Summary
Peacemaker Season 2 finally commits to some of its underlying ideas in Episode 5, with Chris finally taking the alt-universe plunge.
Peacemaker has spent most of Season 2 in the grip of a holding pattern, one that is very funny and silly in the moment but has largely only achieved reiterating its clutch of underlying character ideas (you’ll notice that there’s no real overarching plot or villain this season). The best thing about Episode 5, “Back to the Suture”, is that I think it marks the end of this cycle, with Chris committing to the alternate universe after a string of what he perceives to be betrayals, and his friends finally deciding that he’s more important than their careers and resolving to go after him.
I suppose Rick Flag Sr kind of counts as a villain, but I’m not sure I’m buying that. He’s a grieving father who lacks all the right context and just wants revenge for his son, which is understandable, but this episode also reveals him to be a lot smarter and more calculated than first appearances suggested, so maybe there’s more outright villainy in his future. Either way, at this point, he’s primarily a lens through which Emilia Harcourt can view herself; is she the uncompromising single-minded agent who’ll do anything to get her career back, or is she Chris Smith’s friend, first and foremost?
“Back to the Suture” reveals which pretty much immediately, at least after another opening flashback that fleshes out the relationship between Harcourt and Flag Sr and, by extension, Harcourt and Flag Jr (they weren’t that serious). Even though it looked like Harcourt turned Judas, she actually gave Chris a codeword, “copacetic”, which was intended to tip him off that he’d been compromised. Harcourt didn’t expect him to show up; she was damning her career, not saving it, to make sure he didn’t get caught.
But he gets caught anyway since Chris is feeling so fragile at the moment that he turns up to the meeting despite knowing it’s a trap, just so he can ask Harcourt if their brief romantic dalliance meant anything to her. Harcourt frames this as his ego being too big for his own good, but Season 2 has made it clear thus far that it’s quite the opposite. He’s hurting and is looking for any possible justification to not just disappear for good into the parallel universe. Unfortunately for him, A.R.G.U.S. agents have him surrounded, and Bordeaux has a kill shot, so Harcourt is forced to intervene and choke him out so he can be arrested.
As recompense, Harcourt tells Economos to officially book Chris, meaning his arrest is on record and A.R.G.U.S. can’t just disappear him, which is what she suspects their intentions are. And it seems like she isn’t far wrong, since Flag turns off the CCTV in the interrogation room so he can wail on Chris. But it’s all part of a long con. He knew Harcourt would stop Bordeaux from killing Chris, knew she’d buy into Flag’s unstable revenge mission, and knew Economos, even if he required some prompting, would ensure Chris’s release. That’s the whole plan – to have Judomaster follow Chris back to wherever he’s keeping the Quantum Unfolding Chamber.
What Flag doesn’t account for is two things – the depth of Chris’s depression leading him to decide to commit full-time to the alt-universe, especially after Harcourt pretended there was nothing between them to try and force him to escape the ambush, and the loyalty of his friends. It’s not like they have much else to be doing. Leota does get her first customer for her new security firm, but it seems very much like someone misunderstanding the function of the business. Economos and Harcourt are both unlikely to be able to secure gainful employment with A.R.G.U.S. after all this, and Adrien has mostly just been sitting around waiting for Chris and the others to pay attention to him.
The downside of Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 5 is that it does away with Michael Rooker’s Red St Wild, the self-styled shaman who had managed to track Eagly through astral projection. Red was right, it turns out – Eagly is some kind of superpowered “prime eagle”, or at least seems to be, but maybe Red’s just nuts. Either way, his efforts to kill Eagly result in the death of another eagle, which prompts Eagly to summon a convocation – the proper collective noun for eagles, I’ll have you know – and peck Red to death. RIP. Maybe we’ll see his spirit somewhere down the line.
Anyway, “Back to the Suture” ends as we might have expected, with a heartbroken, fugitive Chris disappearing into the alternative universe, leaving the Quantum Unfolding Chamber locked and inaccessible behind him. He’s determined to team up with his brother and his father and have the cosy relationship with Harcourt he has always dreamed of, leaving our Harcourt and the rest of the 11th Street Kids to figure out a way to get him back. But given how well things are going for him in the alternate universe, that might be easier said than done.
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