Peacemaker (2022) / YMMV

Adorkable:
- Vigilante. Sure he's an unhinged killer, but he's so socially awkward and enthusiastic about his job that it's hard not to find him endearing.
- Peacemaker, despite what he pulled in The Suicide Squad, also counts with the revelation that he was genuinely emotionally stunted by his upbringing and that he's aware of his own failings. It's weirdly endearing watching him repeatedly try and fail to interact with other people in a non-offensive manner out of genuine ignorance. Plus, it turns out he's quite the music enthusiast and a loving pet owner.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Was Peacemaker a really terrible person who changed as a result of the events of The Suicide Squad, or did he just have a reputation for being a worse person than he really was?
  - Peacemaker practically bragged about his willingness to kill men, women and children in the name of peace, but he shows clear remorse for killing Rick Flag, and he balks at shooting the Goff children. Was his claim always just a Badass Boast? Or was he changed by his experience in Corto Maltese?
  - Similarly, when people talk about Peacemaker being a racist, misogynistic sociopath, is it just bad publicity, or does it reflect Chris' character from before the events of The Suicide Squad? Given how much he looks up to his father, who is essentially a neo-nazi, was he simply parroting what his father taught him?
- Butterfly Murn says he dreads waking up to his host's memories every single day. Are the memories in question of all the heinous things real Murn had done in his career, or those which serve as a reminder that for all the terrible things real Murn had done he was still a person, capable of changing for the better?
- Did Auggie truly love Peacemaker's brother Keith, or is this just a lie he uses to keep Peacemaker subservient to him out of guilt for accidentally killing him? In the one full scene we have with the character, Keith expresses open disdain for the white power movement that Auggie champions, and many of the traits Auggie condemns in Peacemaker are ones that he inherited from Keith, such as a love of hair metal. Was Auggie just unaware of this, choosing to deliberately ignore it, or knew all along and didn't care since he never loved Keith to begin with?
- Goff's Motive Rant and the motives of the entire Butterfly conspiracy.
  - Is Goff a genuine Well-Intentioned Extremist aiming to prevent the avoidable destruction of her new home? Or was it a final lie to manipulate Peacemaker to her side, having seen his emotional instability first-hand?
  - Even assuming that everything about avoiding destruction was true, are her goals truly born out of a desire to protect humanity, or a selfish desire to protect her world and her people? Was saving humanity just a bonus? Later events at least prove that Judomaster was given the same information, and Goff willingly returns to Peacemaker's house after her defeat, if possibly just out of a desperate need for the honey he still possessed (it also being up to interpretation if any fondness for him was also a factor).
  - And even with all that information, she herself admits that her planet was partly destroyed from the selfish actions of populists and demagogues. Given the collapse of her previous planet, could she truly be trusted to take over Earth? Or does her assault on the police station and prison prove that she's easily distracted by threats to her authority, making her just as much a dangerous populist among the surviving Butterflies as the populists she feared from her home?
- Vigilante's near-instant recovery from the injuries he sustained during the final battle, while Harcourt requires a lengthy period of rehabilitation and physical therapy to recover, has resulted in some fans theorizing he has a Healing Factor but is too dumb to realize it.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: Peacemaker says you can't housetrain an eagle (not without stealing its soul). You can't housetrain birds. They only have the one sphincter (mammals have two) and can't control when they go. It happens when it happens.
Catharsis Factor:
- As unhinged as he may be, it's hard not to root for Vigilante as he strolls into prison with a Slasher Smile, insults several Aryan Brotherhood thugs, and delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle, all to remove a toxic influence from his friend's life.
- Though he may not have been happy about it, watching Peacemaker beat Auggie to a pulp and then put a bullet in his head is especially satisfying considering all the horrible things Auggie had done to him throughout his life. Funnily enough, in the next episode, Chris hallucinates Auggie and then "kills" him again, apparently because it's just so satisfying to see him die.
- After all she's put Task Force X through, Amanda Waller being completely blindsided by her own daughter exposing everything about Project Butterfly as well as the Task Force X program to the public is another well-deserved blow to the Wall.
Crosses the Line Twice: The show. It wouldn't be a James Gunn production if it didn't indulge in some Black Comedy.
- This exchange between Chris and Jamil, for example:
  Chris: If somebody's committing a crime?
  Jamil: Yes?
  Chris: Am I supposed to control what their ethnicity is?
- While Peacemaker converses with an imprisoned Auggie about his mission taking down the Butterflies, he compares them to "illegal aliens", which Auggie nods slightly approvingly to.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Some believe Adrian Chase to be autistic.
Esoteric Happy Ending: Although the first season ends on a bittersweet note, it's treated to be more on the sweet side of things than bitter. However, the Butterflies have already taken over the bodies of millions of people worldwide, many in positions of authority. Indicating that a lot of major political figures are going to drop dead in the oncoming weeks, leaving a lot of Fridge Horror in its wake. On top of that, Goff and the butterflies wiped out the Charlton Police Department, meaning who's going to patrol the streets?
