Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 7

 White Dragon is on the hunt.

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Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 6

 Bugs are raising up!

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Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 5

 King gorilla in the his-ouse. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris learned that his daddy got sent to jail. Chris visited his father and did his best to apologize, while pleading with his dad to keep his mouth shut for a few more days so he could finish his business. Auggie is a colossal dick to his son, saying he never loved him and should have killed him when he was born. Leota, having been told to find a way to fix this situation, suggests to Adrian that Chris would be better off without his father hanging over him. Adrian almost immediately gets himself arrested and tries to goad the racist Auggie into attacking him in the cafeteria. Auggie is too smart for that, but Adrian takes out two of his goons singlehandedly. Judomaster wakes up, frees himself and beats the shit out of Economos. Chris and Leota arrive to save him, Chris and Judomaster get a rematch. The two are reasonably matched, Judomaster’s skill and dexterity hitting hard against Chris’s brute force. Judomaster tries to tell Chris something about the Butterflies, but he’s shot by Leota. He survives, but barely. After Leota tells the team about her plan with Adrian and that pisses Murn off. He realizes that Adrian is in serious danger of being killed by the White Dragon and there’s a very real chance they’ll lose both of their hired guns over this. He has Economos sprint Adrian and Harcourt picks him up. We also learn that Chris lied about taking out the Goff’s Butterfly, he actually stole it and a jar of the honey like fluid the bugs love. Leota finds a connection between the Goffs and Chris’s hookup Ashley, both groups had cards for the Glan Tai Bottling company. She calls and relays this to Murn, who says he’ll be right it. Just before revealing himself to be a Butterfly to us, as he uses the proboscis tongue to lap up some of that honey goo. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 5: Monkey Dory

 

We open with Chris Smith preparing a raw egg yolk to drink because he’s that kind of fitness weirdo. He adds some tabasco sauce, salt and pepper to it so he’s not just drinking it straight, so that’s something. He also feeds the Butterfly by pouring some of the goo into the jar. After, he sits on his front step and looks really depressed. Eagley flies off and brings him a dead weasel to cheer him up. He’s thankful but tells the bird that he’s not going to eat it. It’s kind of sweet his relationship with that bird.

 

Leota rushes around her apartment getting ready for her work. Keeya stops over and tries to talk to her about their situation, but Leota is rushing to get things done. Keeya tells Leota that she’s grateful for her taking this job to help them get back up on their feet despite not wanting to, but from her perspective, it looks like Leota is choosing the job over them. Leota insists she isn’t, but she has to get to work. At the office she gets a text from Waller asking if she’d planted the fake Peacemaker diary in his house yet. She tells mommy dearest not yet.

 

Murn has either decided he’s tired of dodging Chris’s questions, or with Adrian that two new people are enough to give a briefing on the situation, either way, he gives his team a presentation on the Butterflies. He says that a year ago a business tycoon and a international singer died in a plane crash and they were discovered to have these bugs in their brains. They assume they’re alien, which, ya, I get that conclusion. They enter through an orifice of the body, make their way to the brain and seize control. There’s an argument about if the bugs could do that by entering through the anus based on an artistic interpretation by Economos, and Chris claims that Superman has a poop fetish. Harcourt demands to know where he keeps getting these weird rumors from, and Chris says it’s from Google. Murn ignores them, and continues the presentation, stating that the Butterflies in the brain cause their host to get significantly stronger. He goes on to explain that the alien goo that they’ve found at every Butterfly home seems to be their only food source and is completely alien to anything to us. He tells them that Leota found the Glan Tai connection and that this is their best lead. Chris mocks Economos’s Power Point for the fifth time and this leads to the two of them finally having it out about Economos framing Auggie. Economos insists that Auggie was the only one he could think of, and Smith gives him an exhaustive list of random other people that he could have changed the records to instead of Auggie. Murn finally snaps at him to shut up and focus. He tells his team they’re taking a trip up north to the bottling plant, and that he’s staying back to handle the White Dragon situation. Chris shows Economos a note he wrote, “Eat a Dick, Dye Beard,” and Economos storms off.

 

Song and Fitz are brought back in to speak with Auggie. He tells them that he didn’t do it and that they should rerun his fingerprints. They’re skeptical as the car is registered to him and they’ve two witnesses that said he did it, but he insists. When Song asks who did it, then, Auggie says it was his ‘shit head f-ing son.’ Cat might be out of the bag.

 

Back at the office, Leota tells Chris that he should ease up on Economos a little. He thinks he’s just being funny, and Adrian comes in and says that being a bully is just in Chris’s nature. We then learn that in high school he gave all of his friend’s nicknames based on the shape of their penises. Just a… classy guy. Adrian says he wasn’t bothered by his, Thimble, but other guys would go into the other room and cry after getting a nickname. Leota is confused by this and just asks him to ease up a little.  

 

Auggie gets re-fingerprinted. And continues to be racist to Song. Because of course he does.

 

The team heads out in the truck for the bottling plant. They argue for a bit about music choices, because this is a James Gunn project, before Adrian asks if they should have a search warrant or something before investigating. Harcourt and Leota explain that any time folks have looked into the Butterflies before, someone higher up in the government shuts it down, so Waller made this black op team to handle it. Chris is shocked at the thought that the five of them are all that stand before an alien invasion. Leota points out that Murn makes six, but Chris says he already counted Murn, it’s Economos that doesn’t count because he thinks he’s useless. Economos reveals that he’s into a Hanoi Rocks, a Finish Glam Metal group, which earns him points with Chris. He puts on one of their songs as they pull into the bottling plant.

 

Murn is visited in his apartment by Casper Locke, an old acquaintance of his. Murn hires him to ‘take care’ of a situation.

 

At the police station, they compare the fingerprints and discover that Auggie Smith’s don’t match, but Chris Smith’s do. Song and Fitz head over to the Calaterra’s to reinterview them. Evan answers the door and breaks within five seconds. They don’t even ask any questions; he just says it after being stared at long enough. Amber calls him a wimp. The Calaterras flip on Chris, though Amber tries to lie before Evan tells her to stop. He admits Chris is a pretty nice guy all things considered (confirming to me he doesn’t know his wife banged him), and that like, the guy they locked up for it is some kind of nazi, so what’s the harm? Fitz asks if they’re really releasing the White Dragon, to which Song says, ya, if they want to charge Peacemaker they have to.

 

At the bottling plant, they load up for an assault. Harcourt questions Peacemaker bringing a huge rifle in, and flat out says no to Vigilante grabbing a chainsaw. They split up, Harcourt losing the rock-paper-scissors game, so she has to take Vigilante with her to check the back. Leota and Peacemaker head in the front, Leota asking him to be chill for this. Chris agrees but then activates his new helmet’s X-Ray vision mode. He immediately shoots the receptionist; having seen she’s a Butterfly. He starts mowing through employees that he also sees are Butterflies. Leota radios into Economos the fact the place is crawling with Butterflies. In the back, Harcourt finds crates full of the goo. She thinks that this might be the distribution hub for their whole operation.

 

Peacemaker and Leota start slowly working their way into the back, killing Butterflies as they go. Chris telling a nervous Leota that she doesn’t have to shoot them after h’s already killed them. Vigilante and Harcourt make their way to the bottling machine itself, but are immediately caught by a Butterfly. He pulls a Donald Southerland from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and does that screaming point that he does at the end of the movie. They flee and shoot Butterflies as they go. They’re cornered in a computer room in back. Harcourt radios their location and Peacemaker and Leota head their way. Peacemaker shoots a guard, who lives long enough to say that they’re with ‘Charlie’ and they don’t stand a chance. Peacemaker asks who that is and the goon says “Our Guardian angel.” We learn that Charlie is in fact a Butterfly infected Gorilla. Ya, that’s not good.

 

To clear out the goons, Peacemaker throws missile with a grenade tied to it at them. The massive explosion it causes liquifies the goons and almost kills Peacemaker and Leota. It also tips off Economos that something bad is happening. The four agents battle the Gorilla, who throws them around easily because it’s a Gorilla with super strength. It throws Peacemaker to the ground and almost crushes him, but Economos comes in and kills it with a chainsaw. Chris gets up and calls him a stud. The group head back to the city, super jazzed and have a dance party at the back of the truck as they go. Harcourt pulls out her phone and gets a group shot of them, which is real sweet.

 

Back at home, we see Auggie being taken back into his cell, the man pitching a fit as they take him. Song asks what’s happening and the guard says that Auggie just found out he’s not getting out. The guard was sent the fingerprint analysis that says that Auggie did it. Song is confused by this and goes to talk to the captain. She’s surprised to see her captain was replaced by Caspar Locke, who says he took over because the Mayor wasn’t happy with the old captain’s performance on this case. Song tells him her evidence that Auggie was framed, but Locke ignores it, saying that the White Dragon is more than capable of intimidating witnesses into changing their story and faking fingerprints. He orders her to take the night off. Locke calls Murn and tells him it’s handled.

 

The team meet up with Murn and tell him what happened. He’s impressed, he tells his people that they’ll need to see if they can figure out where the Butterflies food comes from, but that can wait until tomorrow. He tells them to take the night off.

 

Song and Fitz decide to go over Locke’s head. She knows that Locke won’t do the right thing, so she’s going to a judge that she knows she can trust to get a warrant for Peacemaker’s place. The judge is William Judy, her uncle. He greets them warmly, but gets serious the moment Song mentions Peacemaker.

