‘Peacemaker’ S02E05 Review | “Back to the Suture”

Let's all agree to keep the "Prime Eagle" a secret!

Image credit: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max

[Welcome to Decoding TV’s coverage of Peacemaker Season 2! For each of Peacemaker’s eight episodes, we’ll run reviews by Dan Gvozden. If you’d like to support what we’re doing here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The review below contains major spoilers for Season 2, Episode 5 of Peacemaker.]

In my review of “Need I Say Door,” the fourth episode of this second season of Peacemaker, I called it the “least substantial episode” yet, but one that continued to weave the show’s various characters, plots, and themes together as it moved towards its climactic third-act. The same is true of this week’s episode, “Back to the Suture,” which makes its intentions clear from its punny title: this one’s all about getting Chris to abandon the DCU and to cross back through the portal to embrace replacing the Chris from the quantum unfolding chamber’s alternate universe (what I’ve been calling the DC2).

As insubstantial as the plot of this episode is, especially when compared to the first three episodes of the season, Peacemaker’s Season 2’s strong focus on its characters and their evolving dynamics, misunderstandings, and the unexpected reveals about their backgrounds bolster an otherwise forgettable, transition episode. Beyond this episode, I expect that we will return to the no-holds-barred pacing of how Peacemaker has unfolded its plot and revealed its high-concept, wacky ideas.

“Back to the Suture” remains true to this season’s formula by opening with a flashback, this time to Rick Flag Jr.’s funeral, mere moments before the start of Peacemaker Season 1. We join Economos and Harcourt at the funeral, who were supporting the missions of Amanda Waller’s secret Task Force X, which contained both Peacemaker and Rick Flag Jr. As Harcourt mourns the loss of her friend and lover, his father, Rick Flag Sr., joins her to ask if she knows who killed his son. She cannot and does not tell him, out of loyalty to her role at A.R.G.U.S., despite her roiling anger that she lost her closest friend.

Flag Sr. points out that he knows that the two of them were in love and that it was a special kind of love, one that was born from their friendship, and that he will always consider her family. It’s here, as Flag Sr. walks away, that Harcourt turns to him and tells him that “The person who did this. That person, they’ll pay. I’ll make sure of it,” a promise which Flag Sr. was sure to remind her of when he came to her apartment in the previous episode.

As far as pre-credits revelations go, this particular one lands a weaker blow to our understanding of Peacemaker’s world and characters than this season’s previous episodes. Still, it’s an essential beat in this episode to establish and complicate the motives of Harcourt as the show moves into her seeming betrayal of Chris at Kupperberg Park. The episode picks back up at that park, where Harcourt has promised to meet Chris, but also secretly outed their plans to the various agents and assassins of A.R.G.U.S. And so, she waits patiently on a bench, surrounded by kids playing sports, families picnicking, and ice cream vendors pushing their wares, as bait for Chris.

When Chris finally appears, he hides behind passersby, as if he already knows that the whole A.R.G.U.S. team is watching him. Judomaster trains a sniper rifle on him, and we watch as the hairs of his scope scan over the crowds, like it’s the opening of The Conversation, and unsuccessfully attempt to get a clean angle on Chris. Eventually, Chris finds his way to Harcourt and joins her on the bench, using her body as a shield, and reveals his intentions. Despite her code-word warning, “copacetic,” to alert him to the trap, Chris wants to know if their fling on the boat meant anything to her. Her response is the mirror image of how the eager Milia from the DC2 eagerly embraced Chris’s attempts to rekindle a relationship, including the parkside bench they both sit at and his tacky clothes. “No,” she says, “I was drunk. I told you I wish it never fucking happened,” and that Rick Flag Jr. “was my only friend. You killed him, how could I possibly?”

This was the answer that Chris needed to confirm his choice to return to the DC2, but as he attempts to flee the park, he finds himself surrounded by A.R.G.U.S. agents. He grabs a fresh-faced agent to use as a shield and initiates a standoff with the team, but it appears that Bordeaux has managed to secure a fatal shot on Chris. This is aided entirely by the fact that – in a surprising reveal to non-comics readers – Bordeaux is a cyborg who has half of her body replaced with powerful upgrades after she nearly died in a plane crash. When Harcourt sees that Bordeaux is moments away from using lethal force, she springs into action and takes down Chris herself using non-lethal means.

