With a title like “Need I Say Door,” one would rightfully expect some elucidation concerning Peacemaker‘s primary source of interdimensional drama in this week’s episode. Sure enough, the DC Studios series finally concedes that the Quantum Closet in Auggie Smith’s (Robert Patrick) bedroom, since inherited by his only surviving son Christopher (John Cena), could use an explanation. For a season and a half, this cosmic armory functioned exactly as intended: an extra bit of sci-fi color to amp up a goofy and grisly action show. Tonight, during a cold-open flashback, that doorway got its origin story, and in true Peacemaker fashion, it was violent, dark, and oddly sad.
The story goes like this: One day, when Chris and Keith (David Denman) were but two mulleted ankle-biters, Auggie took them out hunting. Observing movement in the brush, he took his shot and hit an alien, who the Smiths found cowering next to a strange, shimmering case. Mere steps away from safety—that recognizable doorway, open to the expanse beyond—the alien begged for its life. Despite Chris’ vain attempt to stop his father (“Don’t!” is met with a backhand across the face), Auggie put the creature out of its misery and claimed his galactic loot.
It’s anti-revelation. This door remains just that, a contrivance that connects Chris to the pain he has since tried to drown with mayhem, booze, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s his portal to the past. Where it came from is secondary to where it leads him. More crucially, answers concerning the Happy Place Chris retreats to whenever reality gets to be too much of a bummer remain elusive. While series creator and writer James Gunn is proficient in connecting seemingly disparate dots to reveal a bigger, more dramatic picture, it’s still somewhat deflating to see the obvious genesis point for the doorway play out. Who else could build such a thing, if not aliens? “Tech guru Auggie” isn’t an option. As Chris explains to Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) later in the episode, his dad flunked out of tenth grade (hardly the mad-scientist type).
However, this flashback does open another door, and I’ll come back to it. In the meantime, episode director Peter Sollett brings Peacemaker to the present, where Agent Bordeaux (Sol Rodríguez) converges on the Smith residence flanked by Economos (Steve Agee), Judomaster (Nhut Le), Agent Fleury (Tim Meadows), Red St. Wild (Michael Rooker), and a host of jackbooted A.R.G.U.S. agents. After last week’s cliffhanger, this development seemed like it may lead to one hell of a showdown, considering Bordeaux had all but confirmed Chris’ illicit use of multiversal whatnots and Red was spoiling for a crack at Eagly. Naturally, this being the midway point in the season, the action is sidelined for additional inter-office bickering, where Economos and Judomaster reopen old wounds (clock Ginger Cool’s sudden dark side) and Fleury catches hell for a wink he used during a phone call with Bordeaux two episodes back.
This friction among agents gives Chris the seconds he needs to escape. Economos, miffed about his team up with Red (whom he calls “Captain Cultural Appropriation”), texts a jumbled warning to his friend, who promptly lams it with Eagly and his dad’s spangly space-purse in tow. The following moments are messy and frantic: Chris and Judomaster tangle in the woods, with Chris coming out on top (quite literally, to Judomaster’s dismay), while Economos knocks out Red before he can shoot Eagly out of the sky. His made-up scapegoat for this betrayal—a mysterious second eagle that swooped in to save Eagly—backfires, instead making Red believe he’s hunting “the eagle that rules over all eagles” (which, in a way, is true). Red doubles down on his desire to bag this primal eagle, which he claims will, in turn, purge America of all its “transgressions” against indigenous people. Economos remains skeptical.
Despite this week’s wheel-spinning, it’s nice to discover that “Need I Say Door” is a stealth showcase for John Economos. After informing Judomaster that he’d rather see him dead than munching Cheetos in his van, dinging Red in the head (thus opening the eagle-killer’s mystical “third eye,” which later manifests into his psychic GPS), and successfully subverting the A.R.G.U.S. sting at the Smith residence (stalling long enough for Chris to switch doorways, leaving Bordeaux with a tiny closet filled with old sweaters), Economos defends himself on two fronts. The first is against Bordeaux, who begins their sortie with “I’m not paid to put up with your shit.” (She is, in fact, explicitly paid to do that; A.R.G.U.S. needs John for his technical skills.) The second is against Fleury, who chooses this tense moment to call John “Ginger Cool” for the last time and gets a loogie to the face.