 

Leota takes Chris home. We get to see everyone smile as they learn that Harcourt changed their group chat name to 11^th Street Kids, the Hanoi Rocks song they were grooving out to earlier. Leota drops him off, saying she’ll pick him up early tomorrow so they can start going through the computer flies they stole from the Butterflies. Chris is still feeling pretty good and invites her in for a drink. She’s nice about his home, and notes a picture of him and his brother, who we learn is named Keith. The first drink he serves is gross, so they switch to beer. As they drink Leota tells him that she isn’t sure if Harcourt and him could work, but she’s heard stranger things. She tries to encourage him, saying that if h stopped being a dick to push people away, people might actually like him. She thinks if he just be nice, but not too nice, everyone will respond well to it. Chris is overwhelmed by emotion, so says he needs to take a piss. When alone, Leota stashes the diary, moving it a few times to find the right spot for it. I can’t imagine that the fake diary is going to be good for Chris. Later, Leota calls up Keeya as she drives home. She leaves her a voicemail saying that she’s sorry, this job is messing her up, but she loves her and will talk to her tomorrow.

 

Leota finds Murn in the office. When he asks why she’s there, she says she couldn’t sleep. Leota finds Chris’s X-Ray helmet and decides to give it a shot. She turns on X-Ray vision mode and is impressed by the effect. Right up until she looks up at Mr. Murn and sees the Butterfly in his brain. He immediately realizes what happened and rushes her. Leota tries to run, but Murn catches her, knocking her gun away. Well, damn.

 

Well, that was a rollercoaster. The action was nice, with plenty of gore that I feel is lacking in most Superhero media. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to see Superman coated in blood or anything, but I prefer realistic representation of what happens why you cut someone. If you slash someone, there should be blood. The reveal of the Gorilla was pretty cool. They actually hinted at Charlie last episode, as the new report that Chris saw on his dad’s TV was of the Gorilla’s mysterious disappearance a week or two ago. Economos killing that thing with a chainsaw was not something I’d have guessed before seeing. Damn, it was brutal. I really enjoyed seeing the team bond on the drive back, with Peacemaker and Economos burying the hatchet and everyone grooving out to the Hanoi Rocks. James Gunn obviously loves music and using it in his stories, so I was expecting this, but I give him credit for Chris and Economos having a love for a specific Glam Rock band. And it was incredibly sweet to see Harcourt commemorating it with renaming the text chain. I’m curious how the cop plot will be resolved, with Song and Fitz homing in on Peacemaker despite Murn’s best efforts. I do appreciate the work ethic that keeps Song from just letting Auggie rot, despite the fact the man is objectively terrible. I’ll be curious to see how Leota’s plot, both the planting of the Diary and getting caught by Murn is going to go down. Feels like she in particular is stuck between a rock and a hard place. But more on that tomorrow. Have a good night, everyone. 

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Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 4

 Vigilante is on the hunt. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Smith and co headed out on their first (official) Butterfly hunt. They set up a sniper blind, Smith and Harcourt manning it with Leota, Economos, and Murn working as tech support. The Goffs arrive home, but Smith can’t get a clean shot of the Senator that wouldn’t go through his human bodyguard, so they’re forced to wait. The two snipers bond a little due to their similar life stories, but are interrupted by Vigilante’s arrival, who Murn says they have to keep an eye on rather than risk him screwing up the mission. Eventually, the Goffs, who act extremely robotic and uncanny when not in line of sight, get up in the middle of the night and start drinking a honey like substance using proboscis that they extend from their mouths. Despite confirmation that every member of the family are Butterflies, Smith can’t take the shot. He’s been having a crisis of faith, I guess, about his vow to kill anyone to achieve peace. Vigilante takes over and blows the brains out of three of four Goffs, but they’re interrupted from killing the senator himself by his specialty bodyguard, a fella called Judomaster. Smith and Vigilante are captured, Goff unmasks Vigilante and tries to torture him to make Smith talk. Unfortunately for Vigilante aka Adrian Chase, Smith is a bit of dick and isn’t willing to spill anything. The rest of the team find a hidden door to the basement and use a small explosive to break through the glass wall. The explosion helps Smith escape, and he’s able to finish off Goff. Judomaster almost escapes but Economos hits his car with their repair truck and then disables the injured martial artist. When the dust settles, we see one of their computers finishing a scan and confirm that there are A LOT of Butterflies. Globally. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 4: The Choad Less Traveled

 

We join Project: Butterfly as they drive in their van. Harcourt asks Smith what happened with the Butterfly, and Smith says that he shot it into little pieces. She scolds him for not trying to capture it for study. Adrian is very concerned that he won’t be able to walk right now, based on his very incorrect believe that the pinky toe is the most important toe for that. Leota explains that if he lost his metatarsal that’d be bad, but losing the toe isn’t a big deal. Their debate is interrupted by an unconscious Judomaster falling over. Harcourt asks what they’re going to do about him, and both costumed killers pull their guns and prepare to shoot him, but Harcourt and Leota tell them to back off.

 

Back at their office, they start moving some of the stuff they stole from the Goff’s into their office as Murn joins them. Murn gives Adrian the keys to Adrian’s car as a casual dismissal. He orders Harcourt and Leota to go over the records they stole from the Goffs for any intel. She complains and asks why Economos isn’t on it, but Murn says his job is keeping Judomaster alive. He orders Smith into his office. Murn starts chewing him out for choking on the mission. He tries to play it off as not having the Dove of Peace on the weapon screwed him up, but Murn isn’t buying it. Smith admits that while he will kill any man, woman or child to have peace, he won’t just kill kids because that was his order. Murn hopes that is all that is wrong and admits that this mission needs a SOB and Smith is the only one he has. Him and Vigilante now. Smith asks if he’s sure about that, and Murn basically says ‘we need all the help we can get.’ He briefly distracts Murn with a story about Matter-Eater Lad, his power is what it sounds like, eating an entire restaurant. He asks one more time what a Butterfly actually is, but Murn just dismisses him to get some rest. He and Adrian leave.

 

Leota and Harcourt keep going through files. Leota apologizes for freezing, explaining that she hadn’t even shot at someone before last night, and elaborating that she’s a pescatarian, so like she doesn’t enjoy or endorse killing mammals at all. Harcourt chews her out, saying that her hesitation made the guard’s last minute of life the most terrifying minute ever and that if she wants to do covert ops like this, she must have zero hesitation. Leota excuses herself for a ‘bathroom break’ aka crying just a little bit. Coming out of the bathroom she sees Economos setting Judomaster up with an IV and is weirded out that they’re just kinda holding him hostage. He says that if they just let him go, he’ll nark on them. He tells her not to take what Harcourt says too personally, as she really doesn’t like anyone. She thanks him and says she just has to show Murn and Harcourt she can handle things.

 

On the drive back to Smith’s place, he asks Adrian to drive him over to his dad’s place so he can grab another helmet that he thinks could be useful. Adrian admits that he was a little mad at Smith for letting him get tortured, or he was until he decided that Smith was just trying to train him to be tougher. He ‘thanks’ him for it. But Smith senses the underlying anger Adrian is clearly feeling and tries to confront him about it, but Adrian keeps being passive aggressive. They pull up to Auggie’s house and Adrian asks about the upside-down flag. Smith says he’s not sure, it’s a ‘deep state’ thing, but Adrian says that maybe it’s a racism thing. Smith gets very defensive about his dad, deflecting the conversation to the fact that Adrian’s dad left his mom for another man. Adrian seems weirded out by this attack, saying his dad and his dad’s boyfriend are deeply in love. Smith makes a crack about Mr. Chase pretending to be gay to get away from Adrian before rushing up to the house and trying to break in.

 

He goes in, seeing the TV is still on but the house is empty. He opens the door to his dad’s lab and grabs a bunch of the helmets. He looked like he’d only take one but decided better of it. In his helmet grab, he sees his dad’s White Dragon outfit. He’s joined by Adrian, who took off his Vigilante gear to be inconspicuous, who asks how the room is so big. Smith says it’s a quantum space, bigger on the inside kind of thing. Adrian is impressed by it, but once again points out that Auggie is a racist and that if Smith is working with him, he might be one by association. Smith shoves him out. They’re met outside by Auggie’s old neighbor who picks a fight about if Smith is a supervillain or not. He reveals to Smith that Auggie was arrested after Smith unleashed a tirade about how Batman’s no kill policy gets innocent people killed.

 

Smith calls Murn and demands to know why they framed his dad. He offers to have Smith come in so they can talk like adults, but he refuses, saying he’s going to see his dad. After hanging up on him, Murn goes to watch his team from his office window and glares at Economos. Smith apologizes to Adrian for not being compassionate about the torture thing, and that he knows his dad is a racist. Adrian asks if that means he should kill Auggie too, but Smith is obviously weirded out by that. He says that he and his dad hate criminals and that’s about the only thing they agree on. He needs to see him.

 

At the office, Murn tells Leota to go see Smith and convince him to not see his dad. She’s confused by this, but Murn insists that she’s the only one that Peacemaker trusts. She says that he trusts Harcourt the most, but Murn disagrees, saying that he wants to have sex with Harcourt, that’s different. Leota heads for the door. Murn stops her to say that her lack of a resume made him hesitant to take her on, but Amanda Waller insisted, so he trusted her judgement. He tells Leota to prove Waller right. In the back office, Judomaster wakes up and tries to get free. He can’t break the chains but starts moving his hands back and forth.

