Ever since Christopher Smith (John Cena) set foot in the alternate reality adjacent to his own—where his brother Keith (David Denman) and father (Robert Patrick) are alive and where Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) can tolerate his presence for longer than five consecutive seconds—there’s been the sense that this happy place was too good to be true. For a man whose life has been one long misery parade since the 11th Street Kids saved the world from the Butterfly invasion last season, Chris has been eager to slap on blinders and call this apparent paradise home. Why ask questions when happiness is staring you in the face? The episode’s title puts it best: “Ignorance Is Chris.”
James Gunn wastes no time disabusing the illusion. Before the opening titles, Foxy Shazam pipes in over a photo of Chris, August, and Keith celebrating their post-kaiju victory from last week with a group of Evergreen’s grateful locals. Alt-Emilia (Jennifer Holland) catches their smiles for posterity, but in a wild fourth-wall break, we see them melt into fleshy smears. Whatever this alt-reality is, it isn’t normal. In fact, Chris, Harcourt, Economos (Steve Agee), and poor Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) discover it’s downright terrifying—and Gunn, who returns to the director’s chair this week, makes it clear that “normal” is about to be ripped to shreds.
Meanwhile, on Earth-Prime, Harcourt, Ads, Economos, and Adrian Chase, a.k.a. Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), roll up to Adrian’s secret lair. “Just so you know, my mom can be a total be-atch,” Adrian warns before they step inside. Instead of a dank hideout (that comes later), they find quaint domesticity: a warm, sunlit kitchen, kitschy decor (note the ceramic pig collection), and vinyl tablecloths—truly a den of retributive justice. Ma Vigilante (Taylor St. Clair) is a delight: “Adrian doesn’t bring his friends around very often—not since the D&D group broke up!” (She informs Ads that she joined her son’s campaign as a “40th level cutpurse.” Just adorable.)
Anyway, after an awkward revelation—Adrian’s been telling his momma that Harcourt is his “slutty” girlfriend—the Kids enter Vigilante’s den, where mountains of money and drugs sit there like unappreciated trophies. “Just last week, you told me you were broke and asked me to pay for your breakfast!” Adebayo says, stunned by the sheer tonnage of cash on display. Vigilante, who seems to have finally, mercifully, shifted back into season-one maniac mode, retorts: “[This is] blood money! Are you crazy?” All that white powder sitting around becomes a problem once Ads resets the dimensional doorway in Vig’s Beanie Baby closet. Soon, the path to the quantum nexus that bridges their reality to Chris’ (along with those of about ninety-seven others) bursts with dimensional energy, making it snow all over the place. Still, the dimensional portal is live, and the gang is back on mission.
What a relief it is to have Peacemaker feel like Peacemaker again. A mission of great importance, handled by fuck-ups and dweebs—it’s season one all over again, with all the surprise character beats, non-sequiturs, and unintended consequences that made it so memorable. Season two has dealt with heavier themes and explored the detritus of failed lives. It’s been consistently enjoyable but difficult to ignore that the episodes building to this dimensional hop have been a shuffle where the series used to strut. This week struts.
Now we pivot to A.R.G.U.S., where Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) stews. His tenure as director has so far been a disaster. Shifting from avenging his son to securing Chris’ cosmic closet for national (nay, global!) security, Flag has failed at everything he’s done. Now, Chris is out of his jurisdiction, and not one, not two, but three of his agents—Harcourt, Economos, and Judomaster (Nhut Le)—are all MIA. What he needs this late in the game, with the clock running out on the season and Peacemaker still at large, is a ringer. Desperation brings him to Belle Reve, where he recruits just that. “What is the United States government willing to give me to stop this clown?” Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) asks. “A chance at redemption,” the director replies. After everything Lex got up to in Superman, freedom is totally off the table, but Luthor leans in anyway. “I’m listening,” the fallen one says.
