Peacemaker season 2: The Team Empire Take

0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt. Welcome to the latest in our series of spoiler special podcasts and this one is dedicated to Peacemaker Season 2. Season 2 of James Gunn's Peacemaker. All eight episodes have now finished. They're available to watch on Sky in the UK, if that is your bag. And, well, Max, HBO, what do they call it these days? Good question. No, it was HBO Max, then it became just Max, and now it is HBO Max again. So they're having a bit of an identity crisis. Amazing. As indeed is Chris Smith. Oh, my word, in Peacemaker Season 2. And joining me to discuss this over the next 50, 55 minutes or so, two colleagues of such lethal cunning james dyer you've already heard hello and i'm on woman you have not hello now you have uh welcome welcome welcome guys um so a lot to talk about with this series or slash season of peacemaker and let's start with overall thoughts shall we i'm on let's I wrote the Empire review when I saw the first five.

1:29I gave it four stars. I commented at the time that the only reason I'm giving it four stars is that I haven't seen the full season yet. And if it maintained the quality of the first five episodes, I was like, this could be a five-star season. I have now seen all eight episodes. It is not a five-star season. The first six episodes, again, I said I think were really, really good. The last two episodes soured me on the season overall a little bit. I felt they were rushed. I felt they left a lot of meat on the bone, especially when it comes to everything that happened in Nazi world. And while the personal journey and the personal arc of Peacemaker is, I think, pretty well done on the whole, the ensemble is not very well used and they could have used a lot more TLC that would have improved the season overall for me.

2:30And we will get into that, I'm sure, as the podcast goes on.

2:34Chris Hewitt:Listen, if they had called that alternate Earth Nazi world, I think even Chris might have caught on to it eventually, but he did miss the giant picture of Adolf Hitler. I missed it too, but we'll talk about why. Well, we weren't showing it until Harcourt says it, pointed out but nevertheless had he come welcome to nazi world i think even then he might have gone there's something different about this place uh jimbo yes did you like the series season i can't i'm sorry i'm british fuck it i'm saying series did you like the series so this was reviewed on pilot when i was not on pilot uh boydy and k review this with steph and uh they were very dismissive besmirching if you will of my beloved peacemaker and i was having none of it so i came back on to address this injustice and fight for peacemaker a show that i love and say how great it was and how much i was enjoying as amon said the first five episodes then i saw the rest of it and i was forced to climb down and offer them an official apology because it's not a good season of the show i'm sorry it's bad and and it starts so well but i think what it starts with is all potential like it's lots of setups but none of those setups ever get resolved.

3:47None of the ideas ever really cross over or feed into each other. The interesting things are never really explored. They're always shut down. And it had, to me, a feeling of like crazy improv. Like Gunn and Co would get in the studio and go, so right, new episode. What should we do this week? And it's just like a new idea. It's quite fractured and disjointed. And obviously we will, I'm sure, get to talking about the finale. But that was spectacularly disappointing. So yeah, it was a real downer for me by the time I got to the end of it. I was very disappointed.

4:15Chris Hewitt:Okay, that's really interesting. I think I think I'm somewhere in the middle of you two guys. I love the first season. I think it's absolutely incredible. It was funny and original and inventive and had great action sequences and great character work as well and made you feel something for this lunkhead who was, even though he's played by John Cena in Guns, The Suicide Squad, he was detestable and he did a horrible, horrible thing and he killed Rick Flagg. And even though my relationship with the actor Joel Kinnaman has been well documented on this podcast, same relationship my feelings towards that actor I should have been punching the air in triumph at that moment but I wasn't because he actually you know I'm not going to admit this on a podcast but he is a good actor and I'm basically just holding Robocop against him forever but that show was so great for me I mean it had flaws absolutely up the wazoo but it was so bold and so inventive I thought this is this is absolutely wonderful and I was really really looking forward to season two And it started strong, it started real strong, the idea of the alternate dimension of Chris Smith's identity crisis, finding his dead brother Keith alive in what we later find out to be Nazi world.

