Summary
Peacemaker continues to have wonky pacing in Season 2, but Episode 4 has solid comedy from Economos and Fleury, and seems to be tightening the net around Chris.
The pacing of Peacemaker Season 2 is a little weird, right? Every episode seems like filler, setting up the next key moment, which never seems to arrive when you think it will. The short runtimes tend to cut off right as things are getting interesting, not in the usual manner of a cliffhanger, but just like a longer, broader story has been haphazardly chopped up. Episode 4, like all the others, is full of really funny stuff and interesting ideas. But it also, like all the others, struggles to really cohere into an overarching plot. The motivating theme still feels rich with potential, but how many times do we need it explained?
For the first time, “Need I Say Door” finds Chris articulating the nature of the parallel universe he discovered in his Quantum Unfolding Chamber, and indeed its precise appeal to him and why he thinks it might be a superior place for him to exist than his own universe, out loud to someone else. But he’s not saying anything we haven’t intuited already. His personal arc isn’t any further along by the end of this episode than it was at the beginning.
One of the legitimately new bits of lore is brushed over rather unceremoniously. It crops up in a brief opening flashback that finds Chris, his brother Keith, and their father Auggie stumbling across a small alien in the woods that Auggie promptly executes like a complete psycho (given this is Prime Auggie, he is a complete psycho, so fair’s fair). The extraterrestrial is clutching the metal bag, which unfolds into the Quantum Chamber.
This explanation doesn’t matter a great deal to Peacemaker overall, but it’s nice to know all the same, and there is a nice callback to it later when Chris uses it to escape from A.R.G.U.S. From there, though, we pick up where we left off, with A.R.G.U.S. about to kick in Chris’s door. Chris himself is on the run for most of the episode, which is just as well, since it allows us to spend more time with Economos, Judomaster, Fleury, Bordeaux, and Kline, a bird-hunting cultural-appropriating wannabe shaman in full Native American regalia. James Gunn obviously really likes Michael Rooker, since he has him lean completely and utterly into this bit to the extent of later performing a blood ritual and astrally projecting.
You could make the argument, and it’d be justified, that this is Gunn being too self-indulgent. But I also think this stuff is easily the funniest Peacemaker Season 2 has gotten, not just in Episode 4 but in general. Fleury is a brilliant addition. His nicknames are hilarious, his “bird blindness” is still amusing, and he allows Economos to reach another level of comedic frustration, which is generally a benefit to the whole thing. His biding time before breaking into the Quantum Unfolding Chamber is really good stuff.
As mentioned, Chris is on the lam, and he turns to the only person he can rely on in a crisis – Leota, who is fresh from securing ad space for her new security business in a magazine that Chris later reveals is a complete scam that nobody buys. It’s Leota whom Chris confides in about the parallel universe and all its upsides, including his brother and father being alive, and his alt-self’s relationship with Harcourt. Leota provides a pretty rational perspective on it, and is suitably aghast that he killed that universe’s version of himself to essentially hijack his life and wardrobe of copious mobster shirts.
Since Economos is stuck working for A.R.G.U.S., Leota and Adrian are the only two real allies Chris has, since Harcourt is poached by Rick Flag Sr. Remember, she has been blackballed by the intelligence community, she still feels a little weird about her closeness with Chris given she was in a relationship with Rick Flag Jr when he was killed (by Chris), and she’s on the cusp of destitution. Flag knows all this, which is why he’s pretty sure she’ll agree to set Chris up in exchange for getting back into Uncle Sam’s – or should I say Amanda Waller’s – good graces.
I don’t for a moment think Harcourt will commit to this, but “Need I Say Door” at least ends by pretending she will, so it’s a possibility we should consider. Either way, despite its faulty pacing, this season of Peacemaker has at least done a half-decent job of setting up why these characters would at least think about making these decisions, even if they renege on them later. If nothing else, it creates a welcome bit of tension, since it looks like the net is closing on Chris from two different sides.
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