The ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Finale Certainly Was One

We did it, y’all. We’ve finally made it to the end of the road: the Peacemaker season two finale. And boy howdy have we seen a lot. Weirdo alternate dimensions that honestly aren’t too different from our own. A man suffering from face blindness with birds. Mick Jagger being in the Beatles and a world without the Kardashians. Eagly.

Oh, and Christopher Smith being traumatized by his found family killing his politically moderate reverse father and nearly killing his reverse brother before making a daring escape back to our dimension, only for him to surrender his portal door and his freedom to ARGUS.

And yet, somehow, we still got one more episode to tie this already huge present of the new DC Universe together while also setting the tone for works to follow. No pressure. Let’s see how James Gunn stuck the landing, for old times’ sake.

Episode eight, “Full Nelson,” kicks off in a way we’ve all gotten fairly used to by now: with a flashback. One month ago, to be specific. And whaddaya know, we’re finally going to know what happened between Christopher Smith (John Cena) and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) on that boat that made their situationship so messy.

While being cute over drawings on a restaurant table, the two have a deep conversation about Harcourt being sensitive about being viewed as somebody special. They then do six shots apiece, stumble out of the restaurant, shut down a freckled catcaller, have a buzzed walk on the pier, and get on a boat rock cruise.

© HBO Max

Back in the present (dammit!), Chris is inside a prison cell after surrendering to ARGUS, refusing visitation from his friends. Elsewhere, Fleury (Tim Meadows), Harcourt, Judomaster (Nhut Le), and the rest of ARGUS’ goons are touring Chris’s pocket dimension room of doors with hazmat suits on, taking photos as they go. They’re looking for something on orders of Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo)—my money’s on him selfishly looking for his reverse son.

The only problem is that they’ve opened a door to an Alice in Wonderland-looking world where a bunch of little critters are attacking them and carrying them away to some worse horror, and now they’re stuck. Also, the critters want to eat their faces. Thankfully, they get out. All of them except for “Titties,” the mercenary who hated Fleury’s HR-visitation-worthy jokes. He will be missed.

We cut to John Economos (Steve Agee) airing out how dumb their mission is and how ARGUS is working for Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to Harcourt. Evidently, their mission is to find a habitable universe like ours. The pair has reservations about how virtuous the mission truly is. But enough of that, because Eagly is depressively sitting in the closet over Chris being in jail.

Meanwhile, Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) makes a house call to Adrian Chase (Freddie Stroma) to try and hatch a plan to get Chris a lawyer for his court trial using Adrian’s blood money. After having his bail paid, Chris returns home and tells Economos he’s grabbing Eagly and skipping town. Adebayo, Adrian, and Harcourt, justifiably, give Economos shit for just letting Chris go.

Evil creature. © HBO Max

After a montage of portal door mishaps with zombie universes and dystopian hellscapes with giant skull spiders, the ARGUS gang has apparently acquired good data for what Flag Sr. and the rest of Lex’s cronies are after: Planet Salvation. What is Planet Salvation, you ask? A dimensional prison for metahumans—removing them from our world. A sorta Phantom Zone, if you will. Flag Sr. is completely Lex-pilled. Whatever happened between Creature Commandos and now changed that guy. Sad.

Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez) meets up with Harcourt to tell her Flag Sr.’s plans for a prison planet at the same restaurant from the start of the episode. They then meet up with Adebayo and hatch a plan to save Chris and stop the whole prison planet thing. After a mini montage of plotting, Harcourt finds a ticket from their boat cruise in the mirror of her bathroom and has a flashback. After grooving to music (in the flashback), Chris and Harcourt share a long, passionate kiss on the boat. Harcourt pulls away, shocked by all the kissing with the guy who killed her past situationship, leaving Chris heartbroken.

And now we know what happened on the boat. That’s two big mysteries settled—the first being what’s up with Earth X—and we’ve still got a little over 20 minutes left to go.

That’s how love starts, ya know. © HBO Max

Back at ARGUS, Economos, Harcourt, and Bordeaux enact their plan to distract Lex’s henchmen and foil his prison dimension plans. It doesn’t go well. Economos is terrible at improvisation. Thankfully, his ranting was enough for them to locate Chris at the hotel where he’s been staying. They all bombard Chris before he tries to flee, leading Adrian to tackle and taser him. Got him. After he comes to, they ask Chris why he’s acting out of character. He says he’s “fucking cursed.”

Killing his brother, Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman), and his father, then going to an alternate dimension where he killed himself and watched his reverse father die broke the man. Adebayo cuts the shit and tells Chris that every time somebody dies around him, it’s because he didn’t listen to himself and recognize that mindlessly following orders from his father, Amanda Waller, and his own dumb curiosity about the other world is what got him in this mess.

She concludes her dressing down of Chris by telling him he’s meant a lot to the group, changing them for the better, and allowing them to witness miracles (like an eagle hugging a human). Everyone echoes this sentiment, especially Harcourt.

Average found family intervention. © HBO Max

They resolve to finally stop listening to others and do what they want, starting with foiling ARGUS and Luthor’s plans. Chris, once again, asks Harcourt about whether the boat meant something. She finally acquiesces, saying, “Of course it did, you fucking asshole. It meant everything.” We’ve reached peak emotional catharsis, folks.

Chris celebrates in his hotel room as the opening theme song plays. We flash forward and backward a week, during which Foxy Shazam sings the opening theme song from the boat, and the crew does a montage of their plan to stop ARGUS. Their plan starts with the group (now including Bordeaux, Fleury, and Judomaster) setting up “Checkmate,” their newly minted base of operations, using Adrian’s blood money.

Chris alone. © HBO Max

We close on Chris being black bagged and taken back to ARGUS. There, Flag Sr. sequesters Chris on Planet Salvation to observe the effects of the dimension on humans, for Ricky. The season ends with Chris hearing strange roaring from a nearby treeline as the camera pulls away and cuts to black.

Peaceful Peacemaker Pontifications

We’ll always have Adrian’s pelvic dance. © HBO Max

• Adrian is apparently a Princess Peach: Showtime gamer as well as a Pokémon guy. Respect.
• John Cena smoking weed can now be checked off of nobody’s Bingo card.
• Adebayo finally settling affairs with her estranged ex to go off and be James Bond instead of building a life in Gotham together? Honestly, bullet dodged.
•  Fleury and Adrian interacting—and matching each other’s weirdness.
• Eagly hugging Economos.
• Two after-credits sequences for our viewing pleasure after that cliffhanger of an ending.

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