Movies & TV Peacemaker Peacemaker Makes a Lot of Bad Decisions in “Back to the Suture” They made Adrian cry; it’s time to get mad. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on September 19, 2025 Image: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max Sometimes the best jokes are seeing someone’s full name spelled out at a funeral. Recap Image: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max Three years ago, we see Harcourt and Economos at Rick Flag Jr.’s funeral. Flag Sr. talks to Harcourt about wanting vengeance for his son’s death, and how he knew they were close. He wants Harcourt to give him the name of his son’s killer, but she can’t do that. She promises that the person who killed Rick Jr. will pay. At the park, Chris arrives with A.R.G.U.S. everywhere, but he’s doing a great job staying hidden behind various civilians. It turns out that when Harcourt texted back “copacetic” at his request to meet, that was a warning word to keep him away. He tells her that he knew, but needed to ask her a question: whether them sleeping together meant anything. She tells him no and that he’s an idiot because now he’s surrounded with no hope of escape. Chris nabs one of the A.R.G.U.S. team as a body shield, but Sasha Bordeaux has a shot she can take that would kill him. Before she can make it, Harcourt charges in and knocks Chris unconscious. Back at the cabin, someone calls to answer Adebayo’s ad, though they clearly think it’s for sex work (which Adrian eventually informs her of, along with the fact that he doesn’t kill sex workers, regardless of his vigilante code to kill people who break the law). Chris is brought back to HQ, where Flag demands that they turn off the security cameras in the interrogation room. He proceeds to brutally beat Chris while the man tries to apologize for killing his son. Outside, Harcourt gets Economos alone and demands that he book Chris’ arrest to save his life. Economos caves, and once it pops up in the system, Bordeaux goes and tells Flag. They release Chris to Adebayo and Adrian, not knowing that Rip Jagger is tailing them. Flag explains to Bordeaux that he wanted Chris to think this was all about revenge to get his guard down. Bordeaux claims she’s impressed, and they wait to find out what Jagger learns. At cabin, Red St. Wild tries to poison Eagly, accidentally killing a fox instead, then shoots the wrong eagle. He finds himself surrounded by eagles, and the prime eagle symbol appears over Eagly. Red tries to apologize for attempting to kill the prime eagle, but the birds descend and begin pecking him to death. Chris tells Adebayo that Harcourt turned him over to A.R.G.U.S. for her job, and that he’s done with all of this. He asks to be left alone, and whistles for Eagly as Adebayo and Adrian drive off. Chris leaves a note to his friends as Rip Jagger calls Fluery to let the team know they should head over. Then Chris opens the quantum door, but programs the device to close soon after he enters. He and Eagly walk through together, and Jagger follows, leaving a note telling A.R.G.U.S. where he’s gone. Adebayo gets one last text from Chris and u-turns right back to the cabin. They find the quantum door missing, along with Rip and Chris’ notes. Adebayo takes the door device, and she and Adrian leave as A.R.G.U.S. rushes to the scene. The 11th Street Kids all get together back at Harcourt’s apartment, and Adebayo reads Chris’ goodbye note and explains what he did. She asks Harcourt if she really turned Chris over, and she explains that Bordeaux would have murdered him if she hadn’t knocked him out. Adebayo heads into the other room and finds Adrian crying, and holds him while she cries too. Harcourt tells the group that they need to take the door device somewhere more robust to use it so they can find Chris. In the alt-dimension, Keith tells Chris they’ve got a kaiju to fight, and he suits up with his family. After the battle, Chris heads to see Emilia and the two rush to embrace. Commentary Image: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max You’d assume that our kick-the-dog moment of this episode was intended to be the (multiple!) animal deaths—when it’s really making Adrian cry. This episode is a mess cohesively, mostly due to the fact that we’re still stuck in the midway storytelling points, but also due to the Eagly side plot being… awful? I can’t think of any better descriptors, it’s just bad, back to front, and reads like it was shoved into the scripts just to give Michael Rooker something to do. James Gunn claimed, as I mentioned in