5:30Chris Hewitt:Those are all great emotional hooks that you can get into. But there were then little things that began to irk and little things that began to not work quite as well. Michael Rooker coming into the show as a character who is so utterly inconsequential that Chris Smith doesn't even know he exists. There's three episodes of Michael Rooker tormenting and trying to kill Eagly and then being killed by Eagly and it doesn't seem to affect the show one jot. You could have excised that completely. I was like, okay, I'm not so sure about this. There's little bumps along the road. And then I felt that the finale was very disappointing.

6:07Chris Hewitt:I thought it was rushed. I thought it was muddled. I thought it was hurried. and I thought it was sloppy as well. It's been pretty widely panned, I think. People are very upset about it. Especially as that's pretty much the end of the show, right? So it's quite egregious. Certainly, as we know, Sagan has said there's not going to be a Peacemaker season three, but clearly Peacemaker is, I would imagine, going to be a major character going forward. Chris Smith will return. Chris Smith will return. He will definitely return in Man of Tomorrow. I mean, might as well get into it now in terms of what it's setting up.

6:37So Salvation, which is where Chris is left, the end of the season uh in the comics there's a comics called uh salvation run which is a precursor to final crisis um where villains have been dumped by task force sets like joker and luther um by um wall and task force sets they've dumped them into salvation what they don't know is that salvation is a training ground for parademons which are of course the legions of dark side. Oh, not dark side. So that looks to be where things are headed. And if that is true, then the images which James Gunn used to tease Man of Tomorrow, which some of which indicated Luthor and Superman teaming up, that might be the thing to get them to team up.

7:21Chris Hewitt:Yeah. But do we think that the salvation is going to end up? Superman's going to end up there? That Rick Flagg and Luthor are going to try and banish Superman? Because haven't we seen that storyline already play out in Superman? or is Luther going to end up there and then have to bust his way out with the aid of Chris Smith and maybe Superman there's potential rich fertile ground there but I'm just slightly worried about the repetitive nature already in the DCU of Superman was dedicated to getting Superman Superman the movie was dedicated to getting Superman the Superman to an interdimensional prison and then that ceased to exist and then this entire season I was wondering what the overall point, what the arc of this season is, who the bad guy is, what the point is ultimately.

8:08Chris Hewitt:And it seems to be we went through a lot of hoops to get to exactly where we were in Superman. Yeah. In part because Vic Flagg has had a massive personality change. Personality change. Hair, hair. Yeah. Hair, hair, color change. Personality change. The fact that they call out the fact that he has gone from opposing Luthor to being with Luthor doesn't make it better or make that... Lampshading, I believe it's called. Make that heel change. I know that he has always had an out for Peacemaker, but his aloofness to his men and to many other things that happened in the last two episodes especially felt incongruent with what we've come to know.

8:55Chris Hewitt:I don't know that the Rick Flagg senior, who's at the beginning of the show would be so blasé about sending lambs to the slaughter into those various worlds. And we get to see that guy, I can't remember the character's name, but the one who dies horribly in the imp world. Yeah. It's just god-awful. And Rick Flagg is, I guess, fiddling while Rome burns at that point. But is that the overall arc of the show for you, Jimbo? That whilst we were all focused on Nazi world and Chris's emotional connection to Keith and his dad who turns out in this world not to be a Nazi. And well, he's... He's got Nazi remorse.