 

Leota meets Smith and Adrian at the front of the jail. She tries to convince him not to go in, explaining about what happened to get him in there. Smith is pissed at Economos. They have an argument about the desire to believe that parents are flawed but ultimately good people, considering her mom I’m sure she’s wrestled with this a lot, and how that might be true most of the time but isn’t true here. She implies Auggie has done a lot of messed up stuff to Smith on top of the racism. Smith still has to see him. Adrian shrugs and says that he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Leota immediately figures out that he’s Vigilante and his attempts at hiding it make him more guilty.

 

Auggie is pulled out of a poker game to see Chris. Chris explains the situation to his dad, who is rightly pissed off. He goes so far as to say that he should have killed Chris when he was born, and that he never loved him, not like Chris’s brother. Chris tries to convince Auggie to just keep quite while they work and that once the mission is over he’ll turn himself in. Auggie says that he won’t rat him out right away but the first chance he gets he’ll spill the beans.

 

Outside, Adrian asks Leota if they’ll arrest Peacemaker. She says she hopes not, and that she thinks both him and Adrian are good people. She very clearly sets the idea in Adrian’s mind that Chris won’t be happy so long as his dad, who is a very bad man with no redeeming qualities, is around. Adrian excuses himself to do ‘something.’ Smith comes out and Leota offers to take him home so he can sleep. Smith wants to keep eyes on Vigilante, but Leota tells him that it’ll be fine. On the drive back, Leota gets Smith to unburden himself a little by telling him that she doesn’t hate him.

 

Adrian goes behind the police station and awkwardly moves a trash can towards a window while the cop’s watch. He smashes a window in front of them to get him arrested.

 

Economos goes to change Judomaster’s IV and finds him gone. He calls up Leota and tells her Judomaster got loose. While he’s distracted, Judomaster comes out of a closet and attacks him, knocking him into a desk and shattering it. Smith and Leota arrive and find Economos wheezing. Leota gives him a hit from his inhaler and he points Peacemaker to the hallway window. Smith leaps out into the parking lot and challenges Judomaster to a rematch. Judomaster leaps onto him from the top of a truck and the two start to brawl. It’s a match of Judomaster’s superior technique vs. Peacemaker’s strength. After a few smashes, Judomaster tries to explain to Peacemaker what Butterflies really are, but Leota shoots him in the chest before he can talk. He’s still alive, somehow, so they have to get him back inside.

 

Adrian gets pulled out of his cell by a guard. He walks through the other prisoners that try to intimidate him, but he’s unphased. He enters the cafeteria and locks eyes on Auggie.

 

While that was happening, back at his place, Smith opens his backpack. He reveals that he’d stolen some of the goo the Butterflies were eating and that he’d kept Goff’s Butterfly… or the Butterfly that is Goff. Eagly flies in and knocks the jar from his hand, but it doesn’t break and the bird can’t get at it.

 

Back at the office, Economos sets Judomaster up with another IV drip while Leota freaks out a little. Harcourt joins her and compliments Leota for not freezing this time. When that clearly doesn’t help, Harcourt goes on to say that after her first kill, it messed with her so bad that she didn’t have her period for three months. Leota asks if it gets easier, and Harcourt tells her no, but that’s probably good. Because if killing becomes too easy, you end up like Amanda Waller, who uses people like chess pieces. Leota admits that she manipulated Adrian into killing Auggie… and Harcourt goes to tell Murn.

 

Murn chews out his whole team for continually making stupid decisions without his saying so. Leota says that she was just trying to make the hard call and keep Auggie from telling the cops what happened with the frame up. While he’s angry at potentially losing Peacemaker’s trust again if he hears about this, he’s more upset at the thought of losing Vigilante when the WHITE DRAGON murders him. Harcourt says it’s more like losing half a man as Vigilante is a psychopath. Murn says that they’re four people fighting an invasion, they need a psychopath or two with those odds. Murn asks if they can get him out of the system before he screws things up worse than they already are. Economos is able to find him with just a little help from Leota’s description of him, and Harcourt recognizes him as their busboy from the first episode.

 

In the prison, Adrian attempts to make his move on Auggie. He inserts himself into their poker game with his classic awkward energy. He tries to set them off by complimenting black people and then insulting them to their faces. Two of Auggie’s goons try to attack him, but Adrian takes them out in no time flat. He tries to goad Auggie into attacking him as well, but he’s too smart to fall for that. He knows that Adrian is going to get off lightly since he got Auggie’s goons to throw the first punch. Adrian calls him a bad dad, and as Auggie is dragged away he demands to talk to detective Song.

 

Smith meets Harcourt at her bar and asks her what his file says his dad did to him. She pretends to not know much, but when he asks again, she says that it says that his father trained him to kill from a young age, that his brother died when he was young, and that he may have been involved. He thanks her and goes to leave. She’s shocked that that’s all he wanted, and he does take a moment to compliment how her boobs look in her top, but not in a sexist way, before going.

 

At his house, he puts on some music and smokes from a bong, blowing the smoke onto the Goff bug. Adrian is released from prison. Economos looks after Judomaster. Leota ignores a call from her wife. Murn decompresses by watching a comedy. And Harcourt picks Adrian up from prison. He tells her that Auggie is still alive, that his name is Adrian, and admits that he may have made things worse. As Chris dances to his music, he flashes back to when he was a child, and his father made him kill a man by stabbing him multiple times with a screwdriver. He remembers killing Flag again and falls to the floor, Eagly and the bug rolling over to look after him. He flashes back to a happy moment hanging with his brother before jumping to another memory of him dying from a seizure.

 

Leota goes through the belongings of the Goffs and Ashley, finding that they both had a card for Glan Tai bottling. Not sure what that is. Leota calls Murn, and tells him that she found something. He says he’ll be right over, before grabbing a bowel and unfurling a proboscis to drink from it. Well, damn.

 

Well, that’s a hell of a twist to end on. The capabilities and plan of the Butterflies are still up in the air, so this raises a lot of questions. Was Murn always a Butterfly or has he been possessed? If possession, was he taken over before the start of the show or has he been taken over recently? Is this whole operation a pretext to take out rivals amongst the other Butterflies? Were the comments about his change in behavior a sign he was taken? The plot has truly thickened. I liked the scene with Adrian in prison. While the show has gone out of it’s way to show us that he is a very disturbed, destructive individual, this is probably the first time we saw how smart he is. Well, in a manner of speaking. Was getting himself arrested in an attempt to assassinate Auggie so that Peacemaker would be free of his influence stupid? Yes. But he really played Auggie’s men from the moment he sat down. The dude is awkward as hell, but he got those guys to make the first swing despite them being longtime inmate and thus more than likely knowing how this would look if they threw the first punch. And he was self-aware enough to know that he definitely made the situation worse by acting rashly. That’s growth right there. Getting some of Chris’s background was interesting. It’s one thing to hear about how Auggie messed him up as a child to make him a hardened killer, it’s quite another to see a pre-teen stabbing a man to death while his father laughed behind him. I’ll be curious to see how his brother’s death factors into things. I’ve seen enough stories to know that it’ll be more complicated than ‘Peacemaker killed his brother,’ but not by much. And it was incredibly sad to hear Auggie say to Chris’ face that he never loved him. I have a very loving relationship with my dad, so this whole exchange is foreign to me, but I can think of few things he could say to me that would be more damaging than that. I’m not sure Leota was wrong in trying to take him out, just for Chris’ mental health. But ya. Butterflies are everywhere and Chris is rightly pissed. I wonder where this’ll go. We’ll see next time. Have a good night! 

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Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 3

A stakeout, how exciting. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris had to deal with the fallout of his very bad decision to pick up a bargirl. He called Harcourt and got the Project: Butterfly crew to come bail him out as the cops’ rush to investigate what happened. Harcourt and Leota arrive in a car and are forced to wait for Smith to gather his stuff and get to the damn car. Smith stole a bunch of stuff from the bargirl and tried to escape. As he fled, he briefly held a couple hostage and flirted with the wife, Amber, much to the annoyance of her husband, Evan. He ends up leaping out a window down a series of balconies to the lower building. He’s almost caught by the cops, but Harcourt comes out and hits them with knockout darts. They flee and report back to Murn. To help cover Smith’s tracks, Economos hacks the police database and alters the registration of Smith’s car and his fingerprints to that of his father, Auggie. Murn chews him out for stupidly picking Auggie of all people. Back at their office, operatives try to figure out how a Butterfly, Annie Strurphausen, found Smith. They argue for a bit but don’t come to any conclusions. Smith heads back to his house and has a sobbing fit to try to process the fact everyone hates him and he just exacerbates everything. He’s interrupted by Vigilante, his self-proclaimed BFF. They decided to celebrate his freedom by shooting a bunch of appliances, their favorite pastime. Meanwhile, Leota bribes the couple to say that Auggie was the one that kidnapped them. Auggie is arrested and we learn that he's actually a former supervillain, the White Dragon, and has a lot of minions in prisons. In the last few minutes of the episode, we see Smith, Vigilante, and Amber after a three-way. While sharing a blunt with Amber, Smith plays with a device he stole from Annie’s apartment, and it’s revealed to be a small spaceship. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 3: Better Groff Dead

 

The episode begins with Peacemaker meeting with the other Project: Butterfly crew and filling them in about the tiny spaceship. Smith tells the others that he hates homunculi and/or tiny beings, including Dollman, a villain who can shrink. Murn asks about the tiny spaceship and Smith says that it’s at Leota’s desk under his lunch. While Economos goes to get it, Leota clocks Vigilante very obviously watching them from behind a dumpster. Harcourt tells him to leave, and he stays to be obstinate. Smith asks him to go, and he agrees, but not before telling Smith that none of his current coworkers would ‘work’ as a friend for him. Especially not a best friend. But he should try to be friendly with Leota, because of all the racism rumors. He runs off. Economos points out that Vigilante is wanted for multiple counts of murder, but Murn tells him they’ve got bigger fish to fry and they should focus on killing a US senator.

