Warning: This article contains spoilers for season 1 of Peacemaker.
James Gunn’s streaming spin-off from The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, recently wrapped up its eight-episode first season in wildly satisfying fashion. With a blood-soaked battle sequence, a nice balance of action and character beats, and a handful of earned payoffs, Peacemaker stuck the landing with its season 1 finale, “It’s Cow or Never.”
Tonally, Peacemaker was on par with what fans of Gunn’s work expected from the series. But its twisting story arcs packed a few surprising punches along the way, like a superpowered gorilla getting chainsawed to death.
Peacemaker’s Harrowing Backstory
Considering this character first hit screens as a side character providing one-note comic relief, Peacemaker has a surprisingly harrowing backstory. His white supremacist dad used to force a young Christopher Smith and his brother to fight each other for his and his friends’ amusement.
During one of these fights, Christopher hit his brother a little too hard and he didn’t get back up. Peacemaker spent his whole life blaming himself for his brother’s death, but throughout the series, he accepts that his father is the one to blame.
Economos Is A Badass
Before joining the DCEU ensemble as A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos in The Suicide Squad, Steve Agee was best known for playing Steve Myron in The Sarah Silverman Program. In the first half of Peacemaker, Agee’s reprisal of the role of Economos is largely confined to a running joke about his dyed beard.
But in the second half, the character emerges as a badass. He kills a superpowered gorilla with a chainsaw in delightfully gruesome fashion, saving Peacemaker’s life, and follows up on that heroism in the finale.
Amanda Waller Is A Villain
The Suicide Squad movies have both suggested that A.R.G.U.S. leader Amanda Waller – played brilliantly by Viola Davis (even in an uncredited cameo in Peacemaker) – is no better than the superpowered inmates she sends on suicide missions around the world under the Task Force X program.
By the end of Peacemaker, Waller has become a full-blown villain in the DCEU. Her black-ops missions have been leaked to the public and she’s officially a bad guy in this universe.
Peacemaker’s Helmets
As it turns out, Peacemaker’s helmet – hilariously compared to a bedpan – isn’t just a big, goofy tin hat. He has a bunch of helmets that all have their own special capabilities. In the pilot episode, he uses a sonic boom weapon attached to one of his helmets to kill Annie Sturphausen.
The finale goes all out with these helmets, as Peacemaker brings a bunch of them to the final battle. Eagly drops one of them in the woods after misinterpreting an instruction, so the team has to search the forest for it. Adebayo uses the “human torpedo” helmet to launch herself at the Butterfly-controlled Detective Song (and misses).
Murn Is A Butterfly
Gunn has cast Peacemaker’s Chukwudi Iwuji to play an undisclosed major role in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and it’s easy to see why because the actor gave an impressive turn as team leader Clemson Murn. Iwuji nailed both the dry comedic moments in Peacemaker and the more serious dramatic beats.
In the final stinger of the fourth episode – the midpoint of the series – Murn is revealed to be a Butterfly. But he turns out to be a good Butterfly secretly rebelling against the evil ones, so his deception is forgivable.
Task Force X Goes Public
After being introduced as a new recruit, Adebayo turns out to be Amanda Waller’s daughter who was hired as a favor (and has an ulterior motive to incriminate Peacemaker with a fake diary). In the season finale, Adebayo chooses allegiance to Peacemaker over her mother and leaks Waller’s illicit operations with Task Force X to the public.
The central premise of the Suicide Squad movies is that the mission officially isn’t happening – like Captain Willard’s mission in Apocalypse Now – so this twist changes everything for the franchise. Future Suicide Squad movies will have Task Force X’s operations happening out in the open.
Peacemaker Kills His Dad
In the penultimate episode of Peacemaker’s first season, the titular antihero’s father Auggie finally dons the White Dragon armor and confronts his son. Peacemaker ends up killing Auggie with a swift headshot, which neither the audience nor Auggie himself thought he had the strength to do.
Throughout the finale, Peacemaker is haunted by his father’s ghost. By the end of the episode, he learns to make peace (pardon the pun) with these taunting hallucinations.
Justice League Cameos
In a fun play on the kind of last-minute deus-ex-machina fan-service cameos seen in The Mandalorian and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Peacemaker’s finale features an appearance by four members of the Justice League – but only after the “cow” has already been killed. With perfect comic timing, Peacemaker tells them, “You’re late, you f***ing d***heads!”
Superman’s face is obscured, much like his cameo in Shazam!, and Wonder Woman only appears in silhouette form. But both Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller appear as their DC heroes (Aquaman and the Flash, respectively). The cameos are hilariously self-deprecating – especially for Momoa’s Aquaman, who confirms the running gag about the nature of his relationship with fish – and they introduce Peacemaker into the wider DCEU fold.