In “Another Rick Up My Sleeve,” the third episode of James Gunn’s Peacemaker, season 2, anti-hero Chris Smith (John Cena) reaches his most heroic point so far — and by that, we mean “He brutally kills a lot of bad guys.” But unlike in previous cases, the public and his peers aren’t chiding him for it. Witnesses on the street cheer Peacemaker and praise him for cold-bloodedly killing a bunch of the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist group fighting what it identifies as government oppression by blowing up government offices.
Peacemaker, aka Chris, isn’t in his own world doling out indiscriminate justice: He’s in an alternate world where his brother and father are still alive, and the girl of his dreams actually wants to be with him. The latest icing on this dream world of a cake is that it also sees his usual sociopathic tendencies as heroic. The violent, heedless way he handles the situation is the final confirmation viewers need to deduce that this is just who Chris is, regardless of what he tells others about his emotional growth or newfound respect for life. Left to make his own decisions, he’s destructive first and foremost, and his destructive tendencies are only heroic to the extent that he chooses to aim them in the right direction.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the rest of “Another Rick Up My Sleeve.”]
Near the final stretch of the episode, Chris and his former handler, Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), are sharing a lighthearted moment on a bench when the terrorist attack starts. Their banter hints at a spark, a possible rekindled romance. As revealed in the season 2 premiere, Chris only ever had a one-night connection with his own universe’s Harcourt — and this isn’t even the same woman. This Harcourt belongs to the alternate universe, where she apparently shared a deeper relationship with that world’s version of Chris. Suddenly, one of the terrorists sneaking by them trips and falls on his bomb, causing an explosion that knocks them both back and initiates the group’s scheme of destroying one government agency a week.
The Sons of Liberty use hostages as scapegoats in their tactics, and Chris goes Peacemaker mode in his attempt to thwart them. These terrorists look pretty amateur, in that they look like average, ordinary people and not trained killers. (One of them tripped and fell on his own bomb, for goodness’ sake.) However, they are all willing to take lives, as demonstrated by the way they shoot their way into the facility, hold a woman at knifepoint, and set up explosives to take the building down.
But Peacemaker handles all perceived villains the same way, with ruthless aggression, whether they’re human, metahuman, or alien. He doesn’t make any attempt at disabling or arresting any of the terrorists. He doesn’t try to launch any conversations or talk anyone down. He just skulks into the government building and dispatches all the terrorists like Rambo stalking through the jungle in First Blood.
Peacemaker crashes into the occupied building by leaping through a window from a nearby roof, and immediately takes an axe to one terrorist’s head. He stabs another in the eye by commandeering his own knife. He crushes another man into a wall with a printer, kicks his head in, then uses his gun to take out another victim. Finally, he sticks two pencils in a victim’s ears at the same time.
It’s a gnarly fight, and it isn’t played for laughs the way Eagly’s action sequence was in the previous episode; instead, it’s almost sheer terror. Director Greg Mottola goes out of his way to make this sequence dark and brutal, turning up the ultraviolence to 11, zooming in on the gore, and even showing blood splashing across Peacemaker’s vacant expression as he chops a man’s head off his shoulders.
These gruesome actions are all true to who Chris has been from the start. Sure, he has moments of empathy, where he wants to do better and be a better person. But those moments are fleeting, and they go against his natural inclination to shoot (or pencil-stab, or printer-smash) first and ask questions later. His actions are morally gray, but Chris can only see in black and white, no pun intended, as his beliefs were built on the foundational teachings of his white-supremacist father, Auggie (Robert Patrick).
Chris is better than Auggie; he does not share the same beliefs as his father. Chris isn’t a racist, and he doesn’t laugh at human misery the way Aussie does. But he’s unable to avoid seeing the world the way his father does, in complete absolutes. The beliefs he was raised with and his introduction to violence at a young age turned Chris into a sociopath, and at least he seems semi-aware of that in his attempts to be a hero. He tries to do good, but it seems like that only happens when he does bad things in the name of heroism. His new alternate reality affords him the peace of being seen as a hero even when he does really terrible things. Being praised for casual murder allows him to feel heroic without having to do any of the legwork involved with improving himself and becoming a true hero. The place he describes as the “best universe ever” rewards him with a loving family and romance with the woman of his dreams.
It just goes to show that all the humble, contrite things about learning to respect human life that Chris told Maxwell Lord and the Justice Gang in episode 1 weren’t entirely true, even if Chris is honestly describing who he thinks he is, or wishes he could be. He hasn’t learned how to value human life; in fact, he’s delighted to find himself in a reality that rewards him for caring less. He’s Deadpool in more grounded circumstances, but instead of wanting to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he really wants to be part of the Justice Gang, so he can finally be the hero he knows he’s not cut out to be alone. He needs a moral compass. And even though the Justice Gang members are all varying degrees of douchebags, at least they’re seen as heroes. Chris has grown as a person since The Suicide Squad, but he’d still rather be perceived as a hero than constrain himself in all the ways that would make him one.
To close out on what this alternate reality could really be conveying about morality, the incident ends when Chris’ brother, Keith (David Denman), swoops in, wearing a supersuit, and obliterates the last of the escaping terrorists, with a similarly cavalier attitude toward law and human life. He also isn’t trying to arrest or incarcerate the bombers; he just kills them all in cold blood. And while the Sons of Liberty are hardly innocent, gunning down civilians and storming government facilities with deadly force, the heroes’ casual attitude toward murder raises a bigger question: Has this world been stripped of empathy altogether? Is this truly a place where Chris’s id can just roam free? Or will his empathy get the better of him and expose him as a fraud to his family and would-be love? Will being perceived as a hero ultimately mean more to Chris than being an actual hero? It may all depend on what Peacemaker ultimately reveals about what these so-called terrorists are fighting for — and what kind of world they’re fighting against.
Peacemaker is available on HBO Max, with new episodes every Thursday through Oct. 9.
