Main cast: John Cena (Christopher Smith/Peacemaker), Danielle Brooks (Leota Adebayo), Freddie Stroma (Adrian Chase/Vigilante), Chukwudi Iwuji (Clemson Murn), Jennifer Holland (Agent Emilia Harcourt), Steve Agee (John Economos), Annie Chang (Detective Sophie Song), Lochlyn Munro (Detective Larry Fitzgibbon), Nhut Le (Judomaster), Elizabeth Faith Ludlow (Keeya Adebayo), Christopher Heyerdahl (Captain Caspar Locke), and Robert Patrick (Auggie Smith)
Director: Brad Anderson
I have to hand it to John Cena: he’s required to funny-ugly cry at the opening scene of Stop Dragon My Heart, as Peacemaker remembers how he caused the death of his brother, who also happens to be his father’s favorite, thus earning him his father’s eternal disgust. I have to admit, I kind of feel sorry for that character right there and then.
Later on, he will take the whole ugly-cry thing to a whole new level, and as much as I hate to admit it, it works on me. Damn.
This is the direction of the arc of that character: he’s starting to reevaluate his tendency to shoot first, question only later when his brain cells kick in. I won’t say that I completely buy this arc, as it seems to come out of nowhere.
Perhaps his brush with death in The Suicide Squad has him reevaluating his priorities, but more often than not, his actions in the series so far often contradict his so-called character development. The dude is still a bloodthirsty dumb lug when the script calls for it.
Peacemaker will find some sort of closure to his own daddy issues here, appropriately so as the finale is nigh and there isn’t much time left for feels. In all of this, Mr Cena is really doing a good job carrying this show on his shoulders. He can be funny, and he can also act vulnerable in a goofy yet moving way when duty calls. I think I may just become a fan should he keep this up in his future gigs.
Then again, any believable feels is only a bonus. This show is all about James Gunn being James Gunn, and with this show coming to a close in one more episode after this, it’s somewhat anticlimactic to realize that this show may very well wrap up with most of his familiar tropes present in his past efforts. Perhaps it won’t be his show if it did something else.
Back to this episode, I hope people aren’t invested in the characters of Detectives Song and Fitzgibbon because the moment they had significant some screen time in the last episode, they ended up having their bodies seized by Butterflies, with Song becoming the host of their queen.
These Butterflies, now comfortably at home in the skulls of the cops in the city, call for a national manhunt for Peacemaker. They aren’t the only ones wanting a piece of that booty, as Auggie in his White Dragon persona leads his KKK gang members to take out his son too.
Peacemaker and Vigilante decide they may as well take out Captain Locke first, who gives the orders to take him down, before the cops get them. A reluctant Economos tags along because this show needs him to do something after all. They soon bump into the KKK gang.
In another part of town, Harcourt confronts Adebayo about planting incriminating evidence on Peacemaker on Waller’s orders, and Adebayo tries to wiggle out of her guilt by wanting to quit on the spot.
They are interrupted by Murn, who tells them that with Locke, their inside man, now taken over by a Butterfly, the Butterflies now know who they all are. It’s time, therefore, to get the hell out of dodge… oops, the cops are already here.
Boy, the plot armors are strong here, because the only reason the bad guys don’t succeed in any way in taking down our gonzos is because they are even more incompetent than our gonzos. I’m all for giving the main characters a challenge, but this is one of those cases when these main characters probably can’t explain why they are still alive either.
Okay, some characters in the cast listing depart the series, probably permanently (I’ll find out in the next episode), but that’s because their deaths are needed to move the plot along. So, no plot armors for them.
Despite the eye-rolling showcase of incompetence from the baddies, this episode succeeds because it brings on the feels like nobody’s business, and shockingly enough, it works on me very well. I’m all for seeing the whole thing wrap up on a high note, and considering how these last few episodes had been, I have a good feeling that can very well happen!
By the way, I’m sure there are people touching themselves to the final scene of this episode. Please do me a favor: if you happened to be one of them, don’t tell me, and we’ll still be cool with one another.