Back at Chris’s grandfather’s cabin, Adebayo and Vigilante guard the quantum unfolding chamber door from the porch, when Adebayo receives a call about her ad, which turns out to be only interested in hiring her for prostitution rather than for her detective skills. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, Red St. Cloud hides in the woods as his hunt closes in on Eagly.

Back at A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, Bordeaux and Harcourt fight over how Chris was brought in, dead or alive, as he is led through the building in handcuffs. Harcourt pulls Chris into the breakroom to talk, free from listening devices, so that they can formulate a plan to free Chris. Side note: Wouldn’t the breakroom be the first place anyone at A.R.G.U.S. would bug with listening devices? Isn’t the entire point of the breakroom at any company to serve as the place where you can go to gossip about your colleagues and bash your boss?

In a bleak interrogation room, Flag Sr. uncuffs Chris and orders all recording devices to be turned off. His violent intentions of revenge are clear, and Chris attempts to apologize, but to no avail. Flag brutally hammers Chris into the floor and walls, as he begs him to fight back. The sequence is a difficult watch, likely aided by John Cena’s WWE-honed ability to make taking a punch seem real. In one particular shot, where he takes a knee directly to his face, it’s almost impossible to imagine that he wasn’t hurt.

He’s only saved by Harcourt’s plan, which involves Economos booking Chris into the police records. This means that whatever pain they inflict on him would have to be reported. I’ll admit, I found this loophole to be a bit silly, especially in today’s day and age, where our President is now routinely performing extra-judicial killings, that a sort of clandestine organization like A.R.G.U.S. would be beholden to the police, but perhaps in the wake of the revelations against Amanda Waller the American government in the DCU is extra-careful about its use of force. That, or I’ve just become incredibly cynical about any agency that’s part of a fictional or non-fictional Homeland Security initiative, as A.R.G.U.S. is. But, as silly as I think it is, it’s extra-curious to me that while everyone else dresses down Economos for his actions, it is the characteristically insulting Fleury who commends him for doing the right thing.

Back at the cabin, Red St. Cloud continues his quest to take down Eagly, which he believes is the “Prime Eagle” because of a lie that Economos cooked up to cover his ass. And so, he injects a dead rat with a poisonous liquid in the hopes that Eagly will discover it, eat it, and die. And, he’s almost successful, when Eagly picks up the rat, plays with his food, and attempts to eat it, all before he’s interrupted by Vigilante and Adebayo, who head off to A.R.G.U.S. to pick up the newly released Chris. Eagly turns around to find that his rat has been taken by a fox, who then suffers the fate Red intended for Eagly.

Vigilante and Adebayo pick up the battered and bruised Chris and drive away, followed by the Cheetos-eating Judomaster. Meanwhile, Flag unfolds his plans to Bordeaux in a private meeting in his office. Whether he’s bluffing or not, he claims that it was his aim for Harcourt to intervene in the kill order he gave to Bordeaux and to let Chris go, despite his enjoyment of punching him in the face. He wanted Chris to think that his methods are sloppy and that he’s purely motivated by an uncontrolled revenge, rather than stopping an incident like the one in Metropolis and what he also alludes to as an even “greater purpose.” (More on this later)

What’s even more curious is that there seems to be some growing physical intimacy between Rick Sr. and Bordeaux, as the two get closer to each other in both this scene and later in the episode, as well as his insistence that she call him “Rick.” It’s a tactic we’ve seen him use just last episode when he entered Harcourt’s apartment and insisted that she call him “Rick.” This could just be one of his tactics of manipulation, but could the show also be cluing us into a secret physical or romantic history between Rick Sr. and Harcourt? I honestly hope not, but it would at least give me some answer as to why they cast Rick Sr. and Rick Jr. to essentially look like they could be brothers, rather than father and son. But, still… yuck.