9:40Chris Hewitt:But he's not as bad as he was in this world. So we were all fixated on that. We were all fixated to a lesser degree, in my case, on the love story between Chris and Harcourt. And then there didn't seem to be an overall villain. there didn't seem to be an overall point that we were heading towards there's no final battle there's no sense like in the last season where they end up fighting that giant alien and again of course there's a reveal there but here it seemed to be Flag all along that you know was hiding in plain sight as the overall baddie of this season but did that work for you? I'm not even sure, I mean look, perhaps I'm being uncharitable it genuinely feels to me like if someone had told me oh yeah this was this was a 40 episode season and they just had to lose most of the episodes and just cobble together a story from what they had in the cutting room floor I would believe it because it gives that impression like I'm not sure I would love to know when Gunn sat down like what the goal of this season was what are you trying to do with it like are you just trying to set up the Salvation Place is that your goal?

10:45because if so there were much better ways of doing that were you actually trying to do interesting things with the character because there are moments there are hints of that we see more of Chris It's like, you know, the Chris Harcourt thing may or may not work entirely, but I like that we see that side of Chris, and he's less of a caricature, and he's more of a fleshed-out human being, and he has a, you know, a human side to him. I mean, he is a punchline, but he's also a man, and I actually like seeing the human side of Peacemaker. What about the Chris Harcourt stuff didn't work for you? Because I thought it was pretty well done.

11:14It's a good question. I maybe just, I'm not really feeling it between the two of them. and the way it was kind of handled, it was quite, I like that Harcourt is clearly damaged and that she clearly has an affection for him and when she leaves them to go and get him from the other dimension, I actually thought that was really lovely. We're going to bring him back. We're going to bring him back. That was great. It was more the kind of latter episode sort of like, let's go on a date stuff. I was just like, I don't know what show this is from. It's not this one and that just didn't feel, there wasn't a realism to that.

11:48I didn't buy it at all. so I struggled with that a little bit

11:51Chris Hewitt:there's a great scene in I think it's episode 6 when she goes when Amelia goes in to rescue him from Nazi world and it's before I think that she's said to him there's a fucking giant painted of Adolf Hitler I've seen that is this when she's in her cell? yeah she says I'm a fucking nightmare Chris and Jennifer Holland at that moment is really really great and she's solid all the way through the season absolutely But I don't know. It feels to me a little bit like Gunn is trying to force that to be a relationship rather than it being in an organic relationship. And I don't know that John Cena, who, again, is terrific in the show, absolutely terrific, when the show allows him to be.

12:31Chris Hewitt:Because I actually think the Peacemaker's not in this season that much. There's huge swathes of episodes where he goes missing. I think that they don't have a lot of natural chemistry. I don't think we're talking Chris Pratt's Zoe Zaldana in Guardians here, for example, where you can just feel there's something fizzing between those two guys. It's a tiny bit forced. A little bit. But still, that scene I thought was terrific. But you can feel that the show is pushing them towards a relationship and a love story that I don't entirely feel that it warrants. But it slows things down. For me, there are other love stories within the 11th Street Kids.

13:16Chris Hewitt:You know, the platonic love story, if you will, between Ads and Chris. I'd love to see that explored in a little bit more depth. I'd love to see just exactly what Adrian's deal is. And I feel that if there is one, for me, huge overarching flaw of the season, again, I think it's sloppy and unfocused at times, is that the other characters are not utterly, not completely, but I think severely neglected. Adrian was maybe the MVP of the first season. Freddy Stroma is hilarious as vigilante. And he gets nothing to do here apart from a redundant riff about, hey, I've been reading about manta ray facts.

14:03Chris Hewitt:Ask me about manta rays. Ask me about crocodiles. And of course he gets it wrong because he's an idiot. and he gets nothing to do until episode 7 where he gets a little bit of stuff with himself and then it's weirdly a show that is repercussion free I know this is a big thing for you right you know in previous sports especially we talked about this an awful lot the end of episode 7 where they come out of Nazi world is precipitated by Adrian psychotically killing Robert Patrick's character based entirely and a misconception and a misunderstanding and that doesn't get interrogated at all yeah that's interesting to me and I just feel that you could have drilled down into those characters and into those consequences a little bit more yeah I fully agree with that the finale it felt very weird to me that I need to go re-watch it but like did anyone even bring up Nazi World in the finale once no that is so very strange to me apart from the fact that obviously they had come out of the dimensional portal and they had access to the doors.

