Episode Review: Peacemaker 2x7 - "Like a Keith in the Night"
- randazzojj123
- Oct 6
- 9 min read
Welcome back to the blog readers. Well, it suffices to say that James Gunn completely broke the internet last week when all the fan theories about the "best dimension ever" being Earth-X were absolutely correct. I do believe that this was the perfect way to reveal it to the audience, and last week's whole episode reveals just how good this damn show is. There is a reason why I love it so fucking much. Now that we have reached the penultimate episode, titled "Like a Keith in the Night," written by James Gunn, and directed by Alethea Jones, would we continue to keep on keeping on the momentum? Stick around to find out.
NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.
I hailed last week's episode as the best episode of the show thus far based on the performances of Jennifer Holland and Freddie Stroma, and the story (and that massive twist). I feel like we are treading similar ground with the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022-) from last year, where I hailed the sixth episode as the best of the show and the very next episode as the best of the entire year (a crown it maintained). I say that because I personally think this is the best episode of television all year from a show not named The Last of Us (2023-). John Cena gives the performance of his life with a dark and haunting story that will stay with you long after the credits.
I have said many times on this blog this season that John Cena is giving the best performances of his career in this entire series. And it is as clear as day; you can see the growth that Cena has undergone as a performer not just over the two seasons of Peacemaker (2022-) but throughout the decades since he started acting. I think I am ready to call it now: John Cena just gave an Emmy-worthy performance this week. That's it, end of paragraph. But seriously, Cena is able to deliver despair at a level I have not seen from him before, and the emotional disparity he displays in the final 10 minutes of this episode elevate everything he has built into this character ever since we met him in The Suicide Squad (2021). I said it before, and I will say it again: give Cena an Emmy nomination after this performance.
Now we get into the deep and rich story that James Gunn decided to give us this week. We pick up exactly where we left off last time out, in which Christopher Smith / Peacemaker and Emilia Harcourt learned Chris's "best dimension ever" is actually Earth-X, a dimension in which the Nazis won World War II, and Emilia orders the arrest of Harcourt since she is not her. Harcourt lambasts Chris for not noticing the signs that this was a Nazi dimension and pointing out a copy of Hitler's book Mein Kampf on every desk and a giant mural of Hitler on the wall. Emilia asks Chris what he was doing, and he promptly breaks up with her and begins to assault A.R.G.U.S. guards with Harcourt. The two escape the facility using Chris's jetpack and ride out on the "Peace-cycle."
Meanwhile, Adrian Chase / Vigilante continues to talk to his Earth-X counterpart and learns that this dimension is ruled over by Nazis since they won World War II. Adrian-X asks what his world is like, leading Adrian-1 to reveal Leota Adebayo's existence, and the two spring up to go rescue her. While this is happening, Adebayo is still being chased down the street by Keith and a bunch of other Nazis, when Auggie calls Keith and summons him to their house. He leaves as Adebayo makes her way into a house and dives in the pool, leading the Nazis to chase after her. She is helped out of the pool by Judomaster, who puts two telephone wires into the pool, electrocuting everyone in it. The two then retreat to a house that Judomaster has been staying in. Meanwhile, Auggie has John Economos (who tries to recant everything he blurted out at the end of last week's episode) tied up, but Auggie sees right through him. Keith makes it to the house, and Auggie breaks the news that his son is dead and reveals that he is aware of other dimensions since he had seen himself in another one. Keith reveals Harcourt must be from another dimension as well. Chris and Harcourt are riding on the "Peace-cycle" being chased by police, and Harcourt puts her head on Chris's back, and he holds her hand. They are eventually forced to stop when more police come, and they are considering fighting for their life until they are saved by Auggie and Keith. The two convince Chris and Harcourt to come with them.
Back on Earth-1, Rick Flag and Sasha Bordeaux follow up on Lex Luthor's lead from last episode when they meet with Luthor's top scientist Sydney Happersen. Happersen wants to know why he should help Flag, and Flag bites back by threatening to tell Luthor his man let him down, leading him to cooperate and find the dimensional breach. He reveals it is not Luthor's technology because it is stable and reveals the location of Adrian Chase's house, leading Flag to call Langston Fleury and get a task force on the house. Happersen later uses his own terminal to look at porn in the post-credit scene. Back on Earth-X, Adebayo and Judomaster are hanging out in the house and they decide to play a game of Scrabble in which they muse on how their dimension is not much different than this dimension, with Adebayo being a person of color and Judomaster being Asian and queer. Adebayo also defends Chris, saying that underneath his many flaws he is a sweet person. Night falls and Judomaster sees the mob, leading them to leave to get back to the Smith-X house. Auggie and Keith interrogate Chris, Harcourt, and Economos (who cannot stop lying to save his own life), leading Chris to tell them the truth.