a previous recap, that he wanted to give Eagly his own nemesis, and while I’m not sure if the guy is fully vanquished yet, the question remains: Why? Why does Eagly need his own antagonist, and more importantly, why does it have to be a human one? I would’ve happily watched an entire side plot where Eagly had a grudge match with a puma or a bear, or something. Whatever is going on here with this faux vision-questing eagle spirit Hitchcockian-attack nonsense needed absolutely no time in this episode. It’s distracting, confusing, and offers nothing to the story whatsoever. Is it mired in racial insensitivity toward Indigenous Peoples, too? Maybe! I’d have to understand what was going on here to be sure, though—which only makes the sloppiness read as intentional. It’s unfortunate because without these weird glaring misfires, the core of the second story’s season is so clear. We’ve got a story about Chris Smith, who is trying to handle the death of his father by controlling the rest of his relationships. But you can’t. You can’t control other people and make them fit your personal patterns, no matter how misunderstood you’ve been in your life. Adebayo finding Adrian crying brings that message home without a word: Chris wants Keith back in his life, so he abandoned the brother he has.  And of course he doesn’t really get that—Chris was a little brother. In his mind, he can’t be Adrian’s big brother because it’s not a role he’s ever thought to assume. But Adrian clearly thinks of him that way to some degree: He admires Chris, idolizes him, would do anything for him, wants to believe he’s the person Chris confides in ahead of all others even when he’s not. We already know the mistakes Chris is making in choosing Emilia over Harcourt (and there’s a special kind of mind fuckery to be had in the fact that Chris can’t truly understand that they are not the same woman even if they look exactly alike), but Adrian’s pain lands differently because we haven’t been focused on his character enough this season to expect that hurt was coming. Rick Flag Sr. is on a slight parallel of the journey Chris is going on; he claims that he beat Chris because he wants the guy to think he’s a liability, and that might be true after-the-fact, but that beating was from the heart. And Flag clearly didn’t get what he wanted from it. He wanted Chris to fight back, but yet again—you can’t control other people. You can only see to yourself. Part of the issue here is that Chris is still trying to speedrun his own recovery from his father’s death. He knows he’s changed, but he hasn’t actually put in enough work yet, or given himself time to heal anything. Rather than realizing that’s part of the reason he’s running up against road blocks, he’s taking the quick and easy path out so he doesn’t have to feel how uncomfortable all that work is. He has one true asset in all of this: an entire car of people who gear up to rescue him when he makes a stupid mistake. It’s the greatest asset any person can have, in fact. And Chris Smith about to find out why. Keeping the Peace (Thoughts and Asides) Image: Jessica Miglio/HBO Max Richard Bill Flag Jr.? Oh, yes. Thank you for that. Okay, so the problem is that Harcourt considered Rick Jr. her best friend—but then I still don’t know why we needed them to sleep together to illustrate that. It’s like any time a man and a woman need to have a serious conversation on screen, it has to be a “morning after” one. The same thing is ultimate true for Harcourt and Chris here, too. Regardless of how shitty Economos can be as a person, the comment about having a picture of Bordeaux’s mangled body as his phone screen falls on the other side of the Too Fucking Far line. Sometimes Gunn over-leans into those edgelord tendencies, and he sure hit it there. Obviously, Bordeaux is playing Rick here (that look she gives him at the end of the episode), but the real question remains: Who is she working for? If you know the character’s comics background, there are some obvious options, but my real hope is Amanda Waller. (Bordeaux’s initial background as a Batman character is… absolutely no fun whatsoever, sorry.) Even Fluery wasn’t feeling good about potential prisoner beatings—good to see the humanity start showing in the guy. (Though this episode did prompt my partner to look up the origin of the word “munchkin,” which was a fun Thursday night rabbit hole.) Back to the alt-reality next week, and I’m dreading it…[end-mark] The post <i>Peacemaker</i> Makes a Lot of Bad Decisions in “Back to the Suture” appeared first on Reactor.