Peacemaker Season 2 episode 1 review — Broken realities, toxic armor, and a multiverse of guilt

The return of Peacemaker on HBO Max wastes no time reminding us why the first Season became a cult phenomenon. James Gunn brings back the blend of outrageous humor, shocking grotesquerie, and unexpected tenderness, but this time with an added layer of emotional complexity that pushes the series into darker territory.

Episode 1 of the new season reintroduces Christopher Smith and his ragtag allies, dismantles them, reassembles them across realities, and dares us to laugh while everything falls apart.

From the opening, the episode reframes the Justice League cameo of Season 1 with a sly retcon: the “Justice Gang” takes its place in the canon. It is a shift that sets the tone for how this season will toy with DCU continuity. The multiverse, often used in superhero stories as flashy distraction, becomes here an intelligent device to deepen the emotional stakes.

Harcourt’s toxic armor

Among the returning characters in Peacemaker, Emilia Harcourt emerges as one of the most intriguing. Branded within the episode as embodying “toxic masculinity,” she illustrates how aggression and self-erasure can live inside someone who never learned to exist beyond the mission. Harcourt walks into a bar looking for a fight because she has no identity without the work.

Her relationship with Chris sharpens this paradox. In "our" reality, their hookup is dismissed as meaningless. In another, she is his ex, and the two are portrayed as deeply in love. It is a clever use of the multiverse to explore the versions of intimacy that characters deny themselves.

Chris and the weight of deaths

If Season 1 of Peacemaker ended with Chris marked by trauma, Season 2 begins by layering new wounds onto the old ones. The show revisits the chain of tragedies: killing his brother as a child, killing his father by choice, and now killing an alternate version of himself. Each death carries a different kind of responsibility: accident, necessity, and existential horror. Together they form the nucleus of who Peacemaker is.

What keeps the show from collapsing under this heaviness is the Gunn trademark: absurd comedy colliding with raw grief. One moment we recoil from a grotesque set piece, the next we’re asked to sit with Chris’s fractured self. The grotesque and the tender coexist, daring us to feel both disgust and empathy.

Absurdity with heart

The genius of Peacemaker has always been its ability to embrace ridiculousness while keeping sight of its characters’ pain. This premiere proves that balance is intact. The orgy sequence, a moment critics have already called one of the most shocking in DC television, sits right beside intimate conversations about regret and longing. The show never treats one as more important than the other; they are both part of surviving in this world.

The “11th Street Kids” remain central to Peacemaker’s heartbeat. They are broken, scattered, and scarred, but the promise of the Season is clear: we want to see them together again. Whether they end up saving each other or self-destructing, that bond is what pulls us fans back.

Ties to the DCU and Fan reactions to the Season 2 Premiere of Peacemaker

The premiere also flirts more openly with the broader DCU. References to Superman and the Justice Gang weave Peacemaker into a larger continuity, but without diluting its anarchic energy. Gunn continues to build Peacemaker as the strange cousin of the DC family, unruly, satirical, but essential.

On Reddit, threads highlight how shocked viewers were by the orgy sequence, but also how invested they are in Harcourt’s dynamic with Chris.

Many note the intelligence of using the multiverse not just for cameos, but to amplify themes of identity, regret, and second chances. Early chatter calls the episode “heavier than expected, but still hilarious,” a combination that feels like the show’s new mantra.

Fractured identities

One of the most striking qualities of Season 2’s premiere is how it plays with fractured identities. In addition to being haunted by the past, Chris is also confronted with alternate versions of himself and those he cares about. These reflections are comforting and cruel at the same time, reminding him of what could have been while forcing him to face what he cannot change.

The series treats these mirror encounters less like science fiction curiosities and more like emotional knives. Every alternate bond and every rewritten history cut into Chris’s sense of self. By grounding the multiverse in guilt and longing rather than pure distraction, Peacemaker makes its alternate realities feel painfully intimate.

Rating with a touch of flair: 5 out of 5 Eagly pecks

---

You might also like to read: Peacemaker and the sad clown paradox: beneath the jokes, a man desperate to be good