Peacemaker’s season 2 finale: laughter, tears, and a lot of setup for the future of the DCU

And so, it turns out, that night on the boat meant "everything," after all. Following a turbulent season that has seen Peacemaker/Chris Smith (John Cena) and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland)'s burgeoning friendship fall dramatically apart, the show's final episode brought them back together if not quite as a couple, then certainly as people who clearly love each other no matter what.

It was a satisfying emotional payoff. Peacemaker season 2 has been all about digging deeper into these characters – sometimes to the detriment of other aspects of the series. I was a little soft on the start of the season (as you can read in my Peacemaker season 2 review) which, lacking a pressing threat like season one's Butterflies, meandered down odd tangents, like Red St. Wild's hunt for Eagly. It was never bad and often very fun, but it was only with episode five's cliffhanger that it felt like the season truly kicked into gear. Peacemaker left the DCU behind to go and live a better life in a parallel universe with his father and brother, and his friends set off in hot pursuit to bring him back.

Except, of course, that same parallel universe was quickly revealed to be the Nazi dimension, complete with office copies of Mein Kampf and a gigantic Hitler mural on the wall...

The grass is always greener?

Episodes 6 and 7 saw Peacemaker back at its best. A somewhat-expected Lex Luthor cameo added a greater sense of danger to the proceedings and neatly tied in with this summer's Superman.

Following a season where most of the laughs came from Tim Meadows' Langston Fleury, Vigilante regained his comedic mojo. The reveal of his basement – full of drugs, cash, and a fearsome Beanie Baby collection – was both a solid gag and neat setup for the finale. Also very fun was his encounter with his own parallel universe counterpart, only to discover they were pretty much identical.

Crucially, the reveal of Earth-X was a great monkey's paw payoff to Chris's season-long wish. Of course he would fail to notice the lack of people of color – though he is thankfully horrified when he finally realizes the truth.

Episode 7 was even better, turning the heat up on all of the characters, and especially Adebayo (Danielle Brooks). Earth-X worked perfectly as both a satirical jab at our own world (Vigilante-2 musing that a world where the Nazis lost World War 2 must be a "utopia", for instance) and as a way to give Chris exactly what he desired and then snatch it away in the most brutal possible way.

Cena absolutely shines here, his scream after Auggie's death (at the hands of Vigilante, something that goes weirdly unmentioned in the finale) is a primal howl of despair. Indeed, season 2 found great mileage in the way it contrasted Chris's emotional openness with the walls that Harcourt surrounds herself with. "I don’t have access to my feelings like you do," she says at one point and it's both a moment of self-reflection for Harcourt, and a reminder of how rare a character like Peacemaker is. Sure, he's a mess of bad habits, self-loathing, and ingrained prejudice, but he's also in touch with his emotions the way very few male action heroes are.

An uncertain future

With the Earth-X storyline seemingly resolved in episode 8, the finale was able to concentrate more fully on Chris and Emilia's story.

As the episode starts, Peacemaker is in jail, Rick Flag is experimenting with the Quantum Unfolding Chamber, and the 11th Street Kids are all facing uncertain futures. It's interesting stuff, but as the episode luxuriated in its 55 minute run time, that early season bagginess came back into effect with Chris spending much of the episode wallowing in his misery, while Flag sets up Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow.

I don't begrudge any of that – it's understandable that Chris would be mired in grief once more, and and I'm impressed with how deftly Gunn has gone about setting up this new DCU – but there was a lack of urgency here. A pair of big musical numbers offer some catharsis, but it would have been nice to have learned a bit more about what exactly the newly-formed Checkmate are actually going to, y'know, do and how the gang came to this pivotal decision.

Some elements, meanwhile, felt plain misjudged. Keeya and Adebayo's relationship comes to an end in a scene that's well-played, but only served to emphasise how under-used Elizabeth Ludlow has been across not just the season, but the entire show.

Critically Rick Flag Sr seems to undergo a personality transplant, turning from a flawed guy grappling with his un-processed grief to a full on villain. That could have worked, but the scenes of him partying while various members of A.R.G.U.S. staff were savaged by imps and munched on by zombies were ill-judged, making his character actively hatable for the first time.

Ultimately, though, this season has always been about Chris and Emilia's relationship. It's a knotty and complicated friendship – clearly a developing romance, but not an easy one. That it gets some level of breakthrough here with Harcourt finally admitting that the night on the boat "meant everything" to her is satisfying and makes the cliffhanger ending even more of a gut-punch. The episode has its flaws, some quite noticeable, but it gets it right here, where it really counts.

But then, isn't that Peacemaker all over? Adebayo said as much in episode 7 when she laid out the character's appeal to Judomaster, in a way that felt like Gunn talking directly to the audience about his intentions for this singular, flawed, deeply heartfelt, and often brilliant TV show. "You just got to open your mind up a little and get past the parts that are cheesy."

When Peacemaker season 2 worked, it was like nothing else currently on TV. And when it didn't? Well, there was always a good gag or a touching character beat just around the corner. Let's hope the members of Checkmate find Salvation sooner rather than later...

For more on the DCU, check out our complete guide to DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. Then, discover what James Gunn had to say when we asked him about DC's video game plans.