 

We see the crew are driving in an Ex-static Electrical truck, swerving in and out of traffic and otherwise driving dangerously to get to their mission on time. Murn informs us of the mission perimeters, their target is Royland Goff, he’s mostly known for being vocally against climate change. Smith thinks they’re killing him because Climate Change is fake, but he’s corrected. Murn tells him that Goff is a Butterfly and that he’ll need to take him out. There’s a brief digression when Leota accidentally pulls up an… explicit pic that her wife sent her and her having to explain how the hell that happened. WhatsApp added it automatically for some reason. Getting back on task, Murn says that Goff is traveling with his family, they don’t know if the wife and kids are Butterflies, but if they are Peacemaker will have to kill them too. Smith is visibly shaken by this. Harcourt brings up his ‘vow’ to have peace no matter how many people he has to kill to do it. Smith is against killing kids, his concerns are noted by Murn. We learn that Goff is traveling with a bodyguard that goes by Judomaster. He’s short but dangerous according to Murn. They head into the mission.

 

Smith gets his sniper rifle ready and is annoyed when he finds out they didn’t engrave the gun with the “dove of peace” the upside-down bird that he has on his chest and all his other weapons. He says he’s not sure he can kill someone without it, so Leota gives him a sharpie. He draws a lopsided bird and looks real disappointed. Economos asks why they don’t just tell Peacemaker what a Butterfly is, and Murn says it’s because he doesn’t trust Smith. He tells Economos that Peacemaker had a deep-seated desire to belong and they need to use that against him. Economos asks about Murn’s past, and he confirms that he's done bad things in the past and he’s trying to make up for it now. They set up a camera to help with their spying.

 

That night, Peacemaker has his rifle set up and is watching while Harcourt eats some trail mix that she shares. Leota, Economos, and Murn watch from the truck. They report to their field team that the family is inbound with Judomaster and an additional bodyguard. There’s a brief argument over the pronunciation of the Berenstain Bears before Murn says for them to shut up. Murn orders Smith to take the shot, but he can’t get Goff in his line of sight as the big bodyguard keeps getting in the way. He asks Murn if he wants Smith to just drop the normal bodyguard, but Murn says no. Watching from a window, they see the family acting weird once they’re out of line of sight. They walk in a creepy single file line to another part of the house. Smith isn’t happy about any of this, not the situation, not the lack of a dove of peace, none of it. Murn tells him to be patient. He says they aren’t killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and that he’s not Amanda Waller.

 

As the night goes on, Smith ask Harcourt what got her into spy work. They both confirm their dads set them on this path. She gives him the bullet points about how she got into spy work right out of college, got recruited by Waller, and is now out here preparing to kill people. She asks him to take monitor duty while she takes care of something. She walks off and Vigilante comes out to chat. He seemed to think that it was safe to talk to Smith right now, despite being around several spec ops guys. Murn is annoyed but says that Vigilante has to stay with the field team as Murn doesn’t want him screwing this up. Leota pulls up a Berenstain Bears book cover to win the argument about how it’s pronounced, but Economos tells her that it’s clearly photoshopped. Sometime later Vigilante asks why they aren’t just killing everyone, and Harcourt tells him they’re not killing the guards who’re just doing their job. They detect movement and see the family heading into the dining room. Mrs. Goff pours some honey-colored goo into bowels for them. Murn confirms they are Butterflies. Which is confirmed a minute later when they sit down to eat the goo and reveal that they’ve got some kind of proboscis in their mouths. Murn orders Smith to take the shot but he freezes. Vigilante ultimately takes over and easily kills the wife and kids as he’s an amoral sociopath. He hums a little song while he does. He goes to kill Goff, but they’re attacked by Judomaster. As his name implies, Judomaster is an excellent hand to hand fighter, he quickly disables all three of the field team, knocking out Harcourt by shoving her onto a rock and beating the other two up. Murn takes Leota to back them up. He orders Economos to do everything in his power to stop anyone from leaving and reporting this. He asks what he’s supposed to do, and Murn shouts at him to do whatever he has to. If the Butterflies catch wind of what’s happened, they’re screwed.

 

Leota finds Harcourt being held at gunpoint by one of the bodyguards. She wants to let him live as he doesn’t seem to know anything, but Harcourt says that doesn’t matter because they’ve seen them. She ends up grabbing the gun and killing the guard. Leota apologies, saying she’s never killed anyone before. Harcourt says her streak is ongoing and for her to check to make sure he’s human. They regroup, confirm Peacemaker is still alive and head inside.

 

Smith currently is tied to a chair and having an intimidation fight with Judomaster, who is calmly eating Cheetos. Smith asks for some and Judomaster uses them as projectiles to smack him in the face a few times. Goff joins them and he has Judomaster prepare Vigilante for interrogation. They tie his hands and hook him up to some jumper cables. Goff tells Judomaster to head out and warn the others. Upstairs, the squad discover that Peacemaker is in a basement of some kind. They search around for an entrance, Leota finding a wall made of some kind of green glass behind a painting.

 

Goff unmasks Vigilante, who is in fact Adrian Chase. Goff starts electrocuting Adrian to try to get Peacemaker to talk, but Smith isn’t effected by his only friend’s screams of agony. Upstairs Murn pulls out some kind of device from his wallet, telling Leota to peel the back and put it on the door, saying it’s an adhesive explosive. Outside, Economos sees Judomaster preparing to escape. In the basement, Smith finally realizes who Vigilante is. He compliments Vigilante on improving his physique, and tells him not to worry as Smith won’t say a word. Goff decides to move on from pure pain to threatening to cut off one of Adrian’s toes. Smith refuses to talk, and Goff starts taking off the toe.

 

Upstairs, they try to use the remote explosive, but it doesn’t seem to work. Goff has a hell of a time taking off Adrian’s toe and wonders why it’s not coming off. Adrian, screaming in pain, says it’s because the knife is dull and asks why he doesn’t maintain his torture equipment. Murn goes to examine the explosive, and right on that obvious cue it goes off in his face. It also knocks Smith forward, as the glass wall was directly behind him.

 

Judomaster tries to drive off, but Economos hits him with the repair truck. Smith frees himself from the chair and he and Goff fight for a minute. He gets Goff’s shotgun and tells him “Peace out, Mother F-er” and blows his face off. Economos checks on the car and sees Judomaster has pulled himself from the wreck and is trying to crawl away. He hits him several times with a crowbar until he finally stops moving. He hits the guy like he’s trying to crush a spider, it’s pretty funny. The wall itself was broken but mostly intact, Leota and Harcourt having to clear the rubble to get inside. Smith helps Adrian get free, even giving him back his mask to hide his face from the others. As they work, they see a large alien insect escape from the wreckage of Goff’s head. It flies up and Peacemaker finally gets the name “Project: Butterfly.” We cut back to the van where one of the computers finishes an analysis and shows potential Butterfly locations. There are Thousands, worldwide. Well damn.

 

This was a fun stakeout episode. As such, there was a lot of waiting and preparing without much action until the end. I liked Smith and Harcourt having some time to chat, her dislike of the man is completely justified but it’s nice to see where their lives overlap ever so slightly. I like the fact that they’re sticking to this idea that Smith is having trouble being as amoral as he used to be. Part of me wondered if this would just be a lot of him saying that killing people is hard for him now without a lot of him doing, but his inability to take the shot does suggest he’s legit. And it was kind of chilling as hell to see how easily Vigilante does it. Like, the show has gone out of its way to say he’s a violent killer too, but the whole ‘humming a tune while he blows heads off’ bit was disturbing. Honestly, it seems like Project: Butterfly should have him on staff. The reveal that Butterflies are some kind of alien bugs was well done. The proboscis drinking was a big clue, but the actual alien bug climbing out of the… meatsuit I guess was even better. And I’m with Smith at this point that ARGUS is terrible at naming operations. Nhut Le was good as Judomaster, he put his whole voice into those Kias. He was the just right amount of obnoxious while holding Peacemaker captive. I hope he’s not a one and done because that character seems like he’s a lot of fun. So… ya, there are a lot of Butterflies out there and it’s looking like Peacemaker is going to have to work overtime to take them out. Fun times. Have a good night, everyone.

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 2

Peacemaker has to escape the apartment complex. It goes about as well as you'd think. 