He admits that he first entered the dimension by chance when he was drunk, and he was looking around to see what was different from his dimension. He admits his brother was killed as a child and that he did accidentally kill Chris-X. When Auggie asks why he came back, he says he wanted to know what it was like to have a family, inspiring Harcourt and Economos. Keith does not share the same level of sympathy, only seeing the man that killed his brother. They are interrupted by detective Larry Fitzgibbon (played once again by Lochlyn Munro), who has been after Chris for his actions at A.R.G.U.S., but Auggie forces him to get a warrant before entering the house, leading the cops to begin leaving. Adebayo and Judomaster have made it to the house, where they are met by the two Vigilantes, with Adrian-1 having a moment with Judomaster before they all agree to sneak into the house. Back in the house, Auggie tells Keith that he believes Chris did not intentionally kill his son and he allows for Chris's friends to arrive so they can leave this dimension and never return. Harcourt rifles back and calls Auggie a Nazi, leading him to get mad and claim he does not control the conditions in his world, but only the things he can control, and he hopes he can do the best he can so he can face God's judgment. As he is talking, Adrian-1 jumps through the window and stabs Auggie repeatedly, killing him brutally as everyone is stunned (using the excuse that he had Economos tied up). Keith shoots his lasers at them, leading the cops to enter the house.
The two Vigilantes hold off the cops while Judomaster and the 11th Street Kids make their way to the Quantum Unfolding Chamber (QUC) and Keith mourns the death of his father. As Chris pauses to look at a painted portrait of Auggie (and he had also brought up his disbelief of Auggie being a Nazi), Keith bursts through the wall and has Chris pinned down so he can brutally beat him, but Eagly comes in defense of his friend, and the rest of the Kids and Judomaster come in to try to kill Keith. Chris is stunned but then lets out a visceral scream asking them to stop, clearly reliving the trauma of his brother dying in childhood. He successfully gets them off Keith, and crawls over to the dying Captain Triumph and apologizes, while asking what is wrong with everyone. Chris comes to a conclusion: it is not his world or Keith's that is messed up, it is him. Adebayo convinces a devastated Chris to go through the door and return to his Earth, while Harcourt asks for Adrian-X's gun to execute Keith, preventing him from coming after Chris, but she cannot kill him. Adrian-X holds them off and all of the Kids and Judomaster return to their dimension, just as Chris closes the door and A.R.G.U.S. have Adrian's house surrounded. The 11th Street Kids and Judomaster confront Fleury, Flag, Bordeaux, and the rest of the agents, but Judomaster returns to A.R.G.U.S.. Chris lies that everyone went into the QUC to convince him to return the device to Flag, and Judomaster corroborates the story, leading only Chris to be arrested. The episode ends with Adebayo stopping Adrian from shooting up the agents and a dejected Chris sitting in the back of a cop car.
I do have to say that I love the direction this episode took, especially with what happened with the Smith family. Since we learned that this "best dimension ever" was Earth-X, I knew the other shoe was going to fall and the relationship between Chris and his father and brother would fall apart. But everything was handled with such reverence and grace that you found yourself feeling for the "bad guys." Also, it is clear to me that Judomaster is being set up to betray or quit A.R.G.U.S. and join the 11th Street Kids in the finale, but I will be talking about that later on in this post in Theory Time. This does end the official review of Peacemaker's seventh episode, and I want to thank you for reading thus far.
Welcome to the first installment of Theory Time in a month, and definitely the last one we will be getting for Peacemaker (unless we get a third season of this show). There is a whole lot we have to talk about this time around with only one episode left and so many questions left unanswered. But the one I want to start with is the most obvious one we have had for the last three months since James Gunn made his comments: who is the "really, really, really big cameo" in the finale?
So let us talk about what it could be. We have had some pretty big cameos in this season, like Joel Kinnaman returning as Rick Flag Jr., and Nicholas Hoult reprising his Superman (2025) role of Lex Luthor. We have even had some smaller cameos like Lochlyn Munro and Stephen Blackehart in this very episode. But who is the cameo that will completely break the internet? People have said Margot Robbie, Jason Momoa, Henry Cavill, and even Ezra Miller among others. Want my two cents? Here you go. James Gunn just said he was getting ready to greenlight two films and an HBO Max series. He did announce in 2023 when he was introducing his universe that there would be a Batman film called The Brave and the Bold in the DCU. I predict one of the two films is The Brave and the Bold, and it will be greenlit and announced after the finale airs, because the "really, really, really big cameo" is going to be us finding out who the DCU Batman is going to be. And this is who I have thought the cameo was going to be from the beginning, especially since Sasha Bordeaux is a Batman character from the comics. So there's my prediction: Brandon Sklenar as Batman. Why him? Gunn also said he loves 1923 (2023-25), a show Sklenar was on. I may be way off, but this is what I think.
The next thing I want to discuss is what I think is going to happen in the finale. In the preview for the finale, we clearly see A.R.G.U.S. using the dimensional device to access the QUC, and I think this is going to attract the attention not of an otherworldly threat like some people think, but of Keith, who will be led right to the mainline DCU and launch a revenge suicide mission on Chris and the rest of the 11th Street Kids. I think A.R.G.U.S. is going to have to get the help of Team Peacemaker in order to stop Keith from going scorched earth on this universe and killing Chris. I also think that whatever is going to drive Man of Tomorrow (2027) will be revealed, and I do not believe it will be Brainiac. Basically, there is a lot we have to figure out by the time the credits roll on this finale, and I cannot wait to go on this journey one more time.
Thank you for joining me on probably my final Theory Time of 2025, and I hope you have a great day, you beautiful people.
Peacemaker's penultimate episode gives me everything I could have wanted from this show: laughs, heart, and an Emmy-worthy performance from John Cena. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.
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