As they speed back to the cabin, Chris tells Adebayo and Vig about what happened at the park and how he believes that Harcourt betrayed him just as he was about to make his escape. Despite Vigilante’s attempts to lighten the mood by talking about manta rays, Chris declares that he’s now done with “everyone,” and by “everyone,” we know he means this dimension. And so, when they drop him off at the cabin, he asks for his privacy and for them to leave. He then tries to summon Eagly, but gets no response. Where could Eagly be?

Well, it turns out that he’s off on his own side-adventure with Red St. Cloud. In a truly gut-wrenching sequence, Red aims an enormous elephant rifle up to the sky and, after a missed attempt at shooting down Eagly, scores a direct hit on the bird. Red gleefully approaches what appears to be Eagly’s corpse, when he’s surprised to be attacked by another eagle from the side. I’ll admit, I threw my arms up to cheer because I knew immediately what this meant. Sure, Economos was making up utter bullshit to redirect Red’s suspicions, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, it turns out that Eagly is, in fact, the “Prime Eagle” and summons a soar of eagles to attack and surround Red.

Then, Eagly, staring directly at Red, conjures the same flaming purple magic that Red uses to spy on him through the astral plane, and orders the other eagles to attack and tear Red apart, one tear of their beaks and talons at a time. It is a moment so extraordinary that I genuinely hope that we never return to this revelation again and that it’s kept as a wonderful secret between the audience and Eagly.

Inside the cabin, Chris writes a goodbye note to Adebayo, imploring her to share his message with the rest of the 11th Street Kids. As he finishes the note, Eagly brings him Red’s finger as a gift, which Chris chooses to ignore. He leaves the note with the quantum unfolding chamber’s control device, resets the portal, and steps through with Eagly. “Ready for the next adventure, pal?”

Judomaster races after Chris, leaves a note and his Cheetos-dusted fingerprints behind, and follows him through the portal, just as Adebayo and Vigilante enter the cabin to find the doorway closed. In the DC2, Chris washes the blood off his face and prepares to assume a new life, alongside Eagly, when his brother, Keith, orders him to suit up because they have a kaiju to fight. And so, Chris gets his wish for a jetpack, and alongside his father, brother, and pet eagle, they fly off to do battle against a giant alien monster.

Back at Harcourt’s apartment, the remainder of the 11th Street Kids gather to hear Adebayo’s reading of Chris’s goodbye letter. In it, he explains that he didn’t believe that redemption was possible for him in this dimension, particularly because of his perception that Harcourt had betrayed him, and that he’s finally going to embrace being the “good man” he always wanted to be in this new universe. He encourages them to turn over the quantum control device to A.R.G.U.S. so that they can all get their jobs back and find their own version of happiness.

But the team remains loyal to Chris and flat-out rejects the message of his note. After Vigilante is done crying, likely because the note was directed at Adebayo, Harcourt leads the charge for them to find a way to reopen the portal because “we are going to get Chris back.” Whether she will feel the same when and if they ever find Chris is yet to be seen, because the episode ends with Chris, covered in Kaiju goo, running through A.R.G.U.S. to kiss the DC2 Milia Harcourt whom he thinks is the perfect opposite of the DCU’s Harcourt.

And so, Peacemaker has set itself up for a rollicking final three episodes of cross-dimensional hijinks and heartbreak. And, if my theories are proven true, there’s no telling what the DC2 has in store for our beloved characters.

Stray observations:

• In the DC Comics, Sasha Bordeuax first appeared in the Batman comics (Detective Comics #751), who worked as the head of Bruce Wayne’s personal security. Through a series of events that involved Maxwell Lord and an army of evil cyborgs called OMACs, which spread like a virus, she is impaled and transformed into a cyborg herself. She eventually betrays the other OMACs and uses an electromagnetic pulse to disable the army that was attempting to take over the Earth.

• In my previous review, I speculated about the quantum unfolding device being a “Mother Box,” which I think is connected to Rick Flag Sr.’s “greater purpose” that he alludes to in this episode. I can’t speculate as to what he wants the “Mother Box” specifically for, other than its advanced technological powers, including creating “Boom Tubes.” Still, it could be related to the upcoming events of the recently announced Man of Tomorrow film.

Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.