Last time on Peacemaker, Chris Smith struck out on his own. After surviving being shot in the neck by Bloodsport and crushed under a building at the end of The Suicide Squad, Smith spent about six months in intensive care. He after getting a clean bill of health from his doctor and deciding he doesn’t want to go back to prison, he attempted to flee. He’s tracked down almost immediately by Project Butterfly, a subdivision of ARGUS. The group’s leader, Mr. Murn, is said to work directly under Amanda Waller. Murn gives Smith the choice to work for him hunting down ‘Butterflies’ individuals that he will not elaborate on but insist need to die, or jail time. Smith chooses going back to shooting people. He takes a quick stop to pick up some gear and his pet eagle Eagly from his POS father Auggie before having Dinner with the Butterfly squad and getting his first assignment. After that meeting, he spies Harcourt, the attractive woman that is supposed to be his handler and follows her into a bar. He tries to very awkwardly suggest they hook up, which disgusts Harcourt even more than Smith had already and she storms off. Smith picks up a bar chick after that and… celebrates his freedom. Things take a turn for the worst, though, when Bar chick is shown to have super strength and a desire to kill Peacemaker. Smith fights her off while in his undies, ultimately electing to leap out a window to escape her. He gets one of the helmets he got from his dad on and uses it’s sonic boom feature which turns the bar chick into ground hamburger and destroys all the cars around him. At the same time we meet Leota Adebayo, the other new recruit to Project: Butterfly. She insists she’s no one special and is just doing this job to help her and her wife get back on their feet. But it’s revealed by the episode’s end she is in fact Amanda Waller’s mole in this group… and her daughter. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Ep 2: Best Friends for Never

 

We cut to Harcourt asleep at home when she gets a call from someone in her contacts that is listed as Dumbshit. She answers and ya, it’s Peacemaker. Smith demands to know what Project Butterfly is, and quickly and crudely explained what happened with the bar chick. He tells Harcourt he’s running up to get his stuff from the apartment. Harcourt quickly dresses and says she’ll meet him there, following the tracking chip in his skull. Harcourt rushes over to Leota’s hotel room and tells her that she’s driving.

 

Peacemaker makes it to the apartment and starts grabbing stuff as the record player starts up on its own. He quickly gets dressed, despite the suit being really hard to get on in a hurry, cursing his dad’s design as he does.

 

Harcourt calls up Murn, who meets with Economos at their headquarters. He reminds her how important their operation is and she insists she has it handled. As Leota drives, Harcourt scolds her for having ‘someone’ in her room and how dangerous that is. She also assembles a gun of some kind as she does. At their office, Murn asks Economos if he can change Smith’s car’s registration on the fly and Economos confirms he can.

 

Cops have arrived at the scene and are baffled by the intact opossum at the center of the explosion. One of them, the Asian woman, says that she knows this has to be some kind of ‘cape shit’ and that this is another headache for her on top of some psycho named Vigilante.

 

In the Apartment, Smith quickly gathers his dossier… no I don’t know why he brought that into the apartment of what was obviously a hookup. And a… souvenir of the encounter.

 

The cops find what’s left of the bar girl’s face as Leota and Harcourt pull up. They wait for Peacemaker to meet them, Harcourt scoffing at the idea that Smith hooked up with a Butterfly. Leota points out that after four years in prison, she can believe there’s not much he wouldn’t want to screw at that point. They’re distracted by a slight argument about whether its weird that Leota dresses up one of her dogs, before Harcourt angrily asks where the hell Peacemaker is.

 

In the apartment, Smith basically steals all of the bar chick’s records and other cool shit he can find. The dude is a villain, I suppose. He sees some device that looks like a space themed Alexa that pings when he goes by it and grabs that too. Harcourt calls him and wants to know what is taking so long. He doesn’t admit to stealing stuff, saying he’s grabbing important stuff. Harcourt tells him he can’t go out the front as there are too many cops outside now. He asks her to try to find Eagly, telling her to crinkle a bag to trick him into thinking she has chips. He looks out the broken window and is immediately spotted by the dozen or so cops out there. The cops are told there are only two ways in and out of the building, so they cover both and head in. Harcourt tells him he’ll need to make it to a balcony on the second floor and jump. Smith grabs the knife and runs.

 

Peacemaker tries to flee but he comes out as the cops come up the stairs and elevator. So, he runs higher, one of the set of cops follows him while the other check out the apartment. Smith knocks on a random door and forces his way inside when the guy answers, though only after he makes up an incredibly stupid fake name. He gets in and locks the door, holding the man and his wife hostage with the knife. The cops knock on their door, but Peacemaker has the couple, Evan and Amber, stay quiet until they leave. Smith checks the balcony situation and seems to decide it’s too far to jump. He goes back in and tells them that he’ll need some twine or rope to tie them up. Amber gets some twine, and she and Smith have a moment bonding over the album Cinderella. The couple start fighting because Smith and Amber start flirting, the cops hear and prepare to bust the door in. Smith leaps one apartment balcony down as they break the door in. A kid watching cartoons sees him and waves. He does another leap, and lands badly on the railing of the next balcony. More cops arrive and start covering the whole building. Smith makes one final leap to the lower building, hits the roof hard and clearly screw up his shoulder.

 

Harcourt, feed up with this, heads in to save him. Leota wants to help but she’s told to stay behind and keep the engine running. The cops corner Smith on the lower roof, but Harcourt hits them with her gun, letting him escape. Smith and Eagly get into the car but not before it’s shot several times. Harcourt says Eagly better not shit back there, and Smith shrugs and says you can’t house train an eagle. They all have a celebratory cathartic shout as they drive up.

 

At the office, Economos tells Murn that he was able to change the registration of Smith’s car and the fingerprint information that they got to someone else. That someone else is revealed to be Auggie Smith. Two of the detectives, Sophia Song (Annie Chang) and Larry Fitzgibbon (Lochlyn Munro) go to his house to ask a few questions. Auggie is racist and they ask him where he was the night before. He says he was at home and tries to slam the door in their faces. Fitz stops him and asks if he’s ‘playing dress-up’ again. Auggie tells him to screw off. They ask about the Comet found at the scene, and Auggie immediately rats out that car belongs to Chris. He tells them to get off his property, calls Song ‘Chopsticks’ and slams the door. Song calls him a ‘fork,’ and she and Fitz debate whether calling him a spoon would have been more demeaning. They switch their focus to the news Peacemaker is out of prison.

 

Murn starts yelling at Economos for doing the incredibly stupid thing of picking Chris’s dad to frame. Economos insists that he had to work fast and he did do something borderline supernatural to do it. Murn calls him an idiot just before the others come in. Leota is super jazzed from the adrenaline rush of being shot at. Economos starts stitching Smith’s wounds. He asks about the Butterflies again, but Economos is mum on the subject. Smith makes fun of his beard, again, and Economos gets incredibly mad, listing off the other super criminals he’d rather spend time with than him. The list includes Harley Quinn, Weasel and Bat-Mite. When Peacemaker asks who that last guy is, Economos explains that he’s a two-foot-tall imp that stans Batman, and they both shake their heads at the absurdity of their universe. Murn and the other two watch, and Murn asks how this bar chick could have found Peacemaker when he kept this as on the DL as he could.  We learn that the woman’s name was Annie Sturphausen. They try to figure out how; Harcourt suggests that it was Waller. She pitches the idea that Waller tipped off the Butterflies to set them at this team to get cover for the operatives she actually trusts. Leota says it isn’t and Murn agrees, but after the Corta Maltese situation Harcourt’s trust in Waller is low. Harcourt lists off the impossibilities, she knows she’s not the mole, she knows Peacemaker isn’t because he was the one almost killed, and that Murn wouldn’t be it as he’s the one that tipped ARGUS off to the Butterflies in the first place. She suggests maybe it’s Leota. Leota denies this but is still vague about her past when Harcourt starts grilling her, which, ya know, looks suspicious. Smith suggests it’s Economos. Harcourt says he’s too much of a wimp to do that. Smith pitches the idea that maybe he didn’t do it intentionally, but while talking big at a strip club or something. Bold to keep mocking the dude who is stitching you up. Leota suggests that maybe Annie picked him up specifically to bang him. Harcourt then asks why she’d try to kill him after. Smith has a flashback to finding Annie looking at the Dossier when he’d been in the bathroom and that’s when the energy between them changed.

 

Murn yells at Smith for bringing highly classified dossiers into the apartment of some rando hookup. Smith says that he thought it was safer with him than in the car and asks if he should have dropped it off at home first. Murn shouts “YES!” at him and that the fate of the country is on this mission. As Murn takes a call, Smith has a very minor panic at the thought that he might get some sort of Butterfly VD from his hook up that no one really pays attention to. Murn comes back and asks why he didn’t say there were more witnesses. Smith admits to kidnapping a couple for a few minutes. Murn tells Leota to handle it. She asks if he means ‘take them out’ take them out or bribe them, and he confirms bribe them and for her to go, now. As Murn and Harcourt go to handle something, Smith asks if he’s a Dick Vampire. Economos tells him no, he’s just a dick.

 

Peacemaker goes back home and looks through his stolen records. He puts one on the Firehouse and has a cathartic cry. He goes so far as to punch his bad shoulder and yells at himself that everyone hates him.  He even admits that Economos could be his friend but he pushes him away like everyone else. He repeats Flag Jr.’s last words, “Peacemaker, what a F-ing joke.” His sob session is interrupted by Vigilante standing at his window asking him what’s up. They have an argument about whether Vigilante is pleasing himself to Peacemaker crying. Smith plays off his crying as face strengthening exercises. And Vigilante asks if Smith could show him those exercises.

 

Leota meets with Amber and Evan, who are still fighting. She tries to subtlety offer to bribe them, but when they don’t get it, she just flat out says, “Yes I am trying to bribe you.”

 

Vigilante and Smith hang out. Vigilante does some tidying up as they banter about secret identities. Vigilante asks how he got out of prison, and Smith admits he’s working as a contract killer. He admits that he’s been feeling weird since Corto Maltese and lately he’s been feeling like a psychopath. Vigilante says gives him a pep talk, saying that they’re born killers but what separates them from other killers is that they only kill bad guys. Unless there is a mistake. Vigilante suggests they celebrate his freedom. Smith says no, he has to study the dossier, but then Vigilante says that he’s been buying appliances since Smith got arrested. They head out into the woods and have a montage of the two of them destroying appliances with various weapons. They shoot them, throw dynamite and grenades at them, and just in general have a good time.