Fanon: Peacemaker is commonly depicted in the fandom as someone who doesn’t wear underwear under his uniform, is a Home Nudist who will either wearing briefs or nothing at all, and Sleeps in the Nude, especially when some of these tropes has been partially shown to be canon.
- For the Going Commando trope, this one is purely fan speculation as on the one hand the audience has only ever seen him in either his costume or briefs, but on the other hand the audience has also never seen him change between the two. Given this and his overall Captain Patriotic theme, it is common to theorize that he started doing this trope when he discovered that the U.S. military started doing it in the 20th century, with him even now referring to underwear as “housewear”.
- For the Home Nudist trope, it is a known fact that he only wears briefs while at his home, with even going out into the forest on one occasion. However, one thing that is this trope is if a house guest starts to heckle him over his lack of clothes in his own home, he will pretend to give in to their demands and go to the other room to change into a “business suit”, when in actuality he is changing into his birthday suit and will refuse to put his briefs back on unless he gets an apology from them. Also when visiting or staying at someone else’s house, he will ask them if can change into his briefs and will accept if the owner says no as he respects a homeowner’s wishes just as he expects his houseguests to respect his own rules.
- For the Sleeps in the Nude trope, it is confirmed that he does this trope when one or multiple partners are in the bed with him. However, if he also does it when no else is in the bed with him is unknown as the closest example has him sitting on top of his bed wearing only briefs. Despite this, it is speculated that he only removes his briefs when he is under the covers to be respectful if he has houseguests, whether invited or not, unless someone starts to heckle him like the above example.
Friendly Fandoms: It has one with the Lobo webseries for both showcasing obscure DC characters in a brutal and profane manner. It helps that Dee Bradley Baker provided his vocal talents for both shows. Some fans are so enthusiastic about the two that they support Gunn as being suitable to make a Lobo project.
Genius Bonus: The license plate on the white supremacists' car is "14WRDS," referencing the Fourteen Words, a white supremacist slogan. Likewise, the pistol that Peacemaker picks up from one of the dead neo-Nazis to kill his father is a luger, the infamous sidearm of Nazi officers from WWII.
Harsher in Hindsight: Peacemaker's comments of the Flash being a "d-bag" while presenting to a classroom can be awkward to look at when it was revealed that Ezra Miller assaulted a couple inside of a karaoke bar in late March 2022, a month after the finale. And after this, Miller kept committing felony after felony, making Chris' assessment seem more and more prophetic.
He Really Can Act:
- John Cena had already showed his acting chops in The Suicide Squad, but he displays genuine pathos and vulnerability during the scene where Peacemaker cries in his bed, revealing how much he hates himself for killing Rick Flag and for constantly pushing away everyone with his dickish behavior.
- Steve Agee, who serves as comic relief for most of the show, gets a genuinely emotional scene where Economos admits that he dyes his beard due to his own insecurities, with this revelation even making Peacemaker feel guilty over mocking his appearance.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- At DC FanDome 2020, when interviewed about playing Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad, John Cena described his character as "a douchey Captain America". It may seem like an odd comparison at first, as Peacemaker's motives are less about America in particular and more about peace in general, but the finale of the first season of this show has Peacemaker fight with a shield, just like Cap.
- Peacemaker’s rant about how his enemies stay dead becomes hilarious when Black Adam (2022) ends up reconstructing the concept of not killing your enemies. Hell, the main villain's plan in that movie depended on him getting killed so he could get his power.
Love to Hate: Caspar Locke is a sociopathic mercenary who casually and sadistically murders innocent people, but Christopher Heyerdahl's magnificently creepy performance makes him a blast to watch.
Magnificent Bastard:
- Royland Goff, real name Eek Stack Ik Ik, led her people, the Butterflies, to Earth after her own world was destroyed. Seeing the same kind of corruption and demagoguery that destroyed her planet manifesting in humanity as well, Eek Stack Ik Ik decided to conquer the world in order to save it, and leads her people in an insidious, body-jacking invasion force to slowly take over America. Taking the body of a US Senator named Royland Goff, Eek Stack Ik Ik ends up genuinely bonding with Peacemaker after a period of captivity and—after breaking out, wiping out the local police precinct to the tune of Reckless Love's "Monster," and preparing to relocate the "cow" from which the Butterflies derive their food source—tries to reason with Peacemaker instead of fighting with him. Peacemaker is sincerely captivated by "Goff's" willpower and intentions, and even after he kills the cow, "Goff" holds nothing against him.
- Clemson Murn, real name Ik Nobe Llok, is a Butterfly who turned on his people after seeing "Goff's" designs for Earth. Taking over the body of a sociopathic mercenary, Murn becomes the taskmaster for Peacemaker and his team in taking down the Butterflies while simultaneously concealing from them his own alien origins. So efficient he takes even "Goff" off-guard, Murn fights to his last breath for humanity's survival and sacrifices himself to keep "Goff" away from them, telling them it's been an honor.