As exciting as it is to see him pop up in Peacemaker (an appearance I can safely presume is meant to tee up Gunn’s next Super-film, Man Of Tomorrow), I must stick a pin in Lex and return to the increasingly untenable situation in Happy Land. Harcourt, exploring the alt-Smith residence in her usual black tank top, leather jacket, and pants, a far cry from her doppelgänger’s cheery Stepfordian skirts and blouses, risks blowing their cover the minute Keith enters the scene. His sudden appearance puts her in improv mode (not her strongest suit) and Economos into a retching fit. (Evidently, weird things, like seeing a person who is supposed to be dead be alive instead, make him pukey.) Soon, she’s riding with Keith to A.R.G.U.S. as her alt-self and Chris snuggle in bed elsewhere in icky post-coital bliss. Later, Gunn makes a pointed needle drop: Helloween’s “Forever And One (Neverland),” hammering the refrain “Your lies…your lies!” as Chris gets a good look at himself in the mirror. Deep down, under his mushy dreams, he knows he’s recklessly betrayed a stranger’s blind devotion, an act that comes from something rotten inside him.
Before I dig into the utter wrongness attached to Chris’s happiness, let me enjoy the cosmic serendipity of Vigilante getting his No Way Home moment. Adrian, obsessed with meeting his doppelgänger, sneaks into his alt-self’s lair (his keys improbably allow him entry), where the boys indulge a stab at the Spider-Man pointing meme. (It seems Marvel endures in every dimension.) One Stroma is great. Two just might make my heart explode. The twin Vigs share a moment of joy amongst themselves, and it’s a delight to see—at least, until Gunn begins to tighten his noose.
And then it’s back to alt-A.R.G.U.S., where Chris and Harcourt finally have their long-awaited heart-to-heart, but not before the agency’s dogs sniff out Vigilante’s nose candy powdered all over Harcourt’s jacket. Locked away in a security room, they hash out everything wrong in their lives (at least since that “boat” incident that occurred between seasons), where Gunn’s knack for writing hard-luck cases with fragile hearts sings. “I know you don’t hate me,” Chris says. Harcourt: “I know you know I don’t.” But knowing is different from saying, and Chris, bonehead that he is, needs to hear how she feels. Holland and Cena are terrific in this scene, especially Holland, who finally rips open the armor Harcourt has built over time to reveal the agony of emotions she’s held onto underneath. “I’m a fucking nightmare!” she says to Chris, “I don’t have access to my feelings like you do.” The big lug loves her regardless, but leaving this utopia, a world where his family is intact and his heart is full, still feels impossible.
“Ignorance Is Chris” makes the choice easy for him. Harcourt, sharp-eyed as ever, takes note of what Chris has so far been unable to see: The world around them is too pristine, too… white. “I haven’t seen a single person of color since I’ve been here,” she observes—though not as quickly as Ads, who, as she goes for a walk after being cooped up with Economos at the Smiths, discovers the truth of Happy Land: It’s Earth-X, the dimension where the Nazis won World War II and the world with it. Naturally, given his upbringing and current emotional tunnel vision, Chris didn’t notice that the dreamscape he embraced was just fascism with a smile. (His rose-tinted glasses don’t see race, evidently.) So, as Ads runs for her life, Peacemaker pulls open the curtain on Chris’ home away from reality, siccing the Nazi citizenry of Evergreen on the 11th Street Kids, paradise forever lost.
Stray observations
- • How did a goober like Vigilante keep his identity secret from A.R.G.U.S. this entire time?
- • New all-timer line: “I have fucking cocaine all over me!”
- • “Reverse-Peacemaker.” Dammit, that’s a moniker so good I’m jealous it’s not mine.
- • Among Harcourt’s many discoveries is the humdinger that Mick Jagger is the frontman for the Beatles in Earth-X.
- • Van Kull is, obviously, another DCU prison for super-baddies. It first popped up in The Power Company: Bork volume 1 by Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett.
- • For an idea of what Superman might be like on Earth-X, check out Mastermen, the one-shot by Grant Morrison and Jim Lee published during DC’s Multiversity event.
- • The way all the white folks pointed at Ads with their mouths agape was, to me at least, reminiscent of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. If that was the intention, Gunn nailed it.