 

Amber and Evan tell the cops that Auggie did it and they head out to arrest him. On the one hand, frame jobs aren’t great… on the other Auggie probably does deserve to be in prison for something.

 

At her hotel room, Leota floats the idea to Keeya that maybe her and the dogs should get out of town while she’s working on this job. Keeya doesn’t take it particularly well.

 

We cut to Smith, Amber, and Vigilante post coitus. Guess Amber was *extremely* mad at her husband. Smith and Amber share some weed, with a grumpy Vigilante (who is still wearing the mask) saying that he doesn’t do that stuff and would have killed them if he’d caught them smoking pot three years ago. Smith grabs the Alexa, touches some buttons on it and it unfolds into a spaceship.

 

Auggie is brought into lock up. He goes over to a young prisoner and tells him to move out of the spot he’s sitting as that’s where Auggie likes to sit. The kid asks what happens if he doesn’t move, and Auggie tells him he can sit there and find out. A half dozen other prisoners are paying a weird amount of attention to the exchange and the kid moves. Auggie sits down and the other prisoners gather around him. Song, who’d been watching from the control room, says to the guard that she thought all capes got sent to Belle Reve or Arkham. The guard says that they’re overcrowded, so he’ll be here until his trial. The other prisoners bow down and give him the Nazi salute, saying “Hail the White Dragon.”

 

That was a fun episode. The extended chase scene through the apartment complex was neat, watching Smith have to think (badly) on his feet to escape the place while it’s swarming with cops was well done. I do find it interesting that Smith insists that he is a hero despite doing the very unheroic thing of stealing from a dead person. Like, I can kind of understand how he twists being a killer for hire as a ‘good’ thing, but theft is just about always frowned upon. All I’m saying. Though I suppose his kleptomania did get him the tiny spaceship, which is probably important. I think I’m on Murn’s side that fingering Auggie Smith for the crimes of Chris Smith was a dumb move, but the man clearly doesn’t thrive under pressure, so it is on Murn for not giving him orders on who to frame. The scene where Chris is alone and starts sobbing because everyone hates him and he knows it’s because of his attitude is… just so damn sad. He puts on a brave face and a smug attitude so well that it’s genuinely surprising when he lets go of the toxic masculinity for a bit and lets himself cry. It’s a bit weird to do it to a stolen record, but hey, a fella’s gotta feel. I enjoyed his interaction with Vigilante. While Chris isn’t any nicer to him than anyone, it seems like Vigilante is his emotional support guy. Dude cleans his house, listens to him vent a little, and then takes him out to shoot stuff as part of a pick-me-up. And like, he’s got to be a reasonably good friend if you’re going to have a three-way with him, just saying. So ya, the plot thickens just a bit. We’ll see what the tiny aliens have to do with things next time, me thinks. Have a good night. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Peacemaker ep 1

 Chris Smith is back.... and is still an asshole.

Alright, let’s cover Peacemaker season 1. Peacemaker stars John Cena returning as Christopher Smith aka Peacemaker, a DC anti-hero and villain that often serves as a member of groups like the Suicide Squad. He’s extremely patriotic, and an efficient killer. He served alongside Bloodsport, Harley Quinn, Polka-Dot Man, Ratcatcher 2, and Rick Flag Jr. as part of the B-Team squad that actually survives. Weasel was brought with them too, but he seemingly drowned on the way there. He was fine though. Smith had a secret secondary mission from the others, his job was to destroy any evidence that the US government had worked with the Corto Maltese Government in their experiments on Starro, a giant psychic alien starfish. He faced off against Rick Flag Jr, who believed all this info needed to get out. Smith kills Flag, but the other Squad members release the data, making his mission a failure. Oh, and Bloodsport shot him in the neck in retaliation for killing Flag. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We open with Smith getting a medical checkup. His doctor says she’s shocked he survived a neck wound and a building falling on him only to need a replacement clavicle. Smith asks if they can’t increase the contrast on the X-ray to show off his muscles a bit more. He feels like the way they have it makes him look like he’s all bulk when he works really hard on his small muscle groups too. The doctor says that this isn’t for his tinder profile and tells him that so long as he keeps up with physical therapy and tries not to lift his right elbow above his shoulder he should be fine. She discharges him, and he seems very confused by that. Smith calls over Jamil, the janitor that he’s apparently smoked weed with a few times. He asks if Jamil is trustworthy, which Jamil says he definitely isn’t. They banter back and forth for a bit before Smith decides to just tell him that he’s supposed to be in jail, for Superhero shit. Jamil doesn’t believe him, hasn’t heard of “Peacemaker,” and says that Smith is too bulky to be a superhero. They have like gymnast bodies. Jamil says he’s a fan of Aquaman and in his smug anger Smith starts an obviously fake rumor that Aquaman has sex with fish. When Smith mentions that he made a vow to have peace, regardless of how many people he has to kill to get it, Jamil remembers him, calling him the racist superhero. Smith denies this, saying he’s killed an awful lot of white people too, but Jamil says that the ratio is suspicious. Smith promises to trust white people less and get that number closer to even, and then asks Jamil if he’s noticed any law enforcement types waiting around to nab him as he’s supposed to go back to prison. Jamil says no. He asks if he can just… go, and Jamil shrugs and says why not.

 

Smith gets his Peacemaker gear out and dons it before walking off. As he walks out, one of the nurses calls him a total douchebag. Another nurse pulls out her phone and texts someone named ‘Mr. Murn’ in her contacts to say that he’s on the move. Peacemaker gets into a cab and tells the guy to drive, ultimately celebrating that he’s seemingly gotten away Scott free. 

 

Chapter 1: A Whole New Whirled

 

After the opening credits we cut to Keeya (Elizabeht Ludlow) and Leota (Danielle Brooks) Adebayo as they get set up in their new apartment. They make some jokes about being into some spy stuff, to defuse the tension that Keeya is feeling about Leota’s new job. Leota promises that she’s just filing paperwork and office stuff. She’s just doing this job long enough for them to stock up some cash in their accounts and then moving on. Her promise of no risk might be a lie as Mr. Murn texts her to get moving and she runs off.

 

Smith gets dropped off at his trailer and tries to barter with the driver to give him some Corto Maltese cash for the ride. He says that it might be worth only fifty sense, but it could be worth a million bucks. The driver isn’t into it and instead takes Smith’s helmet as payment. Gotta justify why Cena doesn’t wear it somehow, I guess. Ha. Smith looks for his hidden key but can’t find it, so breaks into the back window. The house is in disarray, clearly neglected and full of garbage. Smith finds his phone and sees he’s got dozens of missed calls. He curse his dad, for some reason, and starts going through it. Most of the messages seem to be from a Vigilante (Freddie Storma), his self-proclaimed BFF that just wants to hangout. Smith seems mostly annoyed that Vigilante kept asking him to obviously commit crimes on his phone, no code or anything. Smith suddenly finds himself at gun point. Leota, along with John Economos (Steve Agee) and Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) get him in a triangle pattern for Mr. Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji) to speak with him.

 

They move to the living room. Murn points out that he only served 4 of a 30 year sentence, so did he really think he’d just get to leave? Smith says that he did what he was told, he killed Flag for them, but Harcourt points out that that wasn’t on his mission objectives. Smith says he was told to do whatever is necessary, and she points out how often killing proves necessary for him. Murn says that if Smith plays nice and works for him, he’ll stay out of jail. Murn works directly under Amanda Waller, so he seems legit. He tells Smith that Harcourt will be his direct handler, Economos will handle tactics and logistics, and Leota is the new gal so she’s basically a gopher. Leota has an awkward speech to the others about how excited she is to be working with them before just trailing off. Smith asks what the job is and Murn tells him that he needs help with Project Butterfly. Smith thinks for a moment that he’s going to be fighting Mothra, as ARGUS is not that creative with names, but Murn tells him that he’ll be working as a contract killer, taking out dangerous individuals, they’ve dubbed Butterflies for them. Murn says that they’ll meet him for dinner at 7:30. Smith says that he’ll be there, just after he picks up Eagly from his dad’s.

 

Smith takes another cab to his dad’s. His father is flying an American flag upside down… which not gonna lie feels troubling. He knocks and awkwardly waits for him. He has an argument with one of his dad’s neighbors about whether he’s a ‘real’ superhero or not. His dad, Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick) opens the door and invites him in. Auggie hears his son’s story about being shot in Corto Maltese and calls him pathetic. They have a fight about how Auggie didn’t cancel his phone service while in prison, so he owes a lot of money. They start to yell but Smith backs off. He asks about Eagly. Auggie shows him to Eagly, who was locked up in his garage. Eagly hugs him with his wings as Auggie walks off in disgust.

 

The Project Butterfly team set up shop in a crappy building, Leota forced to take a desk under a dripping pipe as Harcourt called the only desk with light. Harcourt asks what Leota did to piss off Amanda Waller to get this gig, telling the newer agent about how she and Economos are getting punished for the whole ‘helping Suicide Squad disobey her at Corto Maltese,’ thing. She doesn’t exactly answer, and they’re distracted by the thumping in the pipes.