15:10Chris Hewitt:But it felt like last week's episode, the event that hadn't even happened and suddenly Harcourt's back at Argus and she's now part of the team going into the different worlds. I was trying to figure out what the explanation for that was and maybe Rick Flag Sr. is punishing Harcourt by having her lead very dangerous expeditions into these other worlds. But if that's the case, you need to make that semi-explicit, if not fully explicit, the fact that they don't was very, very strange to me. What you were saying about the other members of the ensemble not really having arcs, I think was exemplified by Economos in episode eight.

15:50He's just doing that distraction, which is very much, that distraction is very an open view of everything.

15:57Chris Hewitt:He's turning around. He's trying to distract him and then turning around to his teammates going, it's not working, guys. And then he turns around and does a little bit more distracting. Yeah, that felt very weird. And even the arcs, which you can kind of sense were there, we could have done with more. We could have done with more of Sacha Bordeaux and her turn to the good side. Because it came out of nowhere. It came out of nowhere. We could have done with more of Flory, who does get some funny moments, also going to the good side. We see it in subtle moments where they've noticed Rick Flag Sr.

16:28may be up to no good. I think Flory has that moment. I can't remember what episode it was, when Economist puts that Chris has been arrested into the computer system. Yes. I think he said it was good that you did that. I think it was episode five, maybe. So you get a little moments, but that's too subtle with Flory. We could have just done with more of a lot of things, and we talked about this a little bit, but ads in her relationship, it's a really good scene in that finale, and Danielle Brooks is a star.

17:00Chris Hewitt:Yeah. but we get so little run up to that massive scene. Like the only other time you see that character is in episode one. I'd almost forgotten about her until Ads goes back. I think there's another episode where Ads goes back home and she's in, but that's very, very brief. Yeah. Very brief. I just could have done with more for a lot of people. And in isolation, that Michael Rooker stuff was fine and entertaining to me. But when you have all these characters who are underserved, You've got to exercise that and give that screen time to these guys to really build them out more. Because it doesn't go anywhere.

17:33Chris Hewitt:I mean, there's a whole idea with the Michael Rooker character. A, he dies, and Chris doesn't even know he's existed, which is actually probably a very James Gunn thing to do. But the whole idea of that, that he discovers that Eagly is the prime eagle and the eagle to end all eagles, that doesn't pay off. It doesn't go anywhere. it's nonsense and it's not funny like it just it is just it's burning screen time with something that's quite self-indulgent I don't know why I don't know why that was I feel like people really liked Eagly in season one yeah I love Eagly I don't think this was I guess you're right it's like a weird little Eagly subplot so he has a little bit more to do but I don't think we needed that I think involve Eagly in the main adventure with the main characters that's what we want to see him do I remember reading a comment section after I think it was the AV Club after the review of one of the episodes.

18:27Chris Hewitt:I think it might have been the one with which Ruger's character, whose name I can't even remember, gets killed. Something sent cloud. Yeah. And someone was going, don't worry, he'll be back in Nazi world. Although they didn't call it Nazi world at the time. He'll be back in the alternate dimension. There's no way a character, that's going to pay off. Don't you worry. He's going to show up and he's going to be, and it's going to be Eagly and it's going to be something where we find out that Eagly, this Eagly is actually the Eagly from the other dimension who has followed other Chris out unbeknownst to us and swapped places with Eagly and that's why he's more powerful and that's why he seems to be a little bit more sentient than the previous don't you worry James Gunn's three steps ahead of us and it turns out that he wasn't interested in exploring any of that stuff which is interesting yeah like to be a little bit more positive yeah because I enjoyed every episode with the exception of the finale so yeah let's be more positive a big reason why the first six episodes worked for me like we've had a lot of multiversal storytelling miss after miss but again the personal nature of Christopher Smith's arc and what that means for him to find his alternate self who at least initially it seems is living like his dream life where all his worst mistakes haven't happened that was rich fertile ground and it was explored to a point I think again once it's revealed that they're in Lancie World it undercuts a lot of what they built up because they're immediately like okay we gotta go which takes away a lot from the decision that Chris would have had to make in terms of do I go back with my friends or do I stay here and that undercuts a lot but the build up to that I was fully invested in and as we said John Cena was fantastic maybe back and forth a little bit too much and manipulating Chris to the point where he decides to leave for good and go to what turned out to be Nazi world.