Back to the space-purse and its former owner. Since Auggie made him do it as a kid because he thought it might be dangerous, Chris is an old hand when it comes to using it to move the dimensional doorway from one point to another. It seems the White Dragon is used to having others do his dirty work; we also learn that Peacemaker’s array of helmets, and presumably the Dragon armor, were made by someone else. But who? “It’s… complicated,” Chris says. I’m willing to indulge Peacemaker another mystery, especially since Auggie’s tech-hoarding might be connected somehow to Chris’ alt-reality (after all, someone had to make those helmets, too), but it’s odd to see a show that manages its interpersonal drama, action, and comedy so adeptly be this clumsy with its lore. We hardly need a new mystery to keep us watching, yet there it is, leading us by the lapels when a simple “to be continued” would do.
More intriguing has been the fall of Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), whose nightly brawls with dangerous alphas seem to have a subconscious bent to them. Are these hulks meant to stand in for Chris, who killed Rick Flag Jr.? If so, does this mean that, despite the emotional brick walls around her, she was in love with Flag and resents Chris for his death? Or do they stand for Rick, who let himself get killed before she could admit that an Enchantress freak-out was worth their secret romance? Or is it some frustrating and unknowable third thing? Whatever the case, Harcourt is looking for a target along with her punishment, and as fate would have it, Rick Sr. knocks on her door to offer her one. “I’m thinking there may be a way for you to get in the good graces of the U.S. government,” the general says. Broke, angry, and exhausted, Harcourt accepts.
At Chris’ new hideout—Grandpa Smith’s cabin, stashed somewhere in the woods outside Evergreen—Peacemaker finally comes clean. He confesses to Ads what he’s been up to, how he discovered the portal in the first place, what he found when he crossed the barrier, and how, he believes, it’s better than the life he currently lives. Ads gets curious about this alternate reality, and Peacemaker, at long last, explores the ethics of his dubious double-dealing (but not before she posits an interesting theory that this alt-reality might be some kind of supernatural delusion). “However green the grass is over there, our biggest problems in life are the ones we carry within ourselves,” she tells her friend. “You belong here.” Chris isn’t convinced. Maybe, he reasons, some cosmic fluke swapped Peacemakers, where one got the good life while Chris is stuck here, a place of dead-ends, disappointments, and bad memories where he can’t “catch a fucking break.”
As Chris continues to ignore his problems, he blunders into the next shitstorm, leaving Ads with Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) to install a door over the portal to meet up with Harcourt. He has a question for her, and the answer will determine his next move. Doing the right thing at this point depends on the promise of Chris’ immediate happiness, something he feels he’s owed after a life of misery and murder. But doing right is becoming more complicated by the second. He’s already killed himself and disrupted one reality. Does he stay there and hide from his problems or remain in Earth-Prime and face the consequences of opening Pandora’s box in the first place? As Peacemaker shuffles to its next confrontation, Chris has plenty of time to reflect on his ultimate choice: a final stretch in Belle Reve or living a lie forever. Judging by that last look on his face, we know his decision is tethered to the one person he can’t stop chasing. She’s waiting for him. So is A.R.G.U.S.
Stray observations
- • I may be a Michigan transplant living in Chicago, but in my thirteen years here, I’ve received only a few winks and none of them has ever meant “we’re all in this together.”
- • It’s good to finally see Chris’ psychotic visions of his father from season one mentioned. It was probably a dropped plotline to make room for this season’s alternate-reality arc, but ignoring it completely would have been sloppy.
- • Chris to Eagly: “What happened?” I would have also accepted, “What they hey, dude?” (Plus, Eagly loving baloney is now canon.)
- • Red’s analysis of Eagly’s poop: “Hints of…cold cuts…and ‘tater chips.” (Rooker’s inventory of tasting notes in the post-credits is glorious.)
- • Bordeaux: “What’s your problem, Economos?” What a question!
- • Where will Chris and Harcourt’s risky rendezvous happen? Kupperberg Park, named, I assume, after Paul Kupperberg, a longtime DC writer who took over after Marv Wolfman’s run on Vigilante (which, fun fact, I’m currently reading).
