“Peacemaker” Episode 7 Review
Director James Gunn put on an all-out battle with Peacemaker (John Cena), Vigilante (Freddie Stroma) and John Economos (Steve Agee) going against The White Dragon (Robert Patrick) and his legion of white supremacists.
To start the episode off, the audience goes into a young Peacemaker’s past where they’ll learn why he and his father’s relationship soured.
There is heavy metal/rock music blaring in the background of the scene and the camera pans to see two children, Peacemaker and his brother, bonding over the music. His brother tells Peacemaker this is what good music is until they are called outside.
The two leave the trailer to be seen in a trailer park. The boys run-up to their father, The White Dragon, who is surrounded by a crowd and forces the boys to bare-knuckle box one another. The boys are smiling and enjoying the routine fight that pleases the crowd.
Bloodied, Peacemaker lands the knockout punch on his brother; but the way his brother either lands funny or is hit weirdly, it turned out to be a killing blow. From that point on, the audience knows why his dad blames Peacemaker for killing his brother and the audience gets the long-awaited answer to what happened to Peacemaker’s brother.
Present-day, Peacemaker, Vigilante and Economos head off to kill the butterflies' only source of food, which is known as the cow after Peacemaker’s “Diary” was compromised by the butterflies.
Meanwhile, Judomaster (Nhut Lee) is seen roaming the streets until he gets into a comedic altercation with two men who called him short.
At the apartment complex, Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) is packing up to leave the team but Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) barges in to confront her about planting the diary in Peacemaker’s home.
The two get into a moral battle about how secretly neither one is the best of people and Adebayo reveals that she is Amanda Waller’s daughter.
In the middle of the fight, Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) interrupts the two and tells them to settle the differences and go hide because the butterflies will be there any second. The two girls managed to hide but Murn couldn’t; the butterflies broke in and kill him.
The two start to mourn Murn and have a mutual alliance out of respect for Murn. To further the alliance the two are also attacked by and defeat Judomaster.
Back to the rest of the group.
While driving to the “cow”, The White Dragon takes down the team’s trucks and shoots lasers at the team. Vigilante holds off The White Dragon while Peacemaker and Economos flee. In the diversion Vigilante is severely wounded by his grenade in an attempt to harm The White Dragon’s armor, which results in him fleeing by car.
While running, Peacemaker and Economos realize that there is a tracker in Peacemaker’s helmet. He ditches the helmet which buys them enough time to rendezvous with Vigilante.
The team starts to drive away but soon finds out that there are more of Peacemaker’s helmets in the car which leads to them being attacked once more. Peacemaker tries to fight but is overwhelmed by the number of white supremacists. Eaglee, his pet eagle, comes from the sky and takes out enough troops to get Peacemaker back on his feet, but doing this results in Eaglee being badly wounded.
The Peacemaker starts to fight again, enraged by Eaglee’s injury and Vigilante arrives to back him up so Peacemaker can have a one-on-one battle with The White Dragon.
The battle is a close match but The White Dragon beats Peacemaker and Vigilante.
The White Dragon tells Peacemaker that he’s always been a disappointment to him. That he is a disgrace to god because of his “sissy” ways, how he experimented with men and killed his brother. The White Dragon starts to power up the kill shot on Peacemaker.
Sneaking from behind, Economos with a machine gun opens fire on the remaining White Dragon followers, killing them. Vigilante then manages to get on The White Dragon and damage his armor enough for Peacemaker to have a fair fight.
Peacemaker and The White Dragon go back and forth until the former gets a gun on his dad. His dad tells him to shoot, claiming that he controls Peacemaker and he is too much of a coward to kill.
Peacemaker takes the shot killing his dad and falls to his knees sobbing. Finally, Peacemaker is free from his dad.
The team meets up at a dog shelter to patch up and meet up with Adebayo and Harcourt. Peacemaker is praying out to god how he’s a bad man and will reform. He is free, wants to be good and has Eaglee be safe. In what appears to be an act of god, Eaglee wakes up from its injury and hugs Peacemaker.
Adebayo stumbles across the talk and hugs. She believes this is a sign to stay on the team. After some reconciling, the team elects Harcourt as the new leader and heads off to kill the “cow”, but first, the audience sees that Adebayo and Peacemaker’s friendship is no more.
To end the episode, the audience sees that the cow is a giant, bug alien being milked for food.
This episode was heartfelt and action-packed. The audience finally gets to see Peacemaker’s epic conclusion and emotional battle with his dad, which feels perfect for the show.
There was a great balance between humor, action and emotion. Gunn seems to have a gift at how well he pulls these actions off.
There was closure and enough foreshadowing that led to the excitement for the show finale. This is a perfect episode to lead to last and gives enough to have the audience ready for its hopefully epic conclusion.
Ethan Hetrick is a first-year communications major. To contact him, email eth5186@psu.edu