20:26Chris Hewitt:And I don't think we spent enough time there. I don't think we spent enough time with Keith. And I don't think we spent enough time with Robert Patrick. Jimbo to the point where in episode seven, when there's something like that reversal with White Dragon, his blue dragon over there, right? In that one. And it turns out actually to be not as horrible as you think. And, you know, he actually has some sympathy towards this Chris, even though this Chris killed his Chris. And then he's killed. He is. And I just feel like we needed another, maybe another episode, or certainly a little bit more bonding time with those two characters, and with Keith as well, who is left on the board.

21:03He is, and you can only assume that he's going to be deployed at some point somewhere else, because otherwise, why would you? But again, all of that feels not just unresolved, but unexplored, really. It was very unsatisfying, because like I'm on, I thought there's really interesting things being set up. and then they all just fall down. None of them really pay off. And so by the time they get to the end of the series, you just feel incredibly short-changed and frustrated, especially because the entire final episode feels like it's just some random side quest bolt-on, which has no relevance to anything else and crucially isn't very interesting.

21:37And I was really, really just maddened by that. And if you've resolved all your primary storylines to satisfaction, a lot of shows do this in the penultimate episode. They wrap up the season and then the final season essentially tees up the next one. Sorry, they do that in the final episode and the final episode they tee up the next season. This, A, isn't getting another season and B, it didn't wrap all the stuff up satisfactorily and actually it could have used another episode to explore those things properly. So I think those are the reasons why I was grinding my teeth in fury.

22:07Chris Hewitt:Yeah, because most shows do. They barrel towards a climax whether it is in the final episode as you say or the final episode. You get a sense of what the stakes are. I didn't really get a sense of what the stakes were here. Okay, we got Chris back. Now what? I mean, I guess part of the stakes was the interdimensional portal and sort of who's going to have control of that. And obviously that's going to have a big part to play in the DCEU going forward. But, you know, as soon as they get back, Chris hands it over and that's that. Yeah, it's interesting. On that point, though, just on that point, and obviously my feelings about Superman are well documented so we're not going to go into that here but genuinely do we feel that as the DCU begins as it starts that introducing multiverses on day one is a good idea do you not run the risk of it instantly having quite muddy storytelling whereas actually and this is kind of one of my main criticisms of Superman Superman is a very simple story at heart it's very accessible, it's very easy It has a very clearly delineated structure to it.

23:18And Gunn's interpretation of that and Gunn's DCU seems to be extremely nerd-niche, lore-heavy stuff. On the nerd-niche, lore-heavy stuff, we need to talk about Checkmate and how that comes about. I was not very good. But in terms of your wider question, it just depends on how it's used. like you can make a purposeful story with clearly well-defined arcs including multiverses it just depends on sort of how you use it i mean everything i've read all at once obviously that's not a sort of superverse thing but that's the thing with lots of multiverses and look at what they do whether because they had the clarity of storytelling this season didn't quite have that as a whole to checkmate it felt like the feeling that i got from it was remember in falcon and the winter soldier when Zemo puts on a purple mask out of nowhere that is essentially what this checkmate thing was nobody has mentioned chess at any point in the season nobody has mentioned chess pieces nobody has talked about like it's just we we we know it's because we're complex but does anybody else like where has this come from and no it was it was totally baffling to me because

24:36Chris Hewitt:the whole thing happens in a montage at the end of the episode so everyone gets together so Sasha Bordeaux uh the Tim Meadows character yeah you know they they're they're sort of seduced to the light side in the course of that episode uh and then of course you have the 11th street kids and the whole thing towards the end of that that final episode they're going we're going to make a stand we're going to make a stand we're going to stand up for what's right and I was expecting them to go for it. I was expecting them to maybe try and either take over Argus or take down Flagg. What I didn't expect them to do was set up their own business.