 

Christopher and Auggie have lunch while he try to excitedly tell about his team. They have a weirdly intense laugh about Bloodsport and his rat phobia that he developed from being tortured by his dad. Auggie laughs so hard that he needs water. Once his coughing subsides he asks if that… expletive was the one that shot him. That kills the mood and Auggie calls him a Nancy boy. Christopher asks if he can get a new helmet.

 

Auggie takes him to a secret lab in the house with a bunch of other helmets. They’ve got a bunch of features to them, one has X-Ray, one has a personal shield and so on. He says that these are all from before, that he hasn’t thought about his son once since Christopher was in jail. Christopher asks which one he should take, and Auggie says he’s not sure he should give him ANY, but if he’s going to go around taking care of some minorities, he might be able to part with the helmets. Christopher sheepishly says that he doesn’t target non-white people specifically, only criminals but Auggie clearly doesn’t buy it.

 

At the restaurant, the Butterfly crew eat dinner while waiting for Smith. Harcourt is the first to notice and she and Economos are shocked to see Smith arrive in full Peacemaker gear. Murn insists that Waller isn’t screwing them buy giving them Peacemaker… right up until Harcourt sees Eagly in the backseat. Then he agrees she’s screwing them. Smith joins them, and it’s super awkward. One of the bus boys seems to be staring at Smith, and he thinks that’s his friend Gut Chase’s younger brother, claims he has mental issues. Murn gives him a dossier about his first target, and Smith is shocked to see his target is a US senator. Adrian goes outside and does a celebratory dance that Peacemaker is back before having an awkward conversation with a coworker.

 

Smith goes to his car and Leota asks to see Eagly. He lets her see it and she nips his fingers. They bond a little and Leota asks what he’s heard about Murn. He says that he’s heard that Murn is a mercenary that has killed a lot of people, not always the right people. They part on reasonably good terms and Smith takes a drive with Eagly. He sees Harcourt go into a bar and does an illegal U-turn to follow her.

 

Harcourt goes for a beer and gets hit on immediately. She tells the guy to screw off just before Smith walks in. He’s extremely awkward around Harcourt while trying to be friendly. A friend of the dude she told to screw off comes to try to fight her, but Harcourt takes him down in like two seconds. Smith is obviously smitten. She reveals that she saw him make the U-turn and follow her. She tells him that she’s only interest his ability to kill people and to screw off. Smith tries to convince her to have like a no-strings-attached night to help him ‘relieve some stress.’ She tells him to screw off and walks off. Smith clocks a bar girl looking at him, and he… takes her back to her place.

 

We cut to Leota who is having a video chat with Waller. We learn that Leota has some secret directive that she wants to clue the others in on, but Waller tells her no, they need to play things close to the vest. She asks if Leota has Smith’s diary that a forger made up. She does and Waller tells her to hide it in his trailer somewhere where Smith won’t find it. Waller asks about Peacemaker. Leota says that he’s sexist and racist, but there’s something… sad about him. Waller tells her to not get emotional. Leota says that it won’t be a problem. She’ll finish this job, she and Keeya will get back on their feet and she’ll look for a job she likes. Waller tells her that she’d be ignoring her god given talent, but Leota disagrees. They say goodnight, revealing that Waller is in fact Leota’s mother. Damn. Keeya asks if Waller was trying to pull her in, and Leota says ‘Always.’

 

Back at the bargirl’s place Smith looks through her records while she brushes her teeth. He tries to bond with her over music but she’s clearly not listening. He puts on the record for Quireboys, who he says are his favorite. He does a little dance in his tightie-whities, he thanks her for the hookup and is super awkward still. She walks past him and grabs a knife as he’s distracted singing. She cuts up his back and face pretty good and slices him all over. She nearly stabs him in the head, but he dodges and punches her in the face. She shows off some superhuman strength kicking and slashing at him with her nails. She gets her hands around his head and starts to crush it, but he blinds her with perfume. She throws him through a wall. Realizing he’s screwed, Peacemaker leaps out a window and lands hard on his shoulder. Bargirl leaps out after him, Smith running off before she can catch him. She stalks the parking lot for him when she sees Eagly take off. Smith gets his helmet on and tells it to activate Sonic Boom. The burst of force totals the cars in the parking lot and turns the bargirl into goo. Eagly drops a dead opossum at his feet to make him feel better. They sit together amongst the wreckage as the cop’s race their way. Well, that’s a hell of a start.

 

I’ll admit, after seeing Cena as Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad I was a bit surprised to see how they played him in Peacemaker. While he’s still full of bravado and general dick energy he had in the movie, the man is undeniable incredibly lonely and seems to just want people to like him. He seemed hurt that Jamil wasn’t a ‘real’ friend after they smoked weed together, his daddy issues could be seen from space, and the way he seemed to immediately try to get on Leota’s good side makes me think he honestly does just want a friend. A friend that is not the younger Chase. Yes, I did immediately clock that they’re the same kind of awkward so it’s ironic that Smith doesn’t see that this kid is also desperately lonely and wants a friend like him. I’ll be curious to see how his relationship evolves with the other members of this team, as in my experience guys like Chris Smith have a tendency to make situations much, much worse before they start to get better. Leota is a good character. Since I’d seen Creature Commandos already, I knew that Waller did have a daughter, so the heretofore unknown Black woman joining a covert ops team did just sort of scream ‘little Waller.’ I’ll be curious to hear more about her, as it sounds like she’s a talented spy of some kind in her own right but is rejecting the lifestyle for some reason. Considering who her mama is, I kind of get it. Can’t imagine growing up with Amanda “I kill people to make my point” Waller gives one a… positive view on espionage work. The fight in his underwear was a bit… out of nowhere. Sure, Chris Smith is a super soldier, big and powerful like a whole host of impowered soldier types… and yet seeing him in those extremely small little undies does convey a weakness that I’m just not used to seeing in John Cena. Whoever or whatever the bargirl is has me curious. She clearly had powers of some kind, I assume she’ll end up being a Butterfly, whatever that is. An alien, or cyborg or mutant, I’m sure they’ll explain things a little more next episode. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. Have a good night. 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social

Viewer Log: Creature Commandos ep 7

 The plot comes together. Also the sad story of Nina. 

Last time on Creature Commandos, we learned the story of Alex Sartorious aka Dr. Phosphorous. Alex made a deal with Gotham crime boss Rupert Thorne. Thorne agreed to fund Alex’s research in treating cancer through radiation, in exchange Thorne would get to sell the info to who he wanted. The group in question being Bialya, a country currently under a fascist regime. Alex tried to feed them false info, but he got caught. Alex’s wife and son are murdered, Alex being framed for the crime. They then try to kill him with his machine, turning him into the radioactive man. He killed Thorne, stole his territory, lived as a crime boss for a while before being caught by Batman. Phosphorous briefly considers killing a little girl that found him hiding in her house, but she reminded him too much of his son for him to hurt. Weasel hung out with some wolves. Nina and the Bride hid out in a brothel, ultimately saving one of its girls from a pair of violent meta johns. The group reconvene and prepare to kill a princess.

 

We open on a woman giving birth. The baby seems to be born relatively fine, until the doctor gets a look at her and is visibly horrified, as is the baby’s father. We’re not shown the baby’s condition right away, but we’re told she’s got a series of unusual health issues including that her lungs seemed to have developed outside of her body. The doctor says they’re not sure how long they can even keep her alive, but thinks that the baby’s father, Dr. Edward Mazursky, might be able to think of something. He dubs the baby Nina, much to his wife’s shock. I think it’s the confidence in his voice that surprised her more than anything.

 

In the present, Eric has forced a man to drive him to the Pokolistan capital and listen to him talk very possessively about the Bride. The dude really needs a hobby. He ends his long speech by assuring his kidnapped driver, Ivan, that stopping the Bride from killing Princess Ilana will put an end to the “Screwball comedy” portion of their love story and shift it to an… adult film. The tender, soft, focused kind. The kind made for chicks. Ivan just nods as he very much wants to get out of this alive.

 

At the palace, the knights are on high alert for the commandos. So imagine the guards shock when Weasel and the Bride rush him and she crushes his throat. Eric pulls up, sees her massacring a guard, and shakes his head as he laughs at her being ‘up to her old tricks.’ In the guard house, the Bride starts looking through security cameras while everyone else waits. Nina asks the big question, what if Waller is wrong. Phosphorous is nonchalant about it, lighting the dead guards cigar and saying that killing a few people out of several billion hardly matters, and takes Weasel’s grunt as agreement. Phosphorous tries to help The Bride by looking through security camera feeds from a few days ago and sees something in the feed that I can’t make out. Nina remarks that it seems like they aren’t the only monstrous visitors here. They’re interrupted by Eric pulling himself into the guard tower and trying to tell the Bride what’s going on. The Bride sees her centuries old stalker and immediately shoots him three times… unfortunately warning the guards to their presence. They leap out of the tower to get away, the Bride landing next to an injured Eric. He tries to give her Flag’s message again, but she shoots him and tells the stalking POS to go to hell.

 

We flashback to Nina’s infancy where her father seems to have rigged up a portable iron lung to keep her breathing. Edward and Nina are clearly happy but Lily looks troubled, she walks off sobbing as Lily falls on her back and Edward has to pick her up to right her. Edward follows her and they have an argument on whether this is right or not. Lily points out that he’ll forever need to be rebuilding the iron lung to keep her breathing, and that she’ll be struggling every moment of her life. Edward tries to convince her that everything is fine, but Lily can’t take this anymore. She says she love him, but trying to make this work is torturing all of them. She leaves, saying that she’ll be at her mother’s for a while.

