Review: Peacemaker, "Another Rick Up My Sleeve" | Season 2, Episode 3

I was apprehensive when I first realized Peacemaker season two was doing a multiverse story, and I still am to a degree. I’m fatigued from the sludgy sameness of post-Endgame Marvel specifically, and generally find that stories with alternate universes, time travel, and things of that nature have a higher bar to clear in holding my attention compared to more street-level stuff. Peacemaker is basically a show about a criminal seeking redemption for the bad things he’s done, set in a milieu that’s relatively grounded for a superhero story, which appeals to my personal preference for simple crime dramas. Adding in the multiverse element brings the show more into the realm of the superhero genre clichés it avoided or subverted in season one, and the show still has to demonstrate what it’s ultimately going to do with this cliche. 

James Gunn is a genre master, though, and will not be doing the multiverse the same way Deadpool & Wolverine or The Flash or Loki or whatever else did it—and so far, I don’t mind how things are going. Peacemaker is staying focuêed on Chris Smith’s emotional story—his feelings about getting a chance to live the life he dreams of—without getting bogged down in the rules of what he can do and the details of how he does it. He found a doorway in a “quantum unfolding storage area,” and that’s good enough for the story Gunn is trying to tell, which is still a redemption arc. Chris thinks he found a loophole, a shortcut to redemption, but he will inevitably discover that it’s impossible to change the past and in order to become who he wants to be the change will have to come from within.

It’s standard stuff, but Peacemaker is doing it in a more emotionally grounded way than, like, what if you could run so fast you could turn back time and keep your mom from dying? I think part of what makes it work for me is that Chris stumbled into it, rather than making it happen, which keeps him more human and less superheroic. Gags like alternate-universe Chris having an outrageously douchey wardrobe win me over, too. I worry that at some point it will get tangled up in plot mechanics and CGI dimension-hopping, because that always seems to happen and is always boring, but so far, so good. 

“Another Rick Up My Sleeve” reveals a new complication in the already very complicated relationship dynamic between Chris and his unrequited love Amelia Harcourt—she had a thing with Rick Flag Jr. (Joel Kinnaman) before Peacemaker killed him. Her relationship with Rick actually seems like it was pretty similar to her relationship with Chris: they were friends who started hooking up, and he wanted to break up with his girlfriend June Moone (played by Cara Delevigne in the original Suicide Squad) and get serious with Harcourt. She didn’t want to, however, because her heart has always been walled off. So not only does she not want to have the same scenario of loss play out with Chris, he’s also the man who killed the previous man she cared about, and he doesn’t even know it—she’s keeping all of this a secret. Adebayo is not exaggerating when she says Harcourt is the most fucked up person she knows. I wonder if this development with Flag will be controversial among DC fans, as Flag was the closest thing the Suicide Squad movies had to a morally upright hero. I think it was worth doing, though, because it gives us a deeper understanding of Harcourt’s motivations and is pretty genuinely surprising. 

Compared to the prime version, alternate-universe Harcourt seems normal and well-adjusted. She broke up with Chris because he was cheating on her and started dating Flag, but she seems willing to go back to Chris if things will actually be different this time. Little does she know how different he actually is. Their conversation on the park bench where Chris says he’s actually working on himself and she believes him was unexpectedly affecting. Chris is consciously getting a do-over, but in this universe Harcourt is getting one, too. 

I did find the episode’s treatment of alt-Rick Flag a little odd. Everything about the alternate universe storyline is about Chris getting a chance to change things he regrets, and killing Flag is high on that list, but there’s not much acknowledgement of that. This Flag is jealous and insecure, not a cool customer like Suicide Squad Flag, and is the butt of a physical joke where he knocks over a garbage can and embarrasses himself. It’s a different version of Flag, of course, but I found the episode’s rendering of both Flags to be surprisingly irreverent toward the return of a character we haven’t seen in four years and whose death was the catalyst for Peacemaker’s story. 

Usually I’m always in favor of shorter episodes, but I feel like “Another Rick Up My Sleeve” could have benefitted from having more time than 38 minutes. There was a lot happening, but outside of Flag none of it felt particularly game-changing. It was more like the show was running around trying to get to everything it had to and not giving moments time to breathe. Sometimes that was very effective, however, like when Chris and Harcourt’s date was interrupted by a terrorist accidentally blowing himself up in front of them. I thought the Sons of Liberty might have been Auggie’s hate group, but these particular anti-government activists don’t seem to have white supremacy as an explicitly stated goal, at least not yet, which was Auggie’s main thing. I was waiting for a reveal that Chris’s family is involved with them in this reality, and even Keith destroying their helicopter doesn’t convince me they’re not. But we’ll see. For now, the Sons of Liberty are just the recipients of the most brutal beat-down this show has seen to date. Death by printer was funny, pencils in the ears was gross. 

Everything else that happened with the rest of the 11th Street Kids went by pretty perfunctorily, with the most notable development coming with the introduction of Gunn favorite Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, the world’s foremost eagle hunter, whom A.R.G.U.S. has contracted to kill Eagly. He’s dressed like a combination of Johnny Depp in Dead Man and Johnny Depp in real life, and talks like he suffered a severe head injury. Economos is forced to work with him indirectly, which is bad enough; even worse, John’s partnered up with “Rip Jagger,” aka Judomaster (Nhut Le), who surely holds a grudge for John tasing him and chaining him up last season. Not much to report with Adebayo and Adrian, who have both been on the backburner so far this season. There are so many other characters to service with more direct roles in the action that these two have become totally peripheral and their current involvement is a bit forced. Not that I’m really complaining, because the moments we do get with them are funny. But they’re begging to be paired up and sent on a quest of their own. 

At this point, Peacemaker is still settling into its multiverse, and I'm cautiously optimistic about where it's going to land. The story is still in a ramping up phase, and with the halfway point coming next week, we're due for some of the narrative threads to start to come together. This episode was about getting the players in position before the game kicks off next week. Chris going back to his own dimension while A.R.G.U.S. prepares to storm his house is coming at the right moment, because it's time for an action scene of real consequence to happen. But if something happens to Eagly, I swear...

Stray observations

• Chris realizing he was going to be late for his meeting with Harcourt and trying to pee faster was the biggest laugh of the episode for me. 
• Second place: “Eyes don’t always come in pairs.” “Right, I forgot about Martians, one big eye.” 
• I loved the guy trying to save all the pets from the pet store before the Sons of Liberty blew it up, and I was hoping for a button on his scene that didn’t come. Maybe it’s just enough to know that in this reality, Peacemaker is such a hero that he even saves bunnies from getting blown up. 
• Any thoughts on Man of Tomorrow, Gunn’s newly announced Superman sequel? It’s set for summer 2027, and I really appreciate the quick turnaround.