25:13Chris Hewitt:That's not, that wasn't for me. The great demonstration of strength and defiance that I wanted. We've taken out a small business loan, we've rented some office space, and god damn it! The Human Torch was denied a bank loan, but thankfully we were not. Again, it's like, I mean, I guess there is a world where there was a happy ending and that was it, right? And they should have ended the larger episode there and had everything else to be epilogue after the credits. They shouldn't have had that. Including Crispy and thrown into the Salvation. No, they should have ended so the episode ends when they're walking out checkmate, you know, freeze frame, checkmate, credits, and then do all that stuff after the epilogue.

25:56But as I... After the credits, Rana.

25:57Chris Hewitt:I get that, but is even that satisfying? Because they haven't stuck it to the bad guys. They've just opened a startup that's liable to close. I mean, the season opens with sort of Az hasn't got a job, Harcourt hasn't got a job. Yeah. They are all gainfully employed at this point. Yeah, but would you trust Adrian with a small business? Adrian is with his friends who sort of will help him and ground him somewhat. He's going to kill so many customers. I don't know. I think it was slightly, maybe not even slightly ill-conceived. Is there a potential James Gunn overwork, overstretching problem? I mean, I think Superman did pretty well.

26:46Chris Hewitt:The box office was pretty well received critically, not entirely. In this room. I just think generally, but I think there are people who really like it. There are, yes. And there are people who don't like it. Indeed. I think it's fair to say that it's a flawed movie that is not a knock out of the park home run. I think that's probably fair to say. And despite the brilliance of Peacemaker season one, I think that it's also safe to say that of Peacemaker season two. Is there a sense that maybe he's overstretching himself a little bit? Are the screenplays and the scripts therefore beginning to suffer?

27:23Is it that he's overstretched or is it that he's unsupervised? Because I love James Gunn. I think he's fantastic. But I do think he is a guy who has a million brilliant ideas and probably like 50 of them are crazy. And he gets reined in. I think he probably goes to like 110 and they pull him back to 100 maybe. And I think maybe that's when he's at his best. I guess my concern from Superman and from this second season is that now he is his own boss. and everything he does essentially gets signed off because it is his own work. That's my concern, is that this is all going in slightly ill-advised directions for me, personally.

28:02Chris Hewitt:I know he's talked about Peter Safran, who obviously is co-headed at DC Films. He said that Peter Safran did have some notes and did change some things in the finale. But I do worry about that oversight in general. Who is going to say no to James Gunn? If he goes, great idea, guys. I'm going to have an alternate dimension and it's going to be Nazis and it's going to be brilliant and then that just wraps up and then we go somewhere completely different than the final episode. Do you need someone to go, no, maybe that's just it. That's your note. But like studio interference is rarely positive, right?

28:38Chris Hewitt:But not studio interference, but like someone in this structure who can actually say... Having another person in the room to kind of be the gun to piss on your chips occasionally and just say, this is great, but let's maybe just, maybe just, you know, contain it slightly. you can be Ross vibes right now with this someone should do the Ross thing with the Phoenix game a little bit lower just a little bit I mean he's still capable of brilliance there's absolutely no question about that but I just worry that the first season of this crucially was within a larger structure that he didn't have overall control over and the second season he had complete carte blanche to do what he wanted and the difference between those two seasons structurally and from a quality point of view are night and day now it's not 100 % necessary that that's the reason why but it absolutely could be.