 

In the present, the Commandos find an entry point. Phosphorous kills the lone guard and then melts a hole, though he mutters that this could take a while.

 

Flashing back again, we see that Lily wasn’t exactly wrong about how difficult Nina’s life would be, as we’re shown the 5ish year old struggling to even walk while carrying the heavy breathing device. Edward promises her that he’s figured out a treatment to help her so she won’t have to wear it anymore. His machine injects her several times, Edward sying that the treatment is altering her DNA to help her breath despite the fluid in her lungs. Edward, like so many unfortunate mad scientists before him, learns to late that messing with DNA is never as easy as one might think. The injections that Nina is given within moments cause her to have a seizure as her DNA is rewritten, transforming her from the bald, flat nosed but otherwise human child we’ve been seeing up until now into her fishy form. She struggles to breathe, but Edward isn’t stupid. He grabs his baby, puts her in the sink and submerges her in water. After her new gills are under, she breathes fine and asks for her daddy.

 

In the present, new captain Sergei tries to keep the princess protected, even while Ilana nonchalantly walks to the pool for her morning swim. He tries to talk her into not going but she insists she’s fine with all the guards around her. She walks to the top of a diving area and we see the Commandos finally cutting through the brick. They prepare to go after Ilana, but Weasel starts freaking out. Nina grabs him and forces him to the ground. The Bride asks what’s up and she thinks Weasel is excited to see Ilana, reminding them all that she did play fetch with Weasel for hours when they first came. Phosphorous suggests maybe putting Weasel down, but the other two shoot him down immediately. Nina does her best to calm Weasel.

 

Another flashback and we see Edward trying to get Nina into a prep school. He lists off his daughter’s accomplishments, speaks four languages, has a lot of interest in the sciences, and is all around a good girl. He says that he’s homeschooled her this whole time but thinks that Nina needs to socialize as she’s really only ever known him. Principle Gale agrees to take him and asks Nina if she has any questions. Nina asks how to play Lacrosse. She looks like she has a good time playing for about a minute before the other girls are just massive bitches to her. We see she’s relentlessly bullied by other students as well. They call her a frog and demand she ribbit for them… which I don’t get. She’s clearly a fish! She’s fully aquatic and has gills! Why call her a frog? I know it’s asking a lot to have bullies think, but this is a prep school.

 

We cut to Flag’s hospital room, and he finally wakes up from his coma. He immediately tells Waller that she was wrong about Ilana. He only is able to get out that MacPherson wasn’t Mac before he passes out again, and Waller calls John to check things out.

 

At the palace, the Commandos are trying to keep Weasel calm while trying to get to Ilana without the guards noticing. The Bride eyes all the water around them and smirks. Nina asks her “What?” It took them seven episodes but the fish person is finally going to use her fish powers it seems.

 

Back to the flashback, high school Nina makes eyes at a boy she likes. He seems to smile at her and wave, but then she opens up her locker to find a frog sitting there and everyone laughs at her. We see her crying in her room for a minute before Edward comes home. He finds her window open and Nina missing. In voice over we hear her note telling her dad that she loves him but she can’t live among people like this. She opens a manhole and climbs into the sewar. She follows the flow of the water to the outflow, stripping off her suit as she goes before diving into the, hopefully, clean river the storm drain flows into. Her father runs out looking for her as it starts to rain before dropping to his knees and sobbing.

 

The other commandos tell Nina that she’s the one that has to kill Ilana, who is now swimming in the water. Nina is terrified by this as, I think the show has made clear at this point, she’s not a killer. She’s not a career criminal. She’s an otherwise normal twenty something year old woman that has gills. Why did they put this poor girl on a kill squad? Phosphorous and the Bride don’t really have other options so keep telling her to do it, the Bride giving Nina a knife. They tell her to dive in, stab, and then fall back before anyone notices. They give her their confidence, and Nina takes the knife.

 

We get another flashback to Nina living off the grid in the Star City water system. She’s hunting fish and seems to be doing fine when a photographer gets several pictures of her. We learn that it’s been three years since she ran away and has become something of a local legend in Star City. Though after the pictures, city officials have called in animal experts from Metropolis and Bludhaven to potentially capture her. This obviously panics her father, who finally has confirmation is baby is still alive. Nina gets caught and dragged from the water. Her father arrives and does his best to talk to her. An overzealous guard just sees him grabbing at the fish lady and shoot his. Unfortunately, right as her dad was trying to tell her she was never a burden to him. She screams as they throw her in a tank. This feels like a lot of pomp and circumstance for what is obviously a metahuman in a universe where they’ve existed for 300 years.

 

We cut to MacPherson’s house as Waller and John head in. Waller kicks the door in, and they’re shocked to see the fragments of Clayface scattered around the room. Waller realizes what happened and calls the team. She gets in contact with Sergei unfortunately as Nina makes her bid to kill her. Weasel runs to try to save Ilana, warning her what’s about to happen. She swims to the side as Nina makes her slash and they wrestle in the water. Phosphorous runs over to Weasel and grabs him, calling him a stupid animal as he does. An angry Weasel bites his arm, and ends up hurting Phosphorous but also burning his mouth. Ilana gets the knife from Nina and stabs her in the gut seven or eight times, an absolutely chilling look in her eye as she does. The Bride sees the blood welling up and runs to her friend’s lifeless body. They’re cornered by the guards, but Sergie stops anyone from shooting. He brings the Bride the phone and Waller tell her they made a mistake. Ilana rises from the water, soaked in it and Nina’s blood.

 

After, Phosphorous does his best to cover his injury. He is furious at Weasel for getting Nina killed and from getting a bunch of praise from the guards. The Bride asks what he expects after an assassination attempt, a pat on the back. Phosphorous says that he would like that, if their hands wouldn’t burn up from touching him. And he asks the Bride if she knows what it’s like to not be touched for 15 years. She says she does and storms off. The Bride finds Ilana and follows her into her study. Ilana says that she understands what happened and that there’s no hard feelings. She goes so far as to suggest that Circe is the one that wants to destroy the world. The Bride says that she believes Circe. Ilana tries to play cool… right up until the Bride says that she saw Ilana meeting with Clayface, in that tape which had the glare I couldn’t see through. The Bride puts it together for us: Ilana seduced Flag to get her on her side and tries to convince him to execute Circe on the spot. When Flag refuses, she sent Sergie to spy on them and confirm that they’d get someone like MacPherson to corroborate Circe’s claim. He was the other man that stared at The Bride when they got back. So, Ilana called up Clayface and convinced him to take out MacPherson and steal her identity to discredit what she’d told Waller. The Bride tells her that she’s not going to kill Ilana to stop WW3, or to save the world, but because she killed Nina. Her only friend. And the only person with an ounce of kindness in her. Ilana pulls a gun on the Bride, but the Bride is a faster draw and she blows Ilana’s brains out. She quickly exits, telling Phosphorous and Weasel to stop fighting and follow her. They escape before anyone notices.

 

Later, John congradulates the Bride for a job well done. She isn’t super jazzed because, again, dead friend. John tells her that Waller has converted a part of the non-human containment wing for her team. When the Bride asks about that, he opens the door to the cells and we find Phosphorous and Weasel waiting. Along with a rebuilt GI Robot, King Shark, Nosferata (one of the monsters bullying Nina earlier, the one that wasn’t killed) and Khalis an Egyptian themed monster. John asks if she’s in, and the Bride sarcastically asks what else does she have to do?

 

In a post credit scene, we see Eric has survived being shot multiple times. Which, ya know, tracks. He’s being nursed back to health by the woman that tipped him off that the Bride had returned to Castle Frankenstein. He seems to think the Bride “overreacted” to his presence just has him even more convinced that they’re meant to be together. He then comments that the soup is gross, and the woman says that it’s bird dropping soup. Ending on a poo joke, classy.

 

Well… damn. I would not have guessed killing Nina would hurt like that. The Bride had the right measure of her, despite the cruelty, abuse, and anger that Nina had suffered literally her entire life, she was extremely kind, and compassionate, and the Bride’s friend. Her backstory was sufficiently tragic. The world was against her from literal minute one, but she had to keep going. I respect her dad for never giving up on her, even if that desire to get her back is what got him killed. Though, again, the reaction to the fish lady felt way over the top considering guys like Killer Croc and Atlantis exist in this universe. I’ll be honest, Ilana should count herself lucky the Bride went for a headshot. In my experience in literature, taking the only friend of an otherwise anti-social person leads to vengeance that they write epic poetry about. I think the twist about Ilana being… I guess a double twist villain was well done. Her interest in Flag was always a bit odd, and she did at one point seem weirdly into the controller for the Commando’s shock implants. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that there’s a draft of this season where she tries to steal that controller to get the Commandos to work for her. I do wish we could have gotten a bit more about her plan, as I’m not sure how this lady would ultimately lead a global war. I just would have liked what phase one was. Or phase two, if phase one was outfitting her knights in power armor. Overall, I liked this show. They had a good mix of comedy, drama and action, and I’m looking forward to season 2. And also, the Clayface movie, I want to see more of that horror monster. Oh, and I liked a visual Easter egg of the Bride pulling a book from Ilana’s shelves and picking a work by Mary Shelley. She chose Mathilda, which I guess side steps how Frankenstein could be both a book in universe and a real dude. Just saying. Have a good night and a happy Halloween! 

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social