Author: John Sabato

We’ve passed the halfway mark on the first, and hopefully not last, season of Peacemaker on HBO Max. Episode 5 is set to hit HBO Max tomorrow and fans are waiting to see what’s next following that jaw-dropping revelation at the end of last week’s episode. Episode 4 featured some emotional moments and revelations for the team, especially Peacemaker himself, who may finally be realizing his father was never trying to toughen him up, just abusing him and taking his anger on the world out on the only person he had left.

Following the mission in which the team exterminated Royland Goff and his family, who were indeed butterflies as Murn suspected, and with Judomaster in tow, the gang heads back to their rundown base of operations with one less toe than before and Vigilante claiming that he may never walk the same again.

Following a brief team meeting, Peacemaker and Vigilante return to Auggie Smith’s house where the nosey neighbor explains that Auggie has been arrested, but only after he gets into an argument with Peacemaker about Batman, similar to spats you see on Twitter daily.

This is where Peacemaker begins to realize who his father really is. It’s obvious that Auggie is a repugnant and awful man, but as his son, Smith only saw that through rose-colored glasses, believing it to be tough love. It took Auggie telling Chris that he wished he had killed him the second he was born, but Chris seems to have finally had a breakthrough.

After a bit of not-so-subtle manipulation by Adebayo, Vigilante gets the sudden idea to kill Auggie and rid Christopher of him once and for all. Vigilante was the stand-out this episode. While he may be a complete psychopath, he’s one with good intentions who cares about people and things, but just has a funny way of showing it. Getting himself arrested, he takes the Aryans head-on and proceeds to ridicule them for all their backward thoughts and actions, provoking them into attacking him first so that he can make his way to Auggie and take him out.

The episode ends with a montage between characters to “House of Pain” by The Pussycats. We see Peacemaker facing a lot of crucial events in his life: him being forced the kill a man by his father, presumably the first life he’d taken; a flashback to the events of The Suicide Squad, in which we see Peacemaker kill Rick Flag, someone he looked up to and believed to be an American hero, in which Flag calls him a joke; finally, we see the death of Christopher’s brother. Although we aren’t exactly sure how it happened, it’s a moment that deeply haunts him.

The most shocking revelation in this episode, however, takes place in the final scene in which we see Murn revealed as a butterfly as he releases his proboscis to consume the amber nectar. Just why is Murn trying to take down the butterflies if he is one?

Episode 5 of Peacemaker debuts tomorrow on HBO Max.

The first episode of Peacemaker saw Christopher Smith discharged from the hospital, thinking he was free to go as no cops had returned to arrest him. However, it’s upon the return home that he’s introduced to Clemson Murn and his team, featuring a few familiar faces. Murn tells Smith he’d only served four of his thirty-year sentence and could return to prison or work for him.

Welcome to Project Butterfly, another “creatively” named mission in which we’ve learned that an alien species of insects codenamed “butterflies” has infiltrated earth. The butterflies are similar to Starro but are not extensions of one larger being. These butterflies are believed to have infiltrated some of the highest levels of government and influence on earth and it’s up to Peacemaker and his new team to root them out and stop them from taking over the world.

Project Butterfly features the return of not only Peacemaker, but also Emilia Harcourt and John Economos. The two of them are Argus agents who worked on Task Force X during Project Starfish but seem to have much more history with the team. Alongside those two is Murn, an ex-mercenary who brought the issue of the Butterflies to Waller and was directly appointed to lead this task force. The final member is Leota Adebayo, who we learn very early on is the daughter of Amanda Waller and is, of course, there with an assigned ulterior motive: to plant a forged diary in the Peacemaker’s trailer.

Perhaps one of the other biggest reveals from the first three episodes is the alter-ego of Auggie Smith, Peacemaker’s father. After being locked up in prison, the other prisoners salute Auggie and refer to him as the White Dragon, an obscure villain mantle from the comics belonging to white supremacists. We knew Auggie was quite a bad guy, but we didn’t know he was that bad of a guy!

We meet Vigilante early on whose describes himself as Peacemaker’s “best friend” and is just plain crazy, looking to kill anyone who breaks even the most minuscule law. Although he was not an appointed member of the team, he makes space for himself in ‘Better Goff Dead’ in which he kills Senator Royland Goff’s family, all of whom are Butterflies, after Peacemaker hesitates.

Of course, we can’t forget Judomaster making his live-action debut in the series. Judomaster is a Charlton Comic’s character just like Peacemaker, but the one we meet here is a more appropriately reimaged character. Judomaster is the Goff family bodyguard and gives the team quite a beatdown.

Peacemaker Episode 3 ends with quite the shocking revelation as we get our very first look at one of these Butterflies, but also the reveal that this isn’t a contained threat. A map within the team’s surveillance van establishes the Butterflies as a global threat.

Episode 4 of Peacemaker, “A Choad Less Travelled”, is set to HBO Max on Thursday, January 20th.