Peacemaker S2

Taking a bit of a different approach today, in that this my blogs first TV show review! Since it ended today, I thought there was no better time to give my thoughts on the latest entry in the DC Universe. Be warned, there will be spoilers for both the finale and the series as a whole. So only read this if you’ve seen the show! Or if you don’t really care about spoilers, in which case, welcome!

So, where to start? A little background, perhaps? Yeah, so I have had a rocky history with the James Gunn DC projects. It took me a while to come around on Suicide Squad (I felt it was way too similar to his approach to the Guardians) and I did really enjoy his Superman movie (go read my review please!) However, when they announced Peacemaker, I was like, really? This guy? So I didn’t really watch it, until James Gunn took over DC and said it was going to be canon. So, I did what any fan would do, I gave it a chance.

Let me tell you, I’m glad I did. That first season was such a fun time, the cast was electric, the jokes were funny and the story was surprisingly moving. Gunn really does have a talent for bringing out the best of both the actor and the character in his writing. Fastforward to a few weeks ago, I was really excited for Season 2 to come out, especially after the hype of Superman. Having finished the show today, I’m sorry to say that I am quite disappointed.

Firstly, the positives. The cast are all on great form here, some of them are even better than they were last season. John Cena especially really puts the work in and delivers a powerhouse, emotional performance. He manages to balance not only the show but the character’s conflicted nature so brilliantly. The scene in Episode 7 where he reacts to Keith was particularly heartwrenching, seeing all of his buried emotions come to the surface was just a lot to handle as a viewer. I particularly loved his dynamic with Adebayo, played brilliantly by Danielle Brooks. She provided a grounded and emotional anchor for both the show and for Chris that every scene she’s in just automatically gets better. Regardless of the problems she faces, she always shows up for her friends and she always makes sure that they are okay. She is particularly fantastic in the ending scene of Episode 5 where Chris leaves. She doesn’t say one word but the second she sees Adrian crying, she says a whole monologue with just her facial expressions. That scene embodies her character to a tee.

Both Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee are good as usual. Harcourt gets a bigger role in this season and she has to play double duty with the doppelganger on Earth X (more on that later), it was very impressive not just how different both Harcourts are but how similar they are in the ways that count. Plus her action scenes were particularly impressive, tying into her story arc in a meaningful way but also staying true to what they established in the prior season. Steve Agee is pretty funny and has some good emotional beats but other than that, there wasn’t really much development for him. His growing connection with Eagley was nice to see though.

Now we get to one of my main issues with this season, and thats the lack of Adrian/Vigilante. He was such a standout in the first season, Freddie Stroma plays him absolutely perfectly and every single line delivery was hilarious. It was almost Deadpool-esque in the performance, due to the physicality and the comedic timing. In this season, however, he’s barely in it. He doesn’t even suit up until like Episode 6? I get that Chris and his story is the forefront but Adrian relies on Chris for a lot of his appearances to work, and not having him play a noticeable part in the story just made it lack that energy that season 1 had. He has some great comedic moments like when he meets his doppelganger on Earth-X or really emotional moments like when he breaks down after Chris leaves. I just feel like this season wasted both Adrian as a character and Freddie as an actor.

Speaking of wastes, here we find the proper introduction of Rick Flag Sr. Played by Frank Grillo (of Marvel fame), he acts as the main antagonist of the season due to Chris being the one who killed his son in The Suicide Squad. Let me tell you right now, this character was so utterly boring and uncompelling that if it wasn’t for the strong performances and writing around Chris and Harcourt, this whole season would have fell on its face for me. Throughout the season, his whole motivation is finding Peacemaker for revenge, and somehow they made that boring. He is void of any charisma and it never quite feels like they reached the level they wanted to reach with him. To be honest, I feel its a mistake on the part of both Gunn with the writing and Grillo with his performance. His character is limited to vague tough guy out for revenge when they could have gone so much deeper with him. The loss of his son could and should have been devastating for him, but I never quite believe that it was. He is just generally angry and never goes beyond that.

There are a few new additions to the cast this time around as well, the most notable being Tim Meadows as Langston Fluery. He is absolutely hilarious, every line he delivers with such conviction and sincerity that it’s just the funniest thing I’ve seen. Him acting as a foil to the straightforward, almost autistic nature of Economos was a stroke of genius. However, with every good move comes a bad one and thats the inclusion of Michael Rooker. He plays some Eagle Hunter and honestly, I was rolling my eyes in every scene that he was in. He contributes nothing to the overall plot, isn’t funny or a worthwhile addition to the cast and ultimately feels like a stunt casting for the sake of Gunn hanging out with his friends. I just could not get on board with his character, I really wish they just removed that “subplot” all together.

Going into plot, this season does have a strong foundation. Exploring Chris’s place in this world and how he views himself as a person, but balancing that with his need for connection and his obsessive nature surrounding Harcourt. It does have some really strong elements to it, and it really helps to elevate Cena’s performance throughout the show. Doing the multiverse thing this early on in the new “DCU” was a risky move but Gunn did it in a way that made it necessary. He served the characters with it rather than serving the IP. That’s somewhere that Marvel has struggled, they never did anything particularly interesting with it. It was mainly used as stunt casting, setup and nostalgia bait. Here, Gunn uses this new Earth to follow Chris’s story and how he progresses as a character. The whole Earth-X storyline was really engaging and offered a lot of unique story avenues to go down.

Unfortunately, they drop the ball near the end. They resolve the Earth-X storyline very suddenly after only 2 episodes being spent there, and its not even carried over into the finale! All of the interesting things they setup, using it as a way to explore Chris’s familial issues, Harcourt and Chris’s connection and the importance of leaning on those you love when times get hard. They throw that all away to spend the finale going through montages of Gunn’s favourite songs and using the runtime as setup for whatever is going to happen further down the line. I didn’t really feel that they wrapped anything up, at least nothing that this season was setting up. Everyone seems to be back in the place we found them in, it sort of makes this whole season feel a tad pointless in retrospect?

One main focus of the season was in Chris’s and Harcourt’s budding relationship. I don’t know if it was just me, but I never really bought it? The building blocks are all there, the two broken people finding comfort in each other and the drama that he killed someone she was really close to. The show never quite knows what to do with it. For something with such a huge focus in the narrative, it didn’t really have any weight to it. We are expected to care about an event that happened off screen and the way it is described, you expect a huge payoff. But for it to be just a kiss, it feels very anticlimactic for all this drama to be built upon.

The only things that changed really are the formation of this new group and Peacemaker being chucked onto another Earth by Flag. Both of which feel closer to setup than to resolution. The use of the world where Nazis won WW2 was interesting at first but (this is just a me thing) I can’t help but wonder if it would have more of an impact if the CW DC shows didn’t do this exact same premise in an arguably more effective way for the DC characters.

Overall, this season, whilst it was fun and somewhat emotional, I just didn’t gel with it to the same level that I did with the first one. I’m looking forward to Man of Tomorrow and Lanterns, but I think that we need to have a bit of a gap between Gunn projects after this. If this is the last we see of this iteration of the show, I’ll be sad indeed.

6.5/10

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