Summary
Peacemaker Season 2 continues its run of form in Episode 7, setting up an exciting finale with a flurry of welcome twists and violence.
It might have taken ages for Peacemaker Season 2 to finally get good, but now that the ball’s rolling, it has quickly generated enough speed to carry right through into the finale. Episode 7, “Like a Keith in the Night”, uses the previous outing’s reveal that Chris’s idyllic alt-universe is really a Nazi hellscape to one-up itself, delivering a blood-and-guts penultimate episode that lays the foundation for an exciting climax by messily claiming a few lives and pushing Chris to an emotional breaking point.
You’ll recall where we left off, I’m sure, but here’s a reminder: The alternate universe isn’t just full of Nazis, but is built on an alternate history where they won World War II Wolfenstein-style, so there are copies of Mein Kampf everywhere and a mural of Hitler on the wall of the A.R.G.U.S. offices that Chris somehow didn’t notice. As if an army of white racists chasing a woman of colour in an effort to lynch her wasn’t a risky enough visual, Gunn spends the entirety of this episode toeing the very fine line between grim-dark seriousness and knockabout action-comedy theatrics. Immediately after noticing Hitler’s visage looming over the office, he breaks up with alt-Harcourt so that he and Harcourt Prime can fight their way to freedom.
The best example of this playful juxtaposition comes towards the very end of the episode. Earlier, there’s a scene of alt-Auggie trying to tell Keith what Economos told him under interrogation, and he backs up the claim by revealing that he once saw his own doppelganger inside the Quantum Unfolding Chamber. I thought his description of himself as “something cruel, like he came from a world that was a dark version of ours” was in itself the joke, an old Nazi not having the self-awareness to realise his viewpoint is wrong. But the real joke comes later. As it turns out alt-Auggie is not a Nazi; he’s complicit, like everyone, but he rallies against the bad guys in front of him because that’s a fight he can win. Just as he’s explaining this, both versions of Vigilante jump through the window, and one of them violently stabs him to death.
Written down, this doesn’t sound very funny, but honestly, in context, it’s hilarious. The double Vigilante thing is pretty funny throughout. I’m not sure what it says about Adrian that he and his doppelganger are so easily able to overcome pretty fundamental differences and still remain best friends, but I suppose it helps that alt-Vigilante is a member of the anti-Nazi Sons of Liberty group, which means he’s already technically a good guy, if a little prone to bouts of extreme violence. Just ask Auggie.
Both Vigilantes team up with Leota and, surprisingly, Judomaster, who saves her from the lynch mob and turns out to be a fairly cool guy in his own right, at least in a world full of crazy fascists. The rescue goes about as badly as it’s possible for it to go while still also being successful, resulting in alt-Auggie’s death, Keith being badly injured, and Chris having a near-breakdown at the scale and severity of the violence around him. And this is coming right after things were going relatively well for him, at least as far as he and Harcourt Prime are concerned.
None of this should work as well as it does, because it’s a really insane situation that could quite easily come across as ridiculous or in very bad taste, but Gunn’s just really good at writing his way around these wacky scenarios in a way that feels emotionally serious without compromising the comedic lightness. So, no, it shouldn’t work, but it undeniably does.
Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 7 does make it clear that despite the 11th Street Kids rallying together to facilitate an escape back to their own universe, this isn’t exclusively a good thing, and there’s still plenty to play for. Rick Flag Sr remains the main wildcard, since his plan for the portals hasn’t been made clear. In “Like a Keith in the Night,” he tracks down Lex’s assistant to locate Chris and his portal, but what he wants to do with it – or him, given he’s still smarting from his son’s death at Chris’s hands – remains to be seen.
And then there’s Keith. Even though it was kind of ruthless, Harcourt’s decision to execute him before they made their escape was a good one… or at least would have been, had she had time to go through with it. As things stand, Keith remains alive and highly motivated to pursue the man responsible for the deaths of his brother and father. I don’t reckon this season has many more plans for the alt universe now that we have left it behind, but I strongly suspect we’ll be seeing Keith again in the finale.
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