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.
