‘Peacemaker’ season 2, episode 4 recap: need I say door
Chris narrowly escapes ARGUS, while Emilia considers a new job prospect
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ANOTHER WEEK, another episode of Peacemaker. This week’s opener primes us with some backstory as to how Chris’ father, Auggie Smith, came into possession of the Unfolding Chamber. The pocket dimension continues to plague Chris’ chances of a life out of jail as he narrowly escapes ARGUS’ arrest. Meanwhile, Emilia is still struggling to find her feet, but jumps at the chance at an enticing job offer. But what will it cost her?
Below, we recap the happenings of the DC motley crew.
Read our recap on last week’s episode of Peacemaker season two here.
35 years ago . . .
Another flashback opens this week’s episode, taking us three and a half decades ago when Chris and Keith were children. Auggie takes his sons out to the woods to practice their hunting. Rustling in the bushes was an unlikely prey: a small grey alien looking as though it jumped out of a child’s drawing of an extraterrestrial life-form. The trigger-happy father gets two shots, the second utterly obliterating the alien’s skull. Clutched in its limp arms a half-moon shaped metal bag, which unfolds into the pocket dimension doorway.
More bickering, more nicknames
The most entertaining team in Peacemaker gets new faces. As the new ARGUS team heads to Chris’ with a warrant for his arrest, Economos is joined by Judomaster, Fleury, Bordeaux, and Kline, a rifle-wielding white man with a penchant for Native American paraphernalia. (Played by Michael Rooker, who starred as the blue-skinned Yondu Guardians of the Galaxy, another MCU defector to James Gunn’s DCU.) Economos takes a stab at Fleury’s game of nicknames, anointing Kline “Captain Cultural Appropriation”.
As they approach, Chris makes a run via the back door, Eagly flying away after him. Kline catches a glimpse of the “parrot” (according to Fleury) and is convinced he just encountered a “primal eagle”. Later that episode, he proves he isn’t a total kook: performing a ritual that enables him to astral project, following Eagly to Settlers’ Hill, Chris’ hideout.
Chris and Leota hide out at Settlers’ Hill
Leota seems to be the only Task Force X member finding her feet this season. She’s setting herself up with her freelance security business; she makes it official with business cards and takes out an ad space in a magazine. Honestly, Chris and the rest of Task Force X are holding her back. Chris messages her in a panic that ARGUS is at his door and he needs a getaway ride. He escapes, only just, after Judomaster puts up a fight.
Heading to Settlers’ Hill, where his grandfather’s old cabin is, Chris debriefs her on the idyllic alternate universe, the other Emilia, and the fact that he murdered his other self. And remember how that alien made the Unfolding Chamber into a bag? Chris took it with him to Settlers’ Hill, unfolding it there and out of his house just as Bordeaux and ARGUS opens the door. They’re left wondering why Chris would password lock a closet with his jackets and jumpers.
Rick Flag Sr enlists Emilia Harcourt
Flag Sr’s new ARGUS team is a certified flop after they failed to apprehend Chris. Having Economos as an insider mole proved especially disastrous – the man is still reckoning with his crisis of conscience. Taking it up a notch, he wants to hit closer to home, now with his eyes on enlisting Emilia. (We get another brief shot of her in a neon-lit alleyway fighting some dude, leaving her bloody-mouthed.)
Paying her a visit at her apartment, the line everyone recites to excuse Chris of murdering Flag Jr was that he was acting under Amanda Waller’s orders. It obviously peeves Flag Sr every time he hears this, who reasons that they all seemed to disobey the former director when she went too far. “I know you miss him,” he tells her, kind of weird for a father to say to his son’s fling.
Anyway, to get under her skin and out from under the influence of Waller’s administration, he reveals that it was Waller who black-booked Emilia from applying to any government intelligence agency. She needed someone to take the fall after Leota outed her own mother on TV. Want back in on the good graces of the US government? Emilia will do anything, including betray Chris. The woman has the loyalty of a chocolate éclair. The new plan is now to draw Chris out from Settlers’ Hill to Emilia’s apartment for a chat/distraction, with Flag Sr, Fleury, Bordeaux and all the rest waiting in ambush. Meanwhile, Kline is flying high in the astral plane, locking in on the location of the Unfolding Chamber.
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