Movies & TV Peacemaker Peacemaker Throws a Party in “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird” You mean you don’t subject yourself to orgies in the name of friendship? By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on August 29, 2025 Image: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Warner Bros. Is it true friendship if someone won’t dispose a body with you? (The answer is no, by the way…) Recap Image: Warner Bros. When Rick Flagg Sr. is put in charge of A.R.G.U.S. eight months previous, he asks Economos for the file on his son’s death and learns that Peacemaker killed him. He immediately orders around the clock surveillance on him. In the present, Peacemaker is trying to clean up his alt-universe body, and cries in the shower while scrubbing off blood. He makes a call to a friend for a bandsaw. The next morning, Adebayo goes to her ex-wife’s apartment to get her old haircare, and they have a conversation about their breakup. Adebayo clearly doesn’t believe it’s a real thing, and tells Keeya (Elizabeth Ludlow) she loves her as she leaves. Harcourt is at the local pharmacy and gets approached by a woman who assumes she’s battered; she shouts her down. Economos gets a new partner in Langston Fluery (Tim Meadows), who has secretly been advised to break into Peacemaker’s once everyone’s gone for the night. In the meantime, Adrian shows up to Chris’ house with a kit to help Chris clean up the alt-universe body. He’s hurt that he wasn’t invited to the orgy, though (because that’s valuable bonding time). They cut up alt-Peacemaker’s body and incinerate it. Chris ends up with the alt-version’s phone and finds and entire folder of pictures with the other him and Harcourt, seemingly having a lovely romantic relationship. While the 11th Street Kids meet on Harcourt’s roof for a party, Fluery takes an A.R.G.U.S. team to sweep Chris’ house and they’re all attacked by Eagly. One of them loses an eye, so they head to the hospital. During the party, Chris attempts to ask Harcourt about her injuries, noting that she seems to go to rough spots looking for trouble. He’s worried about her, which Harcourt finds detestable; she feels it’s Chris trying to make them seem alike, which she’s determined not to be. Adebayo talks to Economos, noting that he seems depressed and advising him to get another job. He insists that he can’t and also that his life-long issues with anxiety mean he’s unlikely to change. Chris goes home drunk and tries to send a text to the alt-universe Emilia Harcourt. It doesn’t work, so he heads through the quantum room to the other universe and hears his dad in the house, clearly looking for the alternate version of him. Emilia texts back a greeting and a broken heart emoji. Commentary Image: Warner Bros. This is episode is largely about getting folks where they need to be, but it’s got a few excellent little windows into specific dynamics and abilities, namely, Eagly getting to show off his action skills. The reflexive cringe whenever people have guns around an animal never goes away—though trying to fire a shotgun at a bird will never not be funny—but it was such a blast to watch Eagly do his thing. Though I find myself curious as to whether this is pure instinct or something he was trained on. (Do we think that we’ll ever find out how Chris ended up with a pet eagle?) After that action sequence, you cannot convince me that Eagly doesn’t hear the music cues in their soundtrack. While Adebayo’s difficulties on the home front seem to be getting some attention, I feel the need to point out that Harcourt and Adebayo hang out on their own—according to what Economos is told at the end of the episode—and the show refusing to let us see one of those hangouts is criminal? (Looks like we might get one of those scenes in an upcoming episode, but they better do more than talk about Chris.) I want to know what they do together! It’s nice that we’ve moved out of the realm where so much television is weird about women having friendships, but we still need to see those friendships. It would also be great for the show to let Harcourt hang out with anyone who isn’t romantically interested in her for an extended period. While it’s true that her protestations against Chris attempting to care for her are bound up in her fear of being remotely similar to him, she’s also right that love isn’t going to fix what she’s going through. Let her figure out friends first! They’re the more important part of building a life and community for yourself. Rick Flag Sr.’s arc here has the potential to be interesting if they bother to dig into his grief, but the convenience of these plots is always a little baffling. Sure, you’d put this guy in charge after his son was killed by one of the agency’s agents. And no one is going to check in about it. That makes sense. He’s ordered around the clock surveillance on said agent, and nothing will get bumped up to a higher authority, or questioned all that much. As a side note, it’s amusing that we have the sort of casting kerfuffle that normally only applies to women here—getting someone to play an actor’s parent when there’s not enough of an age gap to support that relation. Grillo is only fourteen years older than Joel Kinnaman, so the idea of him being his dad is a little silly. But most important, as a mentioned at the top: Friendships are only as good as someone’s unflinching desire to dispose of a corpse with you. I did hazard a guess last season that Adrian was asexual and only hanging out for sexual acts because he likes to be included, so the discussion over the orgy was vindicating on multiple fronts. The read we get in this episode makes perfect sense; Adrian thinks that sex is for bonding with friends. Which is adorable. (He clearly thinks that bodies are kinda gross when they’re not his own, from some combination of germophobia and other generalized discomfort. The fact that he’s willing to overlook those issues and his own disinterest in sex in the service of friendship is a big deal!) He’s clearly more comfortable with the bandsaw, though. And with stripping down to his underwear to get covered in beer. (Maybe he assumed Orgy Part Two was impending…) And now Chris is going to take a step further down the alternate reality well, all because he saw some nice pictures and videos of himself and Emilia and alt-him’s phone. Oh, buddy. That’s not going to fix anything. Keeping the Peace (Thoughts and Asides) Image: Warner Bros. This is obviously not the point, but if this group of five can get absolutely wasted off two cases of Bud Light, they’re all sporting very average human tolerances and I appreciate the realism. (It’s a lot of beer, but light beers have a lower alcohol content! That’s what makes them light.) I expect that Chris had about sixteen, but even so. Again with the hints about the other universe. We hear the other Auggie talking about how Chris is disappearing more often than usual (not knowing that he’s dead, obviously). It’s not all sparkly and perfect over there, and I can’t wait to find out how. Sometimes I think about how Eagly is “voiced” by Dee Bradley Baker and get happy all over again. Sometimes I also think about the fact that my mom insisted on calling our family’s pet bird “Birdie Birdie” and how that’s certainly not relevant in the discussion of How Pets Get Named. See you next week… [end-mark] The post Peacemaker Throws a Party in “A Man Is Only as Good as His Bird” appeared first on Reactor.