has learned something from one another. For all its silly humor and graphic action scenes, Peacemaker is a stark reminder that the superhero genre can be more than just flashy special effects, sometimes they’re also incredibly emotional stories that prove there's a turning point for everyone. Except for Nazis and Amanda Waller that is.