Memetic Mutation:
- Fuck you, Barry! ^explanation
- "What if Peacemaker in the finale of his show says, “Peacemaker, what a joke,” throws his helmet away, and wears Rick Flag's shirt in his honor."^explantation
Misaimed Fandom: Some of the fans of the "Zack Snyder era" of the DCEU who watched the show took Peacemaker's comments about Aquaman, Superman, and Wonder Woman at face value and accused the show of ruining them. That ignores that Peacemaker is very clearly an idiot who believes whatever he reads online regardless of whether or not it is true and that he is very clearly making up the story about Wonder Woman wholesale to make himself sound cool.
Moe: Eagly is strangely adorable, mostly due to its tendency to act more like a dog than an eagle.
Moral Event Horizon: At first, the Butterflies are portrayed somewhat ambiguously, and there are a few hints that they could be Good All Along. Goff even gets a few moments where she expresses seemingly genuine affection towards Peacemaker. However, it becomes abundantly clear that they are downright evil, and cross the event horizon when Goff possesses Song and unleashes an army of Butterflies on the entire police station, essentially killing them via Death of Personality, and with the exception of Murn Butterfly, makes them clearly beyond any redemption.
Narm Charm: When Economos reveals that he does dye his beard, his explanation of why he does would be pretty ridiculous in any other context. The scene, however, is executed genuinely and sympathetically enough that the audience actually ends up feeling sorry for the guy.
One-Scene Wonder: Aquaman and Flash make a brief cameo after the climax of season one, and their brief exchange in regards to the rumors about Aquaman fucking fish is widely regarded as one of the most memorable moments of the show.
Special Effect Failure: Superman's "cameo" can't hide the fact that he's a CGI construct framed in shadow. Note the unnatural positioning of the legs, and the fact that his cape doesn't float the way it did in his films.
Spiritual Adaptation:
- A comedy series about a Psychopathic Manchild with delusions of grandeur (and a troubled relationship with a parent) who's part of a spy team consisting of a no-nonsense Action Girl, a Big Fun woman, a bespectacled Butt-Monkey with a Bully and Wimp Pairing with the male lead, an Only Sane Man with his own mild eccentricities, who all work for a female Bad Boss. This is probably the closest we'll get to a live-action version of Archer.
- Being in a covert spec ops group meant to take on strange aliens in a town in Washington State while trying to avoid the attention of the police (or in Murn's case, get someone to infiltrate the town's police as a high-ranking officer) is an accurate live-action take on Delta Green.
- The plot line about insect-like parasites living among humans and behaving like monstrous zombies when threatened makes this a bit closer to This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It.
- Similarly, the plot of alien parasites living inside people's heads who have infiltrated all levels of government and society, being given away by and defeated by their reliance on a food source, and being opposed by a small group which includes a handsome white guy in the most visible role, his Plucky Comic Relief best friend with some form of Hidden Depths, a Blood Knight blonde Statuesque Stunner, a sensitive black woman, an alien who can pass as human, and a bird of prey makes this a better adaptation of Animorphs than the 90s series.
- If The Star-Spangled Bastard had a full-length series it would be this.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Song is an interesting character with a lot of room for development, but she's essentially killed and possessed by the Butterfly Queen before her character arc can really go anywhere. She doesn't even get to interact with the main cast outside of a brief scene.
- The same goes for Locke. He's a menacing, sociopathic mercenary who has a dark history with Murn and has a great dynamic with both Murn and Song, but he's killed and possessed by a Butterfly after only two episodes.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Using Adrian Chase as Vigilante means we will never see an adaptation of the Cult Classic 80s series, since Adrian underwent heavy Adaptational Comic Relief that removed all his pathos and grit. Many claim it would have been better if they've used Donald Fairchild, or even Adrian's brother Dorian.
Unexpected Character:
- Many people were rather surprised to see another live-action version of Adrian Chase, due to him being one of the more obscure characters in the DC comics history (with Greg Saunders being the more popular bearer of the Vigilante name), the last version of Adrian Chase not even bearing the Vigilante title (it was given to somebody else), and the relationship between Peacemaker and Vigilante being rather tenuous to say the least ^note.
- He’s only mentioned in a brief dialogue exchange in Episode 2, but this show confirms the existence of Bat-Mite in the DCEU.
- Likewise, Episode 4 confirms the existence of Matter-Eater Lad.
- It happens again in episode 5, where it’s revealed that at the beginning of his career, Peacemaker fought Kite Man.
- The gag reaches its apex in the final episode where it unexpectedly canonizes an A-lister, Green Arrow, in the DCEU... via one of Peacemaker's misinformed anecdotes about superhero hobbies (in this case, that he's supposedly a brony).
- If that wasn't enough, the final moments of the finale has an even bigger one with most of the Justice League (aside from Cyborg and Batman) appearing — albeit moments too late to actually help. While Superman and Wonder Woman are framed in shadow, Jason Momoa and Ezra Miller actually appear as their characters and have some banter, with Aquaman bemoaning the stupid rumor of him "fucking fish".
Visual Effects of Awesome: Eagly is all CGI, but many viewers were convinced it was a real trained eagle.

YMMV / Peacemaker